Masters Of Doom (2004)

By David Kushner

352pp, Non fiction

Notes

2026-01-13

Romero and Carmack both come across as massive assholes and Kushners sympathetic treatment of their assholery show how back in 2004 the foundations of Gamergate etc. were already laid down. Kushner obviously put in the hours with interviews here, all the main players are extensively quoted and as a history of toxic office politics it's interesting enough and very readable. That said, Kushner really doesn't seem to have any facility with placing things in context; the games are never analysed or thought about as intrinsically interesting cultural objects, it's all about how many units were sold and so on. Why were these games good/ interesting? Basically they were fast and cool and so on, proper Beavis and Butthead level thinking. More: Kushner doesn't seem to have a grasp on the technicalities -- when he does try to grapple with them neither he nor his editors cover themselves in glory -- and there are a bunch of factual errors around other games too which undermines much of the book's credibility.Finally, this tends towards a deeply parochial US-centric version of the video game industry of the 90s.

Off the back of this its time to rewatch the excellent: ACTION BUTTON REVIEWS DOOM both factually accurate and critically incisive.