Masters of Doom is a fantastic read, I had the kindle edition and had to track down a hardback copy after reading it. I wanted it on my shelf.
The author has a new novel out titled Jacked which I believe tells the story of Rockstar games but I haven't read it yet. Has anyone else? Is it good?
I feel like it would be lacking some of the nostalgia and lure of Masters of Doom. The celebrity and talent of Carmack is legendary in our industry and Romero's arc makes him a compelling foil later in the story. Additionally, id software's games are the games that I grew up playing as opposed to Rockstar's games which I have only seen in passing.
I loved Masters of Doom and bought Jacked hoping it would be as amazing. Jacked had some great personality profiles in it... but as mentioned above, the personalities just aren't as captivating as Carmack and Romero. Plus there was a lot of focus on Jack Thompson (the video game activist [1]), which got tiresome. I hadn't realized that the title of the book was a pun on carjacking and Jack Thompson.
The book also didn't dig nearly as much into the detail around the creation of the games. In Masters of Doom, you felt like you were watching Carmack and Romero invent Doom. In Jacked, the game creation process was talked about in much more general (and less personal) terms. That's absolutely typical for a journalist, but Masters of Doom set such a high bar for gaming journalism that I ended up a bit disappointed.
Overall Jacked was a worthwhile read, but I didn't find it to be in same class as Masters of Doom.
The author has a new novel out titled Jacked which I believe tells the story of Rockstar games but I haven't read it yet. Has anyone else? Is it good?
I feel like it would be lacking some of the nostalgia and lure of Masters of Doom. The celebrity and talent of Carmack is legendary in our industry and Romero's arc makes him a compelling foil later in the story. Additionally, id software's games are the games that I grew up playing as opposed to Rockstar's games which I have only seen in passing.