Quotes from David Kushner

Romero himself couldn't believe the way people were harping on Doom, a game that was six years old. It just showed how clueless the politicians had become. It was just the same old crap from the same old people. And Romero was tired of the blame. Those kids were defective, he thought, so don't blame it on my game. Don't blame the games. Blame the fucking parents.

Though few if any of the gamers had seen pictures of Romero, they figured he was the guy wearing the black T-shirt with the militaristic Doom logo on the front and the bold white words "Wrote It" on the back. The shirt was Romero's own modification. After id had printed up a bunch of promotional tees, he suggested they add the phrase "Wrote It" for their own. He even sent his mother a Doom shirt with the words "My Son Wrote It" on the back.

Making a game, writing code, for Carmack, was increasingly becoming an exercise in elegance: how to write something that achieved the desired effect in the cleanest way possible.

320 pounds of gamer meat

He began by pushing himself to stay up one hour later every evening and then coming in one hour later the next day. By early 1995, he had arrived at his ideal schedule: coming in to work at around 4:00 p.m. and leaving at 4:00 a.m. He would need all the concentration he could muster for Quake.

In the information age, the barriers just aren't there," he said. "The barriers are self-imposed. If you want to set off and go develop some grand new thing, you don't need millions of dollars of capitalization. You need enough pizza and Diet Coke to stick in your refrigerator, a cheap PC to work on, and the dedication to go through with it. We slept on floors. We waded across rivers.

He was sentenced to one year in a small juvenile detention home in town. Most of the kids were in for drugs. Carmack was in for an Apple II.

The fourteen-year-old Carmack was sent for psychiatric evaluation to help determine his sentence. He came into the room with a sizable chip on his shoulder. The interview didn't go well. Carmack was later told the contents of his evaluation: "Boy behaves like a walking brain with legs . . . no empathy for other human beings.

In fact, he had never really gotten the appeal most people found in hapless diversions. He would see things on television about drunken spring break beach weekends, and none of it would compute. A lot of people didn't seem to enjoy their work. Carmack knew well and good what he enjoyed—programming—and was systematically arranging his life to spend the most time possible doing just that.

At 4:00 A.M. on May 5, 1992, the shareware episode of Wolfenstein 3D was complete.

In another assignment, he wrote about how one day, when he refused to do extracredit homework, his mother padlocked his comic book collection in a closet; unable to pick the lock, he removed the hinges and took off the door.

Though games were barely acknowledged as a legitimate form of expression, let alone a legitimate art form, Tom was convinced that they were almost sublime forms of communication, just as films or novels. After

This is my daily work . . . When I accomplish something, I write a * line that day. Whenever a bug / missing feature is mentioned during the day and I don't fix it, I make a note of it. Some things get noted many times before they get fixed. Occasionally I go back through the old notes and mark with a + the things I have since fixed.

Death leaves trails of mutes.

John Carmack was a late talker. His parents were concerned until one day in 1971, when the fifteen-month-old boy waddled into the living room holding a sponge and uttered not just a single word but a complete sentence: "Here's your loofah, Daddy." It was as if he didn't want to mince words until he had something sensible to say.

The barriers are self-imposed. If you want to set off and go develop some grand new thing, you don't need millions of dollars of capitalization. You need enough pizza and Diet Coke to stick in your refrigerator, a cheap PC to work on, and the dedication to go through with it. We slept on floors. We waded across rivers.

He strengthened his body to keep up with his mind. He began lifting weights, practicing judo, and wrestling. One day after school, a bully tried to pick on Carmack's neighbor, only to become a victim of Carmack's judo skills.

If we can get this done, [Doom] is going to be the fucking coolest game that the planet Earth has ever fucking seen in its entire history!

Romero's stepfather knew something was up when an officer working on a classified Russian dogfight simulation asked him if his stepson was interested in a part-time job.

now. The last free generation of kids had let their fears take away their kids' freedom. As

at least one player (who had been consuming Ding Dong cupcakes during a marathon match) explosively defecated in his pants midgame.

Shortly after the Civil War, religious leaders assailed pulp novels as "Satan's efficient agents to advance his kingdom by destroying the young.

Kids grow up hearing fairy tales, but the biggest fairy tale of all, I realized at the age of four, is that life is safe. Life isn't safe, I learned. It's crazy. Evil is real. One minute you could be riding your bike on the way to get candy, and the next, you're dead. Anything could happen anywhere at any time. So now what? How was I supposed to live without giving in to the fear?

They hacked all day. They even hacked naked; at the Taylor University computer lab, gamers stripped down for regular "skinny-hacking" parties.