DOOM
Book of the Month. DOOM: SCARYDARKFAST
The General Arcade library has hundreds of different books about video games and game development. Each month we cover the best of them, which will be useful for developers and/or inquisitive readers.
So much has been said and shown about DOOM that it would seem there is nothing more to add. Hundreds, no, thousands of articles, essays, and interviews. A book about the history of the developers, a book about the game’s engine, even novels based on the game… But what if a famous game developer who is crazy about DOOM wrote a scientific book and looked at the game from the Game Studies point of view? Just think about it: DOOM, science, and a book. Such a mix is definitely worth a try.
John Romero writes a book!
For our company, DOOM is more than just a game and its creators are more than just another bunch of talented people. John Romero and John Carmack have entered the history of video games as and will remain so forever.
John Romero loves to share memories and his Blog and Twitter are always a pleasure to read. But posts and tweets are sometimes not enough to get into a person’s story. That’s why John Romero has written an autobiography.
Game Engine Black Book: DOOM
“In early 1993, id Software was on top of gaming industry. Wolfenstein 3D launched the first-person shooter genre, and sales of its sequel, Spear of Destiny, skyrocketed”. That’s the words that started Engine Black Book: DOOM released 25 years after the DOOM.ZIP file appeared on the FTP server of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and it is rather difficult to argue even with such a peremptory statements.
The thing is that the technologies and tools that were used by id Software really surpassed everything that any of many competitors could offer — it was not in vain that the company spent years creating them. But while id was able to safely follow the beaten path that guaranteed them some definite success, the company acted much more daringly, “playing all-in”, leaving everything and starting from scratch. “Definite success” was not enough for the future authors of DOOM and Quake, they wanted everything at once. That’s what Game Engine Black Book: DOOM is about — “the story of how they did it, a book about history and technology”.