Doom Guy Quotes

Ferret took out a folded scrap of paper and passed it to him. 'My guy Ben doesn't know where the other club is, but the girls are being shipped in from here, a rehab centre in Newtonville.' 'What's this other place called?' Tazeem asked as he slipped the scrap of paper into his pocket. 'The place is just known as The Club. But the behind-the-scenes bit that only the real big spenders get to see, there's no official name, 'cause officially it doesn't exist, that's know as The Zombie Room.

I couldn't think of one clever way to stop this guy, so I just trusted to mindless violence.

I’m amazed this guy manages to get out of bed in the morning without working himself into a panic attack over the chance that he might trip on the bath mat and stab himself through the eye socket with his toothbrush and be left with a permanent twitch that’ll ruin his chances of landing an airplane safely if the pilot has a heart attack and doom hundreds to a fiery death.

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.

Amber saw getting infected as the ultimate commitment. Like her and the guy would be doomed to be with each other. Looking back, she figured a brush with death would make her really enjoy her life. Like she would feel more alive.

Execution is everything: Success is not defined by an idea. It is determined by your ability to execute on that idea.

He could guess, analyze, play out scenarios in his mind, but he would never know. It was a night-time truth that became a queer, private sorrow for him amid all that came after. A symbol, a displacement of regret. A reminder of what it was to be mortal and so doomed to tread one road only and that one only once, until Morian called the soul away and Eanna’s lights were lost. We can never truly know the path we have not walked.

Julian’s not at the house in Bel Air, but there’s a note on the door saying that he might be at some house on King’s Road. Julian’s not at the house on King’s Road either, but some guy with braces and short platinum-blond hair and a bathing suit on lifting weights is in the backyard. He puts one of the weights down and lights a cigarette and asks me if I want a Quaalude. I ask him where Julian is. There’s a girl lying by the pool on a chaise longue, blond, drunk, and she says in a really tired voice, ‘Oh, Julian could be anywhere. Does he owe you money?’ The girl has brought a television outside and is watching some movie about cavemen. ‘No,’ I tell her. ‘Well, that’s good. He promised to pay for a gram of coke I got him.’ She shakes her head. ‘Nope. He never did.’ She shakes her head again, slowly, her voice thick, a bottle of gin, half-empty, by her side. The weightlifter with the braces on asks me if I want to buy a Temple of Doom bootleg cassette. I tell him no and then ask him to tell Julian that I stopped by. The weight-lifter nods his head like he doesn’t understand and the girl asks him if he got the backstage passes to the Missing Persons concert. He says, ‘Yeah, baby,’ and she jumps in the pool. Some caveman gets thrown off a cliff and I split.

Alluding and attacking, summoning a courage, embodying a gallantry of defiance that hurt to see, it was so noble and so doomed.

All they needed was a title. Carmack had the idea. It was taken from The Color of Money, the 1986 Martin Scorsese film in which Tom Cruise played a brash young pool hustler. In one scene Cruise saunters into a billiards hall carrying his favorite pool cue in a stealth black case. “What you got in there?” another player asks. Cruise smiles devilishly, because he knows what fate he is about to spring upon this player, just as, Carmack thought, id had once sprung upon Softdisk and as, with this next game, they might spring upon the world. “In here?” Cruise replies, flipping open the case. “Doom.

Bruce Lee was proof: not all Asian Men were doomed to a life of being Generic. If there was even one guy who had made it, it was at least theoretically possible for the rest. But easy cases make bad law, and Bruce Lee proved too much. He was a living, breathing video game boss-level, a human cheat code, an idealized avatar of Asian-ness and awesomeness permanently set on Expert difficulty. Not a man so much as a personification, not a mortal so much as a deity on loan to you and your kind for a fixed period of time. A flame that burned for all yellow to understand, however briefly, what perfection was like.

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

I really felt amazing overall---other than a few minutes ago in the shower. Pushing the thought from my mind, I focused on the positives. My senses were heightened now, like I'd been bitten by Peter Parker's radioactive spider. Only the guy who bit me was a mutated green beret. And instead of making me into a superhero, he'd doomed me to die of a brain hemorrhage.

The rest of the family tree had a root system soggy with alcohol... One aunt had fallen asleep with her face in the mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving dinner; another's fondness for Coors was so unwavering that I can still remember the musky smell of the beer and the coldness of the cans. Most of the men drank the way all Texas men drank, or so I believed, which meant that they were tough guys who could hold their liquor until they couldn't anymore--a capacity that often led to some cloudy version of doom, be it financial ruin or suicide or the lesser betrayal of simple estrangement. Both social drinkers, my parents had eluded these tragic endings; in the postwar Texas of suburbs and cocktails, their drinking was routine but undramatic.

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.

First, because I have been made to learn that the doom and burden of our life is bound forever on man’s shoulders, and when the attempt is made to cast it off, it but returns upon us with more unfamiliar and more awful pressure.

If Nick were on a quest to return the One Ring to the fiery pits of Mount Doom, Jai Hazenbrook would totally be the hot-as-fuck elf in tight leather pants who could shoot the left testicle off an orc at a thousand paces. Whereas Nick, of course, would be the short hairy-footed guy who liked beer and fireworks and second breakfasts. Even in his fantasy worlds, Nick is a realist.

Carmack was of the moment. His ruling force was focus. Time existed for him not in some promising future or sentimental past but in the present condition, the intricate web ol problems and solutions, imagination and code. He kept nothing from the past–no pictures, no records, no games, no computer disks. He didn’t even save copies of his first games, Wraith and Shadowforge. There was no yearbook to remind of his time at Shadowforge. There was no yearbook to remind of his time at school, no magazine copies of his early publications. He kept nothing but what he needed at the time. His bedroom consisted of a lamp, a pillow, a blanket, and a stack of books. There was no mattress. All he brought with him from home was a cat named Mitzi (a gift from his stepfamily) with a mean streak and a reckless bladder.

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.

The game industry is a culture created by the outsiders—the kids who didn’t fit in, the ones who listened to and loved Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, D&D, and Aliens.

And just so you know, I would never drive you to your imminent doom. Hopefully, I’ll be the guy driving you away from it. Always.

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!

I was a skinny guy, but I was morbidly obese with doom.

Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture, by David Kushner;

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.

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

Strip away the community bond and the seduction business interests that united us, and what was left? Six guys chasing after a limited subset of available women. Wars have been fought, world leaders shot, and tragedies wrought by males claiming territorial rights over the opposite sex. Perhaps we’d just been too blind to see that Project Hollywood was doomed from the start by the very pursuit that had brought it together. After

I can't help it if I understand that everything tends to ruin. Over our heads, Skylab is eternally falling down, I can see it all, the debris raining without cessation. I was a skinny guy, but I was morbidly obese with doom.

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.

Bullseye. The problem wasn’t Gerald, or the chair, or what the Rescue Services guys might think when they got down here and saw the situation. It wasn’t even the question of the telephone. The problem was the space cowboy; her old friend Dr. Doom.

Because of the kind of programming that goes into games, they were (and still are) the most taxing form of programming. You can use a computer to crunch a bunch of numbers, sure, but spreadsheets don’t generally need sound cards and GPUs (graphics processing units).

Bill believed the push for Brexit—and its eventual approval by voters—showed a strong contempt for existing power structures that reflected the mood of the American electorate. You guys are underestimating the significance of Brexit, he told Brooklyn and his own advisers over and over.

Can I help you?” I loved the guy, and any other time I would so be right there with him, but I literally had two chapters left in the book, and things were intense. It was a common misconception that it was okay to interrupt people when they were reading. It was, in fact, not okay. This relationship may be doomed.

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.

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.

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.

a poem called “The Night Before Doom”: “ ’Twas the night before Doom, / and all through the house, / I had set up my multi-playing networks, / each with a mouse. / The networks were strung, / with extra special care / in hopes that Doom, / soon would be there.” The publisher of a computer magazine had a darker vision he printed in an editorial called “A Parent’s Nightmare Before Christmas”: “By the time your kids are tucked in and dreaming of sugar plums, they may have seen the latest in sensational computer games . . . Doom.

there was this family who had two boys who were twins, and the only thing they had in common was their looks. If one felt it was too hot, the other felt it was too cold. If one said he liked the cake, the other said he hated it. They were opposites in every way. One was an eternal optimist, and the other a doom and gloom pessimist. Just to see what would happen, on the twins’ birthday, the father loaded the pessimist brother’s room with every imaginable gift – toys and games, and for the boy who always sees the brighter side of life, with horse manure. That night, the father went to check on the doom guy’s room and found him sitting amidst his new gifts sobbing away bitterly. “Why,” the father said in anguish, “after all this?” The boy replied, “Because my friends are going to be jealous, I will have to read all these instructions before I can do anything with this stuff, I will constantly need batteries, and my toys will eventually be stolen or broken.” Passing by the optimist twin’s room, the father found him dancing for joy on the pile of manure. “What are you so happy about?” the father asked. The boy replied, “There’s got to be a pony in here somewhere!

Lost In The World" (feat. Justin Vernon of Bon Iver) [Sample From "Woods": Justin Vernon] I'm up in the woods, I'm down on my mind I'm building a still to slow down the time I'm up in the woods, I'm down on my mind I'm building a still to slow down the time I'm up in the woods, I'm down on my mind I'm building a still to slow down the time [Chorus 2x:] I'm lost in the world, I'm down on my mind I'm new in the city, and I'm down for the night Down for the night Said she's down for the night [Kanye West:] You're my devil, you're my angel You're my heaven, you're my hell You're my now, you're my forever You're my freedom, you're my jail You're my lies, you're my truth You're my war, you're my truce You're my questions, you're my proof You're my stress and you're my masseuse Mama-say mama-say ma-ma-coo-sah Lost in this plastic life, Let's break out of this fake ass party Turn this into a classic night If we die in each other's arms we still get laid in the afterlife If we die in each other's arms we still get laid [Chorus:] (I'm lost in the world) Run from the lights, run from the night, (I'm down on my mind) Run for your life, I'm new in the city, and I'm down for the night Down for the night Down for the night I'm lost in the world, been down for my whole life, I'm new in the city but I'm down for the night Down for the night Down for the night Who will survive in America? Who will survive in America? Who will survive in America? [Chorus:] I'm lost in the world, I'm down on my mind I'm new in the city, and I'm down for the night Down for the night Said she's down for the night I'm lost in the world, I'm down on my mind I'm new in the city and I'm goin' for a ride Goin' for a ride I'm lost in the world, been down for my whole life I'm new in the city but I'm down the for the night Down for a night, down for a good time [Gil-Scott Heron:] Us living as we do upside down. And the new word to have is revolution. People don't even want to hear the preacher spill or spiel because God's whole card has been thoroughly piqued. And America is now blood and tears instead of milk and honey. The youngsters who were programmed to continue fucking up woke up one night digging Paul Revere and Nat Turner as the good guys. America stripped for bed and we had not all yet closed our eyes. The signs of truth were tattooed across our open ended vagina. We learned to our amazement the untold tale of scandal. Two long centuries buried in the musty vault, hosed down daily with a gagging perfume. America was a bastard, the illegitimate daughter of the mother country whose legs were then spread around the world and a rapist known as freedom, free doom. Democracy, liberty, and justice were revolutionary code names that preceded the bubbling bubbling bubbling bubbling bubbling in the mother country's crotch What does Webster say about soul? All I want is a good home and a wife And our children and some food to feed them every night. After all is said and done build a new route to China if they'll have you. Who will survive in America? Who will survive in America? Who will survive in America? Who will survive in America?

these sources were particularly helpful to my thinking about and understanding of 1990s- and 2000s-era game culture and designers: Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made, by Jason Schreier; Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture, by David Kushner; Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (specifically the section on Sierra On-Line), by Steven Levy; A Mind Forever Voyaging: A History of Storytelling in Video Games, by Dylan Holmes; Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter, by Tom Bissell; All Your Base Are Belong to Us: How Fifty Years of Video Games Conquered Pop Culture, by Harold Goldberg;

CHORUS OF NIGHT VOICES Come out, come out, wherever you are, you dreamers and drowners, you loafers and losers, you shadow-seekers and orphans of the sun. Come out, come out, you flops and fizzler, you good-for-nothings and down-and-outers, a day's outcasts, dark's little darlin's. Come on, all you who are misbegotten and woebegone, all you with black thoughts and red-fever-visions, come on, you small-town Ishmaels with your sad blue eyes, you plain Janes and hard-luck guys, come, you gripers and groaners, you goners and loners, you sad sack and shlemiels, come on, come on, you pale romantics and pie-eye Palookas, you has-beens and never-will-bes, you sun-mocked and day-doomed denizens of the dar: come out into the night.

He already knew he could coach. All you had to do was look at each of your players and ask yourself: What story does this guy wish someone would tell him about himself? And then you told the guy that story. You told it with a hint of doom. You included his flaws. You emphasized the obstacles that could prevent him from succeeding. That was what made the story epic: the player, the hero, had to suffer mightily en route to his final triumph. Schwartz knew that people loved to suffer, as long as the suffering made sense. Everybody suffered. The key was to choose the form of your suffering. Most people couldn’t do this alone; they needed a coach. A good coach made you suffer in a way that suited you. A bad coach made everyone suffer in the same way, and so was more like a torturer.

Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made, by Jason Schreier; Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture, by David Kushner; Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (specifically the section on Sierra On-Line), by Steven Levy; A Mind Forever Voyaging: A History of Storytelling in Video Games, by Dylan Holmes; Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter, by Tom Bissell; All Your Base Are Belong to Us: How Fifty Years of Video Games Conquered Pop Culture, by Harold Goldberg; and the documentaries Indie Game: The Movie, directed by James Swirsky and Lisanne Pajot, and GTFO, directed by Shannon Sun-Higginson. I read Indie Games by Bounthavy Suvilay after I finished writing, and it’s a beautiful book for those looking to see how artful games can be.

Sam, in what way are you like me as a parent that you are glad about?” “Oh, that’s hugely easy. I’m glad I’m hardworking like you, and that I naturally love to play with my kid, and that I’m sort of flexible for such a rigid, uptight guy. I’ll eventually go with whatever might just work. “What Jax will thank you for giving me is my ability to forgive and start over. Not everyone has it, and I can’t believe I do. I’m glad for two reasons. One, that I can do it, even though it’s hard, because you’re doomed if you can’t, and two, when you can do it, you start finding people in the world like you, who can start over, too, and these are the people you want to be with. People who can forgive. “It’s so incredibly humbling when someone forgives you—I can’t ever believe when people forgive me, because you know how badly you’ve screwed up, and how you’ve hurt them, and how hard it is for them to be brave enough to find it in themselves to reexperience the pain you caused, and the humiliation that is in them because of you—and for someone to be willing to refeel that much like shit again, reexperience it out of not wanting to lose you, means how deeply precious you are to them. And that’s pure gold.

Senator Lieberman took it as a call to arms. "After watching these society. violent video games," he said, "I personally believe it is irresponsible for some in the video game industry to produce them. I wish we could ban them." This wasn't the first time that America's political and moral estab lishment had tried to save youth from their own burgeoning culture. Shortly after the Civil War, religious leaders assailed pulp novels as "Satan's efficient agents to advance his kingdom by destroying the young. rupter "In the twenties, motion pictures were viewed as the new cors/ of children, inspiring sensational media-effects research that would be cited for decades. In the fifties, Elvis was shown only from the waist up on television; AD magazine's publisher, William Gaines. was brought before Congress. In the seventies, Dungeons and Dragons with all its demons and sorcery, became associated with Satanist particularly after a player enacting the game disappeared under the steam tunnels of a Michigan university. In the eighties, heavy metal artists like Judas Priest and Ozzy Osbourne were sued for allegedly invoking young listeners to commit suicide. In the nineties, video games were the new rock 'n' roll-dangerous and uncontrolled.

A few thousand miles away, Nine Inch Nails' rock star Trent Reznor sauntered off a concert stage as the crowd roared. Security guards rushed to his side. Screaming groupies pushed backstage. Trent nodded and waved, heading back through the crowd. He didn't have time for this. There were more important things waiting. He stepped onto his tour bus, forsaking the drugs, the beer, the women, for the computer awaiting him. It was time again for Doom. Scenes like these had spread around the world since the game crashed the University of Wisconsin's network on December 10. With out an ad campaign, without marketing or advance hype from the mainstream media, Doom became an overnight phenomenon

Schools, corporations, and government facilities blessed with fam computers, high-speed modems and, most important, people familia enough to make them work were overtaken by the game-sometimes literally. Over the first weekend of Doom's release, computer networks slowed to a crawl from all the people playing and downloading the game. Eager gamers flooded America Online. "It was a mob scene the night Doom came out," said Debbie Rogers, forum leader of AOL game section. "If we weren't on the other side of a phone line, ther would have been bodily harm." Hours after the game was released, Carnegie-Mellon's compute systems administrator posted a notice online saying, "Since today's lease of Doom, we have discovered [that the game is] bringing the campus network to a halt.... . Computing Services asks that all Doom players please do not play Doom in network-mode. Use of Doom is network-mode causes serious degradation of performance for the > player's network and during this time of finals, network use is already at its peak. We may be forced to disconnect the PCs of those who ar playing the game in network-mode. Again, please do not play Doom is network-mode." Intel banned the game after it found its system swamped. Tens A&M erased it from its computer servers. ...The once-dull PC now bursts with power.... For the first time, arcade games are hot on the PC... the floodgates are now open.

Woz was equal parts programming genius and mischievous prankster, known around the San Francisco Bay Area for running his own dial-a-joke phone number. In computers, Woz found the perfect place to combine his humor and his math skills, creating a game that flashed the message "Oh Shit" on the screen when the player lost a round. Jobs recruited Woz to design Breakout, a new game for Atari. This alchemy of Jobs's entrepreneurial vision and Woz's programming ingenuity gave birth to their company, Apple. Created in 1976, the first Apple computer was essentially a prototype for the Homebrew crowd, priced devilishly at $666.66.

They also threw in something they called a Death Cam. After the final enemy, known as "the boss" of an episode, got killed, a message would appear on the screen saying, "Let's see that again!" Then a de tailed animation would slowly play, showing the big, bad boss meeting his grisly demise. This Death Cam was id's version of a snuff film. They decided to include a screen at the beginning of the game that would say, 'This game is voluntarily rated PC-13: Profound Carnage.' Though tongue-in-cheek, it was the first voluntary rating of a video game.

When Kevin came to work with a bloody wound on his knee, they scanned that in too, to use as a wall texture

I graduated from college in the spring with a history degree, only to discover that there are no jobs for someone with my specialty. We've all decided being doomed to repeat history is fine, I guess.

In the fall of 1988, the eighteen-year-old Carmack reluctantly enrolled at the University of Kansas, where he signed up for an entire schedule of computer classes. It was a miserable time. He couldn’t relate to the students, didn’t care about keg parties and frat houses. Worse were the classes, based on memorizing information from textbooks. There was no challenge, no creativity. The tests weren’t just dull, they were insulting. "Why can’t you just give us a project and let us perform it?" Carmack scrawled on the back of one of his exams. "I can perform anything you want me to!" After enduring two semesters, he dropped out.

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

Was there nothing left in this world that was worth opening your eyes and fighting for? Would the bad guys always win? Are our efforts to live in peace simply doomed to failure? Will the bad guys always be bad guys? Will the good guys spend their whole lives taking punches and throwing rocks into the water with all of their might and getting nothing more in return than a ridiculous sploosh and the shame of failure?

There was one idea that might have turned out pretty interesting. Hunter S. Thompson had written a book called Songs of the Doomed, and in the first few pages he mentions sitting around and listening to something off The Caution Horses, then he mentions the band later on in there, too. He's always been one of our favourite wackos, so we decided to call him up and see if we could maybe work on something together. It took a while to get him on the phone, because he'd wake up at midnight, stay up all night, drinking and watching sports, then sleep through the day. But we ended up having a bunch of weird phone conversations with him. His idea was we'd go to his ranch out in Colorado, get a camera crew, no script and 'just go crazy, man!' That didn't really fit what we had in mind; we wanted a little more structure than that. Going crazy isn't what we do. But he wasn't into that, at all. He didnt want to write anything, he just wanted this wacked-out thing. Eventually he got really pissed off for some reason. He sent us a fax, saying 'If you guys show up here, you're going home in body bags!' What did we do to piss him off that much?

I don’t know what the guy had in his shop, but there were homemade radiation warning signs on the door. You can decide for yourself whether a homemade radiation sign is scarier than an official one.

What did I hope to find here? I can only answer that with another question: What draws us back to the places where we were once young?

Every man and woman should play the noblest games and be of another mind from what they are at present.

I got into a situation with a crazy person named Ben because I had the loss of a damaged person named Alex hanging over me like a dirt cloud over Pig Pen for what had ballooned into a six-month funk. Alex’s frigidity, after the sex-free final year of my doomed relationship with Patrick, plus all the time invested and the chocolate-chip scones downed in their respective aftermath, honed me into the perfect vessel for Ben’s brand of crazy. Alex was Mrs. O’Leary’s cow, I was the lantern he kicked over, and Ben was the Chicago Fire.

We fully expect to be the number one cause of decreased productivity in businesses around the world.

Spending time with you is like watching paint dry.” Lassiter’s voice echoed up to the stalactites hanging from the Tomb’s high ceiling. “Except without the home improvement—which is a tragedy, given how this place looks. Do you guys always go for the gloom and doom? You never hear of Pottery Barn?” -Lassiter to Tohr

Damn! I thought, furious that even after expending my only rocket, I couldn’t get the machine pistol; I was right back where I started, except one rocket lighter. I had squandered my gift! I felt like the guy who found a lamp that would grant one wish, and he says, “Jeez, I wish I knew what to wish for.” I

Fear is a drug you need to survive. Without fear, you die quicker; that’s part of basic, that’s what the old guys instill in us when we’re fledglings waiting and eager to fly; fear is your friend, but only in controlled doses, never in such flooding waves that you panic. Panic kills you quicker than bullets. Panic turns you into doomed animals.

Carmack was building the guitar that Romero would bring to life. But their friendship was not traditional. They didn't discuss their lives, their hopes, their dreams. Sometimes, late at night, hey would sit side by side, playing a hovercraft racing game called F-Zero. For the most part, though, their friendship was in their work, their unbridled pursuit of the game.

Mitzi was having a net negative impact on my life," e said. "I took her to the animal shelter. Mmm.

If deathmatch was a release from stress, work, family, and drudgery, it was a release that Carmack didn't need or, for that matter, understand. 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.

It is almost painful for me to watch some of the VRML initiatives. It just seems so obviously the wrong way to do something. All of this debating, committee forming, and spec writing, and in the end, there isn't anything to show for it. Make something really cool first, and worry about the spec after you are sure it's worth it!

The best way to sell yourself is to sow what you have produced, rater than tell people what you know, what you want to do, or what degrees you have. You want to be able to go to your prospective employer and say "There is a community of then thousand people actively playing a mod that I wrote in my spare time. Give me a job and I will be able to devote all of my energy to gaming, and produce something vastly superior.

Dad called the principal before we went to school and he told me the principal was okay with what had happened. However upon entering his office, I felt terribly guilty. The poor man was in a neck collar and it was all my fault. The room smelt of sanitizer. He greeted me with a smile, “Good morning Richard.” I was so glad my dad had come with me! Straight away I burst into a full-blown apology, the words tumbling out of my mouth. He waved his hands to stop my verbal outpouring of regret and sympathy. “It’s okay, Richard, I should have replaced my chair years ago, it has always been a bit wonky. I’m fine, don’t worry. Your Dad told me the whole story and I am proud to have such a caring student at this school.” Now this scenario definitely did not play through my head last night! Then he stood and walked around his desk and put his hand on my shoulder. “Can I give you a piece of advice, Richard?” he asked. I nodded. “Sort out your girl problems, two girls and one guy…it never works out.” Breathing a sigh of relief, I shook my head in agreement, “Thank you Sir, I’ll do that.” At the same time I was thinking…how am I going to do that? He walked us out to the hallway and I hugged Dad goodbye. Walking along this hallway yesterday, I felt full of doom and gloom, but today was different. Until I saw the vice principal standing at the end. I stopped, lowered my eyes and tried to apologize. In a quiet and very firm voice, she said, “I’m watching you.” Then she turned and walked back into her office. Two down, one to go and this person was the most important one…Maddi. I walked into class slightly late and heard a few quiet giggles and whispers. Obviously the kids had been gossiping. Looking around I couldn’t see her, she was away! I let out a huge sigh. All morning I had been looking forward to working it out with her. I waved hi to Gretel, she pulled a face and looked away and that was not a good sign. That look told me that Maddi had believed Linda and that she was really mad and upset. Linda was even later than me. She walked into the classroom with a huge smile on her face and apologized for being late, then she headed towards the vacant seat next to me. I jumped up, grabbed the chair and moved it next to Ted. There was NO WAY she was going to sit next to me! Everyone laughed and she looked embarrassed, but I didn’t care. I had had enough!

This happened after Romero accidentally locked himself in his office. Hearing the pleas, Carmack gave the knob a twist, paused, then deduced the most obvious and immediate solution. “You know,” he said, “I do have a battle-ax in my office.” Carmack had recently paid five thousand dollars for the custom-made weapon—a razor-edged hatchet like something out of Dungeons and Dragons. As the other guys gathered around chanting, “Battle-ax! Battle-ax! Battle-ax!” Carmack chopped Romero free. The splintered door remained in the hall for months.

Instead I understood evangelical to be an adjective synonymous with “real” or “authentic.” There were Christians, and then there were evangelical Christians like us. Only evangelicals were assured salvation. Everyone else was lukewarm and in danger of being spewed out of God’s mouth. Our Catholic neighbors were doomed. Nine-hundred miles away, in Princeton, New Jersey, my future husband was winning trophies in the pinewood derby at Montgomery Evangelical Free Church, which for many years he took to mean was a church free of evangelicals, like sugar-free gum. “But aren’t evangelicals the good guys?” he remembers asking his mother. How early we learn to identify our tribes.

We’re vampires,” he said. “Not fairies.” “Sometimes I’m not so sure about that. You see that study your king hangs out in?” “He’s nearly blind.” “Which explains why he hasn’t hanged himself in that pastel train wreck.” “I thought you were bitching about the gloom-and-doom decorating?” “I free-associate.” “Clearly.” Tohr didn’t look at the angel, as he figured eye contact would only encourage the guy. Oh, wait. Lassiter didn’t need help. “You expecting that skull on the altar to talk to you or some shit?” “Actually we’re both waiting for you to finally take a breath.” Tohr glared at the guy. “Anytime you’re ready. Anytime.” “You say the sweetest things.” -Tohr & Lassiter

Question six: * Did you have any boy pals or friends when you were growing up? If not, why is that? Would you have grown up differently if you’d had guy friends? Answers: a) As far as I can remember, my main playmate was my cousin Pinky. Although I remember my mother’s longtime friend and confidant, Yin Yee; her son, Tuck would come to visit and play with Pinky and me, but I was never as close to Tuck as I was to my female cousin. Tuck loved to climb trees and I didn’t really care for those kinds of rugged, outdoorsy endeavors. b) I was extremely protected when growing up due to my wealthy parents’ social status; they were afraid I would be a likely candidate for kidnapping. I was always accompanied by either a family member or hired help before and after school hours. Since I didn’t care for any of the afterschool sporting activities that most of the boys my age seemed to delight in participating in, I preferred to be at home playing with my dolls and with Pinky, my playmate. c) Most likely if I’d had guy friends, the pressure of having to hide my homosexual inklings would be a greater burden than I could have dealt with. I would most likely have been bullied by the ‘straight’ boys like KiWi and his gang of three, or I would have ended up pining for their forbidden sexual gratifications. That would have ended either in disasters or, as it did in the case with KiWi, with unsatisfactory sexual doom. Well, dear Arius, I did my best to satisfy your questionnaires. It has been fun; please keep them coming. Until I hear from you again, best wishes to you and your doggies. Kind regards, Young.

she was lying to him.” “But she is lying to him. You are lying to him aren't you?” Darren asked as he turned to me. “Of course!” “But the priest didn't know she was lying. Afterward, Moira had to chase Jacobi down to tell him the truth and then he hit her.” “He hit you?!” “Just in the arm. And even though it was supposed to be a hit it felt more like a love tap.” “You guys! Y'all are making me skip over the best part!” “Right, the part where Moira is doomed to burn in hell. I almost forgot. Go ahead,” Darren encouraged.

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.

Why are you mad at me?” He didn’t look at her. “I’m not mad.” “You’re not happy.” His fingers tightened on the steering wheel. “That was no practice kiss.” “I know it wasn’t. I was trying to give us a reason not to talk about it.” “Oh. So you don’t think we should talk about it?” “I thought guys hated talking things out.” He drummed his fingers on the wheel. “I just don’t want you getting any ideas, that’s all.” Getting any ideas? Emma was speechless for a moment, unable to believe he’d actually said that. “Since I was walking away from you when you spun me around and kissed me, I’d say you’re the one getting ideas.” “Of course I’m getting ideas. You’re hot and I’m not dead. But I know enough not to confuse lust with anything else.” She snorted and looked out her window. “Oh, yes, Sean Kowalski. Your amazing kisses have made all rational thought fly out of my besotted brain. If only you could fill me with your magic penis, I know we’d fall madly in love and live happily ever after.” The truck jerked and she glanced over to find him glaring at her. “Don’t ever say that again.” “What? The ‘madly in love’ or the ‘happily ever after’?” “My penis isn’t magic.” His tone was grumpy, but then he smiled at the windshield. “It does tricks, though.” “The only trick your penis needs to know for the next three and a half weeks is down boy.” How the hell had she gotten herself into this conversation? “To get back to the point, if you think I have any interest in a real relationship with a guy who thinks he’s a better driver than me just because I have breasts, you’re insane.” “It’s not because you have breasts. Women don’t drive as well because they lack a magic penis.” She turned toward the passenger door, letting him know with her body language she had no interest in talking to him anymore. “Why didn’t I tell Gram I was dating Bob from the post office?” He laughed at her. “You’ve met the Kowalskis. You were doomed the minute you said the name out loud.” Doomed, she thought, glaring at the passing scenery. That was a good word for it.

Activision was promoting an adventure game called Pitfall Harry and had built a little jungle scene in which passersby could swing on a makeshift vine. In another room, a company called Zombie had a metal sphere that shot blue electric bolts through the air. But the id installation had a bit more in store: an eight-foot-tall vagina. Gwar, the scatological rock band that id had hired to produce the display, had pushed their renowned prurient theatrics to the edge. The vagina was lined with dozens of dildos to look like teeth. A bust of O. J. Simpson’s decapitated head hung from the top. As the visitors walked through the vaginal mouth, two members of Gwar cloaked in fur and raw steak came leaping out of the shadows and pretended to attack them with rubber penises. The Microsoft executives were frozen. Then, to everyone’s relief, they burst out laughing.

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.

Created in 1972 by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, two friends in their early twenties, Dungeons and Dragons was an underground phenomenon, particularly on college campuses, thanks to word of mouth and controversy. It achieved urban legend status when a student named James Dallas Egbert III disappeared in the steam tunnels underneath Michigan State University while reportedly reenacting the game; a Tom Hanks movie called Mazes and Monsters was loosely based on the event.

game. A Kentucky entrepreneur hooked up a version of Wolfenstein to virtual reality goggles and brought in five hundred dollars a day at the Kentucky State Fair. But players didn’t need virtual reality goggles to feel immersed. In fact, the sense of immersion was so real that many began complaining of motion sickness. Calls were coming in even at the Apogee office saying that people were throwing up while playing the game. Wolfenstein vomit stories became items of fascination online. Theories abounded. Some players thought the game’s animation was so smooth that it tricked the brain into thinking it was moving in a real space. Other gamers thought it had something to do with the “jerkiness” of the graphics, which induced the feeling of seasickness. Some felt it was simply disorienting because there was no acceleration involved; it was like going from zero to sixty at light speed. Gamers even exchanged tips for how to play without losing one’s Doritos.

His first suspicion came shortly after they were working on their new game for Softdisk, a ninja warrior title called Shadow Knights. Al had never seen a side scrolling like this for the PC. “Wow,” he told Carmack, “you should patent this technology.” Carmack turned red. “If you ever ask me to patent anything,” he snapped, “I’ll quit.” Al assumed Carmack was trying to protect his own financial interests, but in reality he had struck what was growing into an increasingly raw nerve for the young, idealistic programmer. It was one of the few things that could truly make him angry. It was ingrained in his bones since his first reading of the Hacker Ethic. All of science and technology and culture and learning and academics is built upon using the work that others have done before, Carmack thought. But to take a patenting approach and say it’s like, well, this idea is my idea, you cannot extend this idea in any way, because I own this idea—it just seems so fundamentally wrong. Patents were jeopardizing the very thing that was central to his life: writing code to solve problems. If the world became a place in which he couldn’t solve a problem without infringing on someone’s patents, he would be very unhappy living there.

You have to give yourself the freedom to back away from something when you make a mistake,” Carmack said. “If you pretend you’re infallible and bully ahead on something, even when there are many danger signs that it’s not the right thing, well, that’s a sure way to leave a crater in the ground. You want to always be reevaluating things and say, Okay, it sounded like a good idea but it doesn’t seem to be working out very well and we have this other avenue which is looking like it’s working out better—let’s just do that.

Shades of Nightmare on Blood Lake,” Wanda whispered. “Thank the gods we’re not in that flick. Still, we’d be okay,” Lucas said confidently. “None of us have had sex, none of us are naked, and none of us are going to go get a beer. We’re outside the formula!”              “What formula? What in the hell are you talking about?” I asked. “It’s a slasher flick,” Lucas answered. “You could always tell who the psycho killer was going to get next. Anyone who’d just had sex, was naked, or said ‘I’m going to go get a beer’ inevitably died right after.” “That’s the victim profile, idiot,” Wanda said acidly. “We‘re still in the basic plot set up! The whole movie took place at an abandoned campground. We’re doomed!” “Guys, right now, the most dangerous thing out here is the pissed-off sophomore in the back seat with a loaded paintball gun!” I said, voice rising until I was almost yelling. “Now, let me out!

One night in 1987, Carmack saw the ultimate game. It occurred in the opening episode of a new television series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, when the captain visited the ship’s Holodeck,

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.

Carmack quickly distinguished himself. In second grade, only seven years old, he scored nearly perfect on every standardized test, placing himself at a ninth-grade comprehension level.

If we can get this done,” Romero said, “this is going to be the fucking coolest game that the planet Earth has ever fucking seen in its entire history!

Romero ran back to the Apple II department to tell Lane and Jay the good news: “Dudes, we’re fucking making games!” Lane would now be editor of Gamer’s Edge, Softdisk’s new bimonthly games disk for the PC. All that remained was to get another programmer, someone who knew the PC and, just as important, could fit in with Lane and Romero. Jay said there was someone he knew who was definitely hard-core. This kid was turning in great games. And he even knew how to port from the Apple II to the PC. Romero was impressed by the apparent similarities to himself. But there was a problem, Jay said. The Whiz Kid had already turned down a job offer three times because he liked working freelance. Romero pleaded with Jay to try him again. Jay wasn’t optimistic but said okay. He picked up the phone and gave John Carmack one last pitch. When Carmack pulled up to Softdisk in his brown MGB, he had no intention of taking the job. But, then again, times were getting rough. Though he enjoyed the idea of the freelance lifestyle, he was having trouble making rent and would frequently find himself pestering editors like Jay to express him his checks so he could buy groceries. A little stability wouldn’t be bad, but he wasn’t eager to compromise his hard work and ideals to get there. It would take something significant to sway him.

Times were changing in the world of id. They had finally fired Jason, narrowing the group to Carmack, Romero, Adrian, and Tom. But something else was in the air. The Reagan-Bush era was finally coming to a close and a new spirit rising. It began in Seattle, where a sloppily dressed grunge rock trio called Nirvana ousted Michael Jackson from the top of the pop charts with their album Nevermind. Soon grunge and hip-hop were dominating the world with more brutal and honest views. Id was braced to do for games what those artists had done for music: overthrow the status quo. Games until this point had been ruled by their own equivalent of pop, in the form of Mario and Pac-Man. Unlike music, the software industry had never experienced anything as rebellious as Wolfenstein 3-D. The

320 pounds of gamer meat

Carmack was of the moment. His ruling force was focus. Time existed for him not in some promising future or sentimental past but in the present condition, the intricate web of problems and solutions, imagination and code.

When he was on, he was on—loving everything, everybody. But when he was off, he was off—cold, distant, short. Tom Hall came up with a nickname for the behavior. In computers, information is represented in bits. A bit can be either on or off. Tom called Romero’s mood swings the bit flip.

The appeal was primal. “In Dungeons and Dragons,” Gygax said, “the average person gets a call to glory and becomes a hero and undergoes change. In the real world, children, especially, have no power; they must answer to everyone, they don’t direct their own lives, but in this game, they become super powerful and affect everything.

A few thousand miles away, Nine Inch Nails’ rock star Trent Reznor sauntered off a concert stage as the crowd roared. Security guards rushed to his side. Screaming groupies pushed backstage. Trent nodded and waved, heading back through the crowd. He didn’t have time for this. There were more important things waiting. He stepped onto his tour bus, forsaking the drugs, the beer, the women, for the computer awaiting him. It was time again for Doom.

What happens to this kind of business when the data superhighway arrives? . . . No sales force, no inventory costs, no royalties to Nintendo or Sega, no marketing costs, no advertising costs, no executive parking spaces. This is a new and exciting business model, not just for games, and not even just for software, but for a host of products and services that can be sold or delivered via an electronic underground.

Story in a game,” he said, “is like a story in a porn movie; it’s expected to be there, but it’s not that important.

When my grandpa wasn’t yelling at the TV, their home was a quiet and docile environment.

On November 28, 1992, Tom finished his draft of the DOOM bible, and in our meetings we fleshed out all the goals for the game. It was going to be the fastest, most violent, most immersive computer game in history.

All of science and technology and culture and learning and academics is built upon using the work that others have done before, Carmack thought. But to take a patenting approach and say it’s like, well, this idea is my idea, you cannot extend this idea in any way, because I own this idea—it just seems so fundamentally wrong. Patents were jeopardizing the very thing that was central to his life: writing code to solve problems. If the world became a place in which he couldn’t solve a problem without infringing on someone’s patents, he would be very unhappy living there.