Summary of David Kushner's Masters of Doom

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 Romero, who was 11 at the time, jumped onto his dirt bike and went to the local arcade. He knew he wasn’t supposed to be there, but he couldn’t help himself. That was where the games were. He tapped the control buttons as the rocks flew toward his triangular ship and the Jaws-style theme music blipped in suspense.
#2 John Romero was born in 1967 in Arizona. His parents had married only a few months before, and his father had taken a job in the copper mines. The work was hard, and his father often came home drunk. But Romero loved going to the arcade with his stepfather.
#3 Dungeons and Dragons, a pen-and-paper role-playing game, was the hottest thing going in 1972. It was like a computer-game version of the game, and it attracted many adults who lazily dismissed it as geeky escapism. But for a boy like Romero, it was much more than that.
#4 The computer gaming industry was dominated by arcade machines and home consoles like the Atari 2600. But computer games were accessible, and the people who had the keys were not authoritarian monsters, but dudes.

Sujets

• Love
• Love (disambiguation)
• Industrie
• Entertainment

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 19 mars 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669354130
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on David Kushner's Masters of Doom
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7 Insights from Chapter 8 Insights from Chapter 9 Insights from Chapter 10 Insights from Chapter 11 Insights from Chapter 12 Insights from Chapter 13 Insights from Chapter 14 Insights from Chapter 15 Insights from Chapter 16
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Romero, who was 11 at the time, jumped onto his dirt bike and went to the local arcade. He knew he wasn’t supposed to be there, but he couldn’t help himself. That was where the games were. He tapped the control buttons as the rocks flew toward his triangular ship and the Jaws-style theme music blipped in suspense.

#2

John Romero was born in 1967 in Arizona. His parents had married only a few months before, and his father had taken a job in the copper mines. The work was hard, and his father often came home drunk. But Romero loved going to the arcade with his stepfather.

#3

Dungeons and Dragons, a pen-and-paper role-playing game, was the hottest thing going in 1972. It was like a computer-game version of the game, and it attracted many adults who lazily dismissed it as geeky escapism. But for a boy like Romero, it was much more than that.

#4

The computer gaming industry was dominated by arcade machines and home consoles like the Atari 2600. But computer games were accessible, and the people who had the keys were not authoritarian monsters, but dudes.

#5

Romero was a fourth-generation game hacker: the first had been the students who worked on the minicomputers in the fifties and sixties at MIT; the second, the ones who picked up the ball in Silicon Valley and at Stanford University in the seventies; the third being the dawning game companies of the early eighties.

#6

Romero had first seen the Apple II computers at Sierra College. While a mainframe’s graphics were capable of, at best, spitting out white blocks and lines, the Apple II’s monitor burst with color and high-resolution dots.

#7

The Apple II was a hit, and its popularity helped launch the gaming industry. Romero was already a prodigy, but he became even more famous when his stepfather took him to work with him.

#8

For a kid working with an Apple II, there were two ways to get published in the nascent industry. The big publishers, like Sierra and Electronic Arts, were fairly inaccessible. More within his reach were the enthusiast magazines, which printed games as code on their pages.

#9

In 1987, Romero returned to America with his family. He began dating a girl named Kelly, who lived in a cool house high on a hill in town. He decided it was time to go for his dream job. He had published ten games. He was about to graduate from high school. He needed a gig.

#10

In November 1987, Romero was driving across the country, heading for his first day of work at Origin’s office in New Hampshire. He had a wife and a baby on the way. He was already successful, but his life as an Ace Programmer and Rich Person was not turning out as he had expected.
Insights from Chapter 2

#1

John Carmack was a late talker. He was born in 1970, and his parents were already a self-taught family. He grew up in the fruits of his parents’ hard work. He was a voracious reader, and he developed a speech impediment when he was in the third grade.

#2

When Carmack was in the fifth grade, his mother took him to a local Radio Shack and bought him an Apple II. He began programming, and soon he was hacking games. He loved the ability to create things out of thin air. He didn’t have to rely on anyone else.

#3

When Inga took him to psychologists to try and figure out why he was becoming so uncontrollable, he found solace in the book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, which chronicles the rise of renegade computer enthusiasts.

#4

Carmack was introduced to the world of Bulletin Board Systems in 1978. These were computer clubhouses for the people, and they were unlike anything he had ever experienced before. They allowed people to trade software and talk by posting text messages in forums.

#5

When he was in the juvenile home, Carmack was introduced to programming, and he found it extremely addicting. He decided to use other people’s ideas and create his own games. He became extremely cynical and hardened, and he burned to hack.

#6

In the fall of 1988, Carmack reluctantly enrolled at the University of Kansas, where he signed up for an entire schedule of computer classes. He was bored and miserable. He couldn’t relate to the students, and he didn’t care about keg parties and frat houses.

#7

Carmack was a freelance programmer, and he loved it. He was in control of his time, slept as late as he wanted, and, even better, answered to no one. He was able to spend all of his time programming and playing DD.
Insights from Chapter 3

#1

The company was helmed by Al Vekovius, a former math professor at Louisiana State University at Shreveport.