Masters of Doom

Masters of Doom by David Kushner Page A

Book: Masters of Doom by David Kushner Read Free Book Online
Authors: David Kushner
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the games industry for the same reason
     they were common in books and films; they were the best way to build and expand a
     brand identity. Tom, who assumed the role of creative director, mapped out the game
     plan.
    Mario, this was not. As a hero, an eight-year-old misfit who steals his dad’s Everclear
     for rocket fuel was more identifiable than a middle-aged Italian plumber. It was as
     if the gamers had followed that golden rule of writing about what they knew. Tom,
     as a kid, used to walk around in a Green Bay Packers helmet and red Converse sneakers,
     just like Billy Blaze. And, in a sense, they were all Billy Blazes, oddball kids who
     modified technology to create elaborate means of escape. Keen was a punk, a hacker.
     And he was saving the galaxy, just as countless hackers like Carmack and Romero used
     technology to save themselves.
    The roles were set: Carmack and Romero were the programmers, and Tom the lead designer—the
     person in charge of coming up with the game play elements, from the story and setting
     to the characters and weapons. Carmack and Romero were happy to leave Tom to the creative
     work; they were too busy programming. Carmack was refining his engine, getting the
     smooth scrolling down to the point where Keen could move as fluidly left or right
     as he could up or down. Romero, meanwhile, was working the editor, the program that
     allows the developers to put together the graphics of the game—characters, rooms,
     monsters. It was essentially a game designer’s construction kit. Carmack and Romero
     were in sync.
    Not everyone else gelled quite as well. Lane was now officially kicked out of the
     Keen development. Despite Romero’s fondness for him as a friend, he felt that Lane’s
     energy was lacking. Adrian was having problems of his own. Though he was recruited
     later to help them work on Keen, Adrian hated the project. It was too . . . cutesy.
     Tom had a target audience in mind: “kids,” he said, “or those who have kidlike mentalities
     like we do.” Adrian hated kiddie stuff. Even more, he hated cutesy. Worst of all was
     cutesy kiddie. And now here he was having to sit all night drawing pizza slices, soda
     pop, and candy. Tom came up with a little character called a Yorp with a big fat green
     body and one periscopelike eye over his head. Even the monsters were cute. In most
     games, when a character died, it would simply disappear, vanish. But Tom had other
     notions. He was eager to incorporate some “larger philosophical ideas,” as he said.
     He loosely based characters on ideas he’d read in Freud’s
Civilization and Its Discontents;
a guard was made to represent an id. He wanted to teach kids that when people or
     even aliens die, they
really
die, they leave corpses. So he wanted the dead creatures in the game to just . .
     . remain: not graphic or bloody corpses, just dead Yorps.
Cute
dead Yorps.
    The cuteness of the characters wasn’t the only thing bugging Adrian, it was the cuteness
     of their creator. Tom was getting on his nerves. He would run around the house, craning
     his neck and making sounds to show Adrian exactly what the alien creatures in the
     games were supposed to look like. Romero would usually crack up at these displays.
     Adrian took a liking to Romero, who shared his taste in heavy metal and his appreciation
     of sick humor; but Tom, in Adrian’s mind, was just plain annoying. To make matters
     worse, they had to share a desk, and Tom was so full of energy that he kept bobbing
     his knee up and down, inadvertently hitting the table when Adrian was trying to draw.
     But it was better than working at the last open space in the house, next to the litter
     box used for John Carmack’s cat, Mitzi. Tom had no idea how Adrian felt. He thought
     he was just quiet.
    For the majority of the time, however, those late nights at the lake house were a
     perpetual programming party. With Iggy Pop or Dokken playing on the stereo, the guys
     all worked

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