Masters of Doom. It’s the story of two renowned game developers, John Karmack and John Romero, and how they built id Software, the video game company that profoundly changed PC gaming and graphics. I was writing software for enterprise / consulting companies at the time (early phase of my career). This book opened my eyes to the crazy/wonderful/scary world of ‘startups’, the idea that people can bring their passion into writing software and start a business or movement. I joined a startup (nothing to do gaming) and never looked back.
Very motivational book. It's a good illustration for the value of technical excellence and, well, single-minded obsession when building something great.
In a similar vein: the making of prince of Persia.
You really see the highs and the lows in this book about the developing of prince of Persia. It is structured as a diary, so you can see other interests (learning Spanish, becoming a script writer). It is a good insight at how long developing something real feels IMO.
Highly recommend masters of doom. I’ve read through it a couple of times and find it motivational.
I grew up playing Wolf3D and quake games, and in general have admiration for what they were able to build. So I am not sure if people without that context will feel the same way about the book though :)
After finishing this I have been reading Fabian Sanglard’s books on Wolfenstein and Doom which helped make some of the ideas concrete. I’m not even that into games but just reading about how they had to optimize games for slow hardware is really interesting.
This is also one of my favorite books. As someone who grew up playing Quake this book has one of the best possible combinations of material combined into 1 book (business, life stories, relatable games, nostalgia, etc.).
