Masters of Doom: Carmack, Romero, and the making of id Software

Executive overview

Two self-taught programmers — John Carmack and John Romero — built id Software from a shared lake house into the dominant force in PC gaming, creating Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake. Their collaboration worked because their skills were complementary: Carmack pushed engine technology forward while Romero designed levels and drove commercial energy.

The partnership collapsed when their ambitions diverged. Carmack wanted to keep the team small, stay frugal, and focus entirely on code. Romero wanted an empire. After Romero was voted out, he spent $30 million building the opposite of everything that had made id successful — and failed spectacularly.

The core insight: the principles that built the business (small team, zero overhead, direct distribution, obsessive focus on product) were abandoned the moment success arrived — and the outcome was predictable.

Early lives and the pull of games

• Romero grew up in a volatile home, father absent, stepfather abusive — video games were his only escape and the one arena where he had control.
• Carmack scored at ninth-grade level in second grade, taught himself to program via library books and a rented PC, and broke into a school to steal an Apple II — sentenced to juvenile detention at 14.
• Both felt powerless in childhood environments that demanded conformity; building worlds inside games was a direct response to that.
• Carmack's formative text was Steven Levy's Hackers — on finishing it, he had one thought: "I'm supposed to be in there."
• Romero's stepdad told him he'd never make money making games and should build business applications — at the same time, a married couple in California was running a $10 million game company out of Ziploc bags.

How id Software was born

• Both landed at Softdisk, a disk-based software publisher — the two best programmers in a company full of programmers; they quickly formed an autonomous sub-team.
• Carmack cracked adaptive tile refresh — a technique that allowed smooth side-scrolling on a PC, something previously impossible — and used it to clone the first level of Super Mario Bros. overnight as a proof of concept.
• Romero's reaction when he saw the demo: "This is it. We're gone."
• Scott Miller introduced them to the shareware model for games: give away the first episode free, sell the rest direct, keep 85–95 cents of every dollar. No retailers, no publishers, no middlemen.
• id Software launched from a rented lake house in Louisiana with five people and almost zero overhead — shareware income hit $15,000–$20,000/month within months.

The two Johns: how they processed time and work

• Carmack: lived entirely in the present, kept nothing from the past — no photos, no saved games, no mattress. His bedroom had a lamp, a pillow, a blanket, and books. Ruling force: focus.
• Romero: immersed in all three time horizons simultaneously — kept every receipt, every floppy disk, every letter. Passionate about today and obsessed with the future.
• These differences made them perfect complements in the early years — and irreconcilable later.
• Carmack's operating principle: innovate, optimize, then jettison anything that gets in the way — applied equally to technology, business relationships, and his own cat.

Building Wolfenstein 3D and Doom

• Wolfenstein 3D launched via shareware with no advertising. First royalty check: $100,000, for month one alone. The game had cost roughly $25,000 to make.
• id turned down a $2.5 million acquisition offer from Sierra Online (then a $10 million/year company) because Sierra wouldn't put $100,000 down upfront — and id correctly concluded that Sierra didn't understand what they had.
• Doom's distribution model was a step further: give the shareware episode to retailers for free, let them keep all profit from the disc sale, and use their shelf space and advertising budgets to drive awareness. Goal was distribution volume, not margin on the demo.
• Networking — the first true multiplayer first-person shooter — was nearly an afterthought; Carmack added it as "maybe a little bit of work." Romero coined the term deathmatch.
• Day one after Doom's launch: $100,000 in orders. Only an estimated 1% of shareware downloaders converted to paid — and the business was already printing money.

The split

• Post-Doom, Romero became the industry's rock star — doing press, playing deathmatches, acting as executive producer for outside studios. His output of Doom 2 levels dropped; of 32 levels, only six were his.
• Carmack adjusted his schedule to arrive at 4 p.m. and leave at 4 a.m. to minimize distraction. He had no interest in fame or empire — he wanted to keep programming.
• Romero's stated new code: no more crunch, no more death schedules. Carmack watched him walk out the door wearing a shirt that said "I wrote it" and said nothing.
• Carmack summarised the split publicly: "Romero wants an empire. I just want to create good programs."
• The rest of id sided with Carmack — because Carmack was the only person who could build the engine. Romero was voted out.

Ion Storm: the empire that collapsed

• Romero received a multimillion-dollar buyout from id, relinquishing all rights to Doom and Quake royalties.
• He signed a $13 million deal with Eidos to fund three games, then rented a 22,500 sq ft two-story penthouse in Dallas at $350,000/month — chosen in part because it was too strange for normal corporate tenants.
• Office renovations exceeded $2.5 million. Staff grew to nearly 100 people. Monthly burn rate hit $1.2 million before a single game shipped.
• The flagship game, Daikatana, had a 400-page design document, 64 planned monsters, four time zones, and a scope four times larger than Quake. Development started on one engine, then switched to a new one mid-build, requiring a near-complete restart.
• A taunt ad in gaming magazines — "John Romero is going to make you his bitch" — destroyed goodwill before the game existed.
• The Daikatana team staged a walkout: "We don't think the game is ever going to get done." Eidos had sunk nearly $30 million into the project by the time they issued the order: "Shut up and finish the game."
• Daikatana shipped years late, sold roughly 40,000 copies, and Ion Storm closed.
• Romero's own postmortem: "Why did I hire all these people? It shouldn't have been this big. It should have just been me and Tom and a small team with a common goal."

Carmack's philosophy in practice

• Kept id's team intentionally tiny: three programmers, three artists, three level designers — a configuration he believed could still make the best games in the world.
• Opposed patents on principle: "All of science and technology and culture is built upon using the work others have done before. To say this idea is my idea, you cannot extend it — that seems so fundamentally wrong."
• On focus: systematically eliminated anything that interrupted programming — social obligations, fame, sentimentality, his own cat.
• On frugality as competitive advantage: low overhead caps downside; selling ones and zeros has near-unlimited upside. The fewer people you pay, the more of each dollar you keep.
• On the real barrier to entry: "In the information age, the barriers just aren't there. The barriers are self-imposed. 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."