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The Making of Doom III...

January 10, 2005 By R. LeFeuvre

...by Steven L. Kent sucks. I still have have half a Carmack interview and a section about the game making tools to read, but I think I've read enough to know that the book stinks.

Maybe I was hoping for too much. It's a book about id (the subject of my favorite book about the industry, Masters of Doom) and it was written by Steven Kent (the author of my second favorite book, The Ultimate History of Video Games) (Both books are terrific, by the way).

What I got was a strategy guide/"making of" that would neither help with Doom III strategy nor explain much of the making! In fact, there are only 12 pages devoted to the "history" of Doom III, and some of the text there is almost general enough be speaking of any game development, compared to 53 pages for the short story that became the plot of the game. The existence of such a story was interesting - I didn't know Doom games HAD plots, but I didn't get the game to read about the mythos behind it, I want to know about the team behind it.

The chapters that follow are devoted to characters, levels and weapons. These start of good, with some information about the design process of each category, especially the level design chapter as there is a short 2-page piece on each of the 5 main level designers. But other than the short introduction pieces, most of the writing explains the content of the game instead of how it was created.

My BART ride ended as I got to the section with a Q&A session with Mr. id, John Carmack. I only just started reading it, but so far I Kent doesn't appear to be transcibing every robotic "mmmmmmmmmmmm" he makes. It's just doesn't feel like Carmack with out it! (if you don't get that then you need to read Masters of Doom. Go, go read the book.)

Here's hoping that the last 30 pages make up for the first 160.

EDIT: Huh. They acutally almost did. I'd say the book would be about 50 pages if it wasn't for all the art and the huge story. At least some of the art was nifty. Check it out from your library if you liked the game or you know nothing of how video games are made.

Finally, The Carmack interview had a quote that I must share.

Carmack: "The next-generation first-person-shooter games, if somebody walks by your office looking in, there will be a lot of scenes where it's not clear whether it was computer simulated or used a digital image."

Someone obviously takes for granted that playing games in the office is a typical thing!

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