Public Servant Lifestyle

The true inside story of the 'Lennon & McCartney' of the video games industry.

Masters of Doom by David Kushner is the everyday story of how two regular US blokes (John Carmack & John Romero) created an empire from nothing with the game franchise PC Gamer magazine has called: "A masterpiece of the art form" from nothing. As a sideline they quietly transformed pop culture somewhere along the way...

Together these two joe-blokes from the USA created an empire, ruled a multimillion-dollar industry, and provoked a national controversy. They lived a unique American dream, escaping their broken homes to co-create the most innovative and notoriously successful video games in history - Doom and Quake - until the games they made tore them apart.

Originally released in 1993, Doom introduced millions to the terrifying and exhilarating excitement of first-person gaming action. As a lone marine stranded on Mars when a military experiment literally goes to hell, gamers faced off against an army of demons and un-dead marines using the BFG 9000 and an arsenal of classic weapons in order to survive this deadly assault and save mankind from certain extinction.

David Kushner has been covering the video and computer games industry for ten years and knows all the angles. Even those with no interest in video games will be fascinated by this vastly entertaining tale of friendship, betrayal and the genesis of a multibillion-dollar popular art form.

Apart from this book Kushner has written for numerous publications, including The New York Times, Wired, Rolling Stone - for which he writes a digital music column - and Spin - where he is a contributing editor - and has also worked as a senior producer for the music website SonicNet.

Doom also appeared as a live-action motion picture version in 2005. Click here to read a full feature on the film (available now on DVD).

Masters of Doom is out now in paperback - priced: £10.99 - from Piatkus Books.

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