Review: Doom Guy: Life in First Person, by John Romero
by
Stuart Holland
I’ll start with what John Romero apparently expected people to take away from the beginning of the book: that was not what I expected. I didn’t know much about John Romero’s personal history going in, only that he was one of the co-creators of Doom and a founder of the game developer id. I didn’t expect a childhood of abuse, poverty, and suffering. And it’s something he appears to have emerged from as a quite balanced person.
This book tells Romero’s story from being a kid to the games he’s working on today. It was fun to hear him describe the work he and others have done on various games throughout the years. He scratches the surface of the kinds of technical discussions that’d be fun to have with him, without diving so deep that a non-developer would be lost.
The history of id, Doom, and Quake is fascinating. The way that games changed so much in the late 80s and early 90s, and the speed that they made all those games is mind-boggling compared to today. Many know that games are slower to make now, but the sheer comparative multiplier is something to behold.
The story in the book is told straightforwardly but positively. There’s a darker version of this that dwells on the ills and while the book doesn’t shy away from them, it generally focuses on the good. (And Romero says as much inside as well.) It’s a nice way to approach a story that has its dark corners, but in broad is about tremendous success and Romero clearly finding his passion for a body of work that added a lot to his life.
There’s a reason that Doom and Quake are still relevant today. The games were revolutionary in themselves, and the open software approach to them is also refreshing, and it’s what has allowed them to persist as they have. We’d all be wiser to learn from that success.
