May 29, 2023
Video game designer Romero, best known as the creator of Doom, catalogs his personal and professional challenges in this surprisingly moving autobiography. In the 1960s and ’70s, Romero’s family was involved in the drug trade, and his father, who was addicted to “everything from cocaine to alcohol,” abused Romero, his mother, and his younger brother. Romero found refuge in early video games, including Space Invaders, which led him, at age 11, to learn computer programming. He walks readers through the details of his career, from his first gig at the Texas-based Origin Systems when he was 20 up through his triumphs at id Software and Ion Storm in the 1990s. It’s then that Romero developed Doom, realizing his vision for “the fastest, most violent, most immersive computer game in history” and innovating the archiving of gamers’ keystrokes as video files and other advances that changed online gaming. Though some passages get a little too technical (including one on video buffers’ bit depths), Romero mostly manages to appeal to gamers and non-gamers alike with this celebration of triumphing over adversity. Creatives of all stripes will be satisfied. Agent: Marcus Hoffman, Regal Hoffman & Assoc.

June 1, 2023
The video game-creating legend recounts a life in the programming trenches. "Rip enemies' heads off and take them to a sacrificial altar to power yourself up." Thus a feature dangled as an enticement for potential buyers of the iconic first-person-shooter game Quake, introduced in 1996. Born into a chaotic, dysfunctional family, Romero found refuge in games such as Dungeons & Dragons and then fell in love with computers and coding and put his deep intelligence to work mastering things like Assembly language and CP/M. In the workaday world of game writing, the chaos continued; projects were canceled in midstream, office politics proved ruinous, and technology frequently outpaced the programs he was writing. Still, with like-minded friends and later outside hires, "amped on cans of Coke and fueled by pizza," Romero built up his chops and founded id Software, maker of blood-and-mayhem classics such as Wolfenstein, Spear of Destiny, and the Doom series. Alas, though the money rolled in and Ferraris followed, compromises of vision and clashes of personality did, too, and Romero left at just about the time Quake appeared. The author is candid in his discussion of the Columbine shooters, who were addicts of his blood-soaked scenarios, rejecting the commonplace accusation that violent games lead to violence in real life. Confessing failures as well as triumphs, Romero counsels, "Don't hype what you don't have," and "never insult your fans, even in jest." The author has plenty of advice to dispense--too much, at times: Near the beginning of his memoir, Romero announces, "I have hyperthymesia," or total recall, and if his book has an overarching fault, it's that it's overstuffed. As the author allows, "In writing this book, I put everything I could think of into it." Were the book as streamlined as the storied graphic engine in Doom, it would have been a little less unwieldy. Students of game-making and business alike will find useful, sometimes rueful lessons.

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