Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire And Transformed Pop Culture – Excerpt
“For once, reality didn’t live up to Romero’s hype. The id guys arrived at the apartment in Madison on a gray day in September 1991 to find it considerably less fun than he and Tom had described. They were in a sprawling complex in which every building looked the same. Compared with their Shreveport house, it was a dump: no lake, no yard, no boat. When they walked down the hall they didn’t pass trees, they passed two scary-looking guys dealing drugs.
At least they had some semblance of an id office: a three-bedroom apartment in the complex. Because Carmack didn’t care, he agreed to live in the upstairs bedroom while all the other guys got their own apartments elsewhere in the complex. Adrian, who was instantly miserable being out of his element, had even more problems because his apartment was on the far side of the development. While the other guys walked across a parking lot to get to the id office, Adrian had to drive.
But Romero was delighted. He was starting fresh: he had a new girlfriend and new games. Tom shared in the enthusiasm, happy to be back home, refreshed by the collegiate environment. The only real sore point for the two of them was Jason, who had become Carmack’s friend. He seemed to be on a completely different wavelength. Still, Carmack wasn’t ready to let him go.
Despite their mixed feelings about their new situation, the id team buckled down to finish the second Commander Keen trilogy. After their long months working together, the team had formed into a collective personality. Romero and Carmack were now in a perfect groove, with Carmack improving the new Keen engine—the code that made the graphics—while Romero worked on the editor and tools—the software used to create the game elements. Nothing could distract them.
One night Beth and a few other women showed up at the apartment. The guys were hard at work. Beth did her best to attract Romero’s attention. When nothing elicited a response, she threw up her hands and said, “Why can’t we just have our men come home and have sex with us?”
“Because we’re working,” Romero said. Carmack laughed. “
Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire And Transformed Pop Culture | David Kushner
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The (simple)purpose of life is reproduction. This drives all living things so you see it in all living things. However, one species–humanity–can find a calling so powerful that it overpowers their desire for sex, turning a person into a wanderer seeking mastery.
A true path is a virus. It infects your body and changes how you see everything. Nothing in the world looks the same after you have been infected with a calling.
Having a calling is being an irrational genius. You’re different, and the only people who get you are wanderers, and the only people who understand you are wanderers on the same path, of which there may be few, or none, depending on the path you travel and how far you have traveled.
The pursuit of mastery is often lonesome. The path keeps us company.
“Because we’re working”
Elevated Species
The path is what turns animals into humans. The calling is what makes us different from than comparable species we share the planet with.
Having a path is what allows humanity to become a level above the common animal. That’s what makes us different.
Without a path that provides a calling, a wanderer may stumble upon a shadow path, or a path that does not bring the wanderer any fulfillment and the wanderer either does not like where the path goes, or remains entirely unconscious of where the path is taking them, whether that unconsciousness is voluntary or involuntary. More often than not, the unconscious walking down a shadow path is actually a conscious decision to avoid some painful stimulus, or simply the pain of leaving what is known to penetrate the unknown.
Leaving what is known to venture forth into the unknown is the first quarter of the Hero’s Journey popularized by Joseph Campbell, the American writer and Mythologist who died in the late 80s.
The initial four phases of the Hero’s Journey
- The ordinary world
- The call to adventure
- Refusal of the call
- Meeting the mentor
The Refusal of The Call
Fear always comes from what we do not know. Fear is uncertainty. Pleasure is the certain known. Those who do not pursue mastery may be lazy, or fear failure, but underneath that, is the fear of leaving the ordinary world. The adventure stops at stage three, the refusal of the call.
Wanderers fear success more than failure because success means a new, unknowable future. This is why people who come from ordinary worlds that are hellish become possessed to find the call to adventure so they can leave. The brave believe in something better, the fearful believe in something worse.
If you’re born wealthy and the ordinary world comfortably meets all of your wants…it’s hard to leave even if your ordinary world doesn’t meet your needs. Getting what we want is pleasurable but leaves us empty and unfulfilled, as all pleasure does when abused.
Getting what we need is painful because fulfillment requires sacrifice. There is no other way. But the pain is fulfilling and more rewarding than any pleasure.
Your mission is to find a path
Sex is a good reference for finding a true calling. A professional does not skip practice for sex. The game is more important than the animalistic urge for reproduction. Rising above our animal nature is what makes us human.
To John Romero, John Carmack, and the rest of the id gang, developing first-person shooters was better than sex on a Saturday night. It was, you could say, better than being alive. Something worth sacrificing for. A true calling.
This isn’t to say that once you find your path you’re no longer interested in sex. Although, that did happen to the inventor of Calculus, Issac Newton, who allegedly died a virgin. Instead it means that you found a true path that calls you loud enough that you can wait to have sex until you are off the path, resting from your pursuit of mastery.
Notice John Carmack did not care about living upstairs in the office. He was obsessed with the path.
“Carmack had been sleeping on the floor for months too, though by choice. He simply didn’t feel he needed a mattress. Finally Romero got fed up with the situation and bought his partner a mattress, leaving it for him on his floor. “Dude,” he said, “it’s time you got a good night’s sleep.”
Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture | David Kushner (pg.115)
Imagine a calling that pulls at you so hard that you abstain from owning a mattress because it has nothing to do with the path.
Meaning means more than pleasure.
If your path does not call to you as loudly as sex, you haven’t found it yet.