To take credit for having grown is to admit having once needed to

December 1, 2023 1:06 PM

The Simple Truth According to John Romero Games journalist and designer Duncan Fyfe reviews John Romero's recent autobiography Doom Guy: Life in First Person for Remap Radio, with special emphasis on how it reveals as much about its subject and author by what it does not say as by what it does.
posted by firechicago (9 comments total)

If someone saying he was a time traveler had told me in the 1998 that by the year 2023 people wanted John Carmack to shut up more and John Romero to say more, I'd've said: "what is it like to plug your brain into the consensual hallucination of cyberspace, and how many people live on Mars, and have the aliens … wait, Carmack's the annoying one now and Romero's the basically okay guy who lacks a certain perspective, yeah right, a lot can change in twenty five years but that's just ridiculous".
posted by Kattullus at 1:59 PM on December 1, 2023 [14 favorites]

I still remember the interview video released by Ion Storm where they panned down to Stevie Case's bust while she was talking. If Romero grew up a little I'm glad, but he had a lot of growing up to do.
posted by BrotherCaine at 2:02 PM on December 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

I'm not sure what to think of this article. Ok, the book talks about a lot of things the author wants to brush away - maybe a tell-all would sell, maybe not, but it's fair if this guy didn't want to write about his worst himself.

I understand wanting to write about the juicy stories recounted by friends - but then again to this day my friends tell stories about me that I never did. We want our lives and friends and our story to be more exciting than they often are. Lots of people work jobs away from their spouses, date coworkers, and have fallouts with coworkers. Have a job long enough, and you'll have a failed project or two. Lots of people have rough childhoods. Some people it effect sand some it doesn't.

I can't really tell if the book that was written is a good one or not - if you are into video game design history and don't care that much about the characters behind them - maybe it is.

However, I find the actual text the pull quote is based on elementary, "To take credit for having grown is to admit having once needed to" -- like who wouldn't admit to that - but the actual description of the guy's philosophy much worse:

"The famous fallout with Carmack, he writes, happened only because both men were in their twenties and inexperienced. Now, they are in their fifties and experienced, and therefore would not have made any mistakes. In youth we are foolish and in age we are wise, and this process happens automatically and correctly, according to Romero."

I can't tell if that's what Romero really thinks - it's not a direct quote, at least in the article. But if it is that's pretty sad.

I never really played any of these games too much -they make me motion sick, so I don't really know these people and only know the games in passing.
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:51 PM on December 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

I will come in and really recommend Kushner’s Masters of Doom, which is superficially a journalist survey of ID software and about these two dickheads, but is a much broader look at pop culture shifts. It’s a rare bit of writing, in that it’s about two very immature and unpleasant people, but compelling.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 3:33 PM on December 1, 2023 [4 favorites]

Here is where I get to/have to admit that I have a surprisingly low Carmack & Romero Number: I used to sell Commodore 64 games I had written to Loadstar, a magazine-on-disk put out by Softdisk Publishing, the same outfit that they worked for.
posted by JHarris at 3:38 PM on December 1, 2023 [4 favorites]

listened to the Audible version of this (I dig autobiographies read by the subject); we're the same age so had similar arcs through home computers etc, tho he sure hustled a lot more than I did in the 80s and 90s, sigh.

weird thing about his book tho was the final 20-30% was just pure padding devoid of anything of interest other than to him & his family,
posted by torokunai at 5:15 PM on December 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm glad this article is skeptical of Kushner's whole narrative, but it is just too bad there doesn't seem to be anything else in Romero's book to really replace it.
posted by fleacircus at 8:36 PM on December 1, 2023

I can't tell if that's what Romero really thinks - it's not a direct quote, at least in the article. But if it is that's pretty sad.

Sometimes growing up really does mean just getting too old to keep being an asshole, though.
posted by atoxyl at 12:21 AM on December 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

JHarris, you might really like the memoir that Sid Meier put out a couple of years ago.
posted by dr_dank at 6:07 AM on December 2, 2023 [2 favorites]