I don’t know that he even really was thinking so much about his career, he just wanted to make cool games and cool programs. This was a different era, keep in mind, so maybe parents had a reason to think that.

“His mother didn’t think that pursuing a career in gaming was really viable. For more of Kushner’s videogame journalism, check out his new audiobook Prepare to Meet Thy Doom. Listen to our complete interview with David Kushner in Episode 207 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (above), and read some highlights from the discussion below. “Someone who’s living in squalor could live in a mansion in virtual reality.” “In a virtual world there are unlimited resources,” says Kushner. The move surprised many, but it makes perfect sense in light of Carmack’s lifelong interest in the transformative power of virtual reality. The admiration goes both ways-Carmack was so impressed with Luckey’s work that he left id Software in 2013 in order to take a job as CTO at Oculus. “Carmack was the guy who was creating this incredibly powerful, robust computer engine that could run this, and display graphics that no one had ever seen before,” says Kushner.Īmong Carmack’s many fans is Palmer Luckey, developer of Oculus Rift, who got interested in virtual reality after reading Masters of Doom. So that’s what they made.”īut by far Doom’s most striking feature was its graphics engine, developed by genius coder John Carmack, which was able to render moody full-screen environments at breakneck speed. “Heavy metal, science fiction, blood and guts gaming. “They were these guys who wanted to have heavy metal gaming,” Kushner says. And in an era dominated by Nintendo’s family-friendly approach, id was defiantly transgressive. Its multiplayer abilities laid the groundwork for the eSports boom, its easily hacked data files popularized modding, and its novel shareware distribution model allowed it to reach an unprecedented number of computers. The original Doom featured an impressive array of innovations.

David kushner doom