On the Paper Trail: Masters of Doom

This is a sample taken from Coldguy's other project The Paper Trail where he review books on Video Games.

Howdy partners welcome back to the trail, in this stop we have ourselves a geek classic here. Masters of Doom tells the tale of John Carmack and John Romero, how they once started as lowly programmers trying to push the edge of technology and somehow changed the entire culture of gaming for better or worse.

This story is madly fascinating by being brutally honest about the Johns and their rise to power. Carmack is a self motivated nerd who just wants to hammer out the code to get the job done, Romero is an experimental jackass that takes no solace in anyone else's emotions. These people are in essences uncaring pompous pricks that are really good at computers, they do the things their way and everyone hates them because of it. However at the end of the day there is still a passion that you can not deny from them.

This book is blunt, in the same manner as the Johns and pulls no punches with foul language and tells it like it was. It includes great mini biops on various people you know (American McGee and the ID Mom were among my favorites) as well as incorporate the culture at the time as well. One fact that I found hilarious was that one day after the US government forced the ESRB to come into existence Doom was released to the public via shareware.

It also tells you that both together managed a rise and fall for the glory that was Doom and Quake I, and how they were apart made Ion Storm and Id crash from its mighty perch. The various business dealings would make you head tilt upon how Eidos managed to put up with all the nonsense that Romero was cooking, or how in the world no one thought Carmack was a terrible business owner and not just a hard worker.

This book is a time capsule about early computer gaming, the excitement of having two people and a bastion of friends pushing computer hardware to the absolute maximum and creating the games that they wanted to have created and making a boat load of money using unorthodox methods. The book does not sugar coat anything it simply tells it like it was and excepts you to be mature enough to think it is awesome or just question why Microsoft would allow a Giant Vaginal door to take place with the members of Gwar hitting people with dildos (yes that actually happened).

If you grew up in the 90s this will be a blast from the past that you will love to revisit, if you are wondering where trolling started it also tells you that as well, or if you wondered how two people with no business skills managed to finance an empire based around video game it talks about that as well. A must read if you are a gamer to find the zenith into FPS that is still tried and true to this day.

On the Paper Trail: Gamers...in the Library?!

Note: this was taken by Coldguy's side project On the Paper Trail which goes and reviews book based on video games. For more up to dates notes check out On the Paper Trail.

Howdy gamers, welcome to the first stop on the trail and in this installment we are going to talk about video games and libraries. Sure you may think that these two things would not go hand in hand with one another however recently studies have shown that this can be a power house mix to attract teenagers and children to the hallowed book hall.

So the goal of this book is simple: get more people to the library and have video games to be one of those "services" that are made available to the patrons. Eli Neiburger is both a librarian and a gamer and has seen his hobby become a major success in his district and has the plan to make it a success for your own.

Now as you might imagination the core of this book is not for "gamers" but rather librarians who may or may not know about video games. Therefore several parts of this book address things like which games you should look into, what consoles you may want to get, what cabling is required to set up an event and the logistics of the event to attract people into coming.

As a facilitator it does an amazing job into breaking down the various aspects of planning of the tournament season at your library, from convincing a person who does not think video games belong in the library to using your budget to get the most bang for your buck. It breaks things done into simple terms and tells even the non technologist how to pull an event like this off and keep the gamers coming in.

As a gamer the biggest takeaway from this is the tournament system they use to ensure that no one would be bored at the event. As well as how the rules need to be both structured enough to be understood and flexible enough to change on the fly in case an issue arises. This in combination with how to set up a room for a tourney comes into play if you were wanting to set up one at a convention, your basement, or in another public space. This is a great guide to ensure you get the maximum amount of fun from the experienced player to the novice.

All in all this book was made for librarians, as it was published by the ALA directly. Yes the American Library Association has published a book on how to create video game tournaments at your local library to encourage gamers to come. If that alone does not tell you that libraries are not cool I am not sure what will. If you are an adult that wants to run a tournament to attract people to come and keep coming back to your public venue this is right up your alley.

As for a gamer this is something you may want to skip since it deals with more of an open venue management rather then the nuts and bolts on setting up ways to get the clan structure set. Plus since it is an ALA book the price point of this one is $50. Which in my opinion is way too much for you to go and purchase this title, my best suggestion is to check this out at your local library (heck my library had it on its shelves for me to go and check out) take some notes and return when finished. You can check out the book on Amazon which provides you with a nice Kindle version for those reading on the electronic device.