David Kushner (1)

This was OK, I guess. I enjoy re-reading accounts of 90s and 80s technology movements, and startups because I lived through most of it, moderately close to many of the front-lines, and nostalgia can be compelling. This also makes me a bit reflexively over-sensitive to inaccuracy or editorialising, or lack of any real feel for technology on the part of the author. Often this genre of books aren't even terrifically well written, or even that well researched. I would say this one is slightly above par - it captures the narrative and the sense of the times. It does a fairly good job of communicating the paradigm breaking technological innovations that the id team brought to PC games and graphics programming during their glory years. I always enjoy NeXT paraphenalia, and NeXTSTEP was crucial to the id development methodology, so it's good to see that getting a nod and a walk-on. I think I usually end up scoring these books mostly by whether I learned anything new. I suppose I did, but it is mostly that the id founding team all seem to be really unpleasant people, which is a bit of a disappointment.… (mer)

A fantastic reportage by David Kushner on the creators of Doom and Wolf 3D. Gives a peek into the lives of the two Johns who created many memorable video games. Will Wheaton was simply superb in his narration.

I still worry a bit about the narrative fallacy. You can get an impression that just these two guys created a revolution (along with people at id Software) alone. It might be true but the skeptic in me still refuses to believe. I somehow missed the culture / social context of other development that happened during that era, which led to the revolution. Remember, we know Edison as the inventor of the light bulb but a detailed examination of the history will say the otherwise. But anyway, this is just a nitpick, in such an excellent writing.

(Originally published at http://santhoshguru.com/2018/03/18/masters-of-doom/)
… (mer)