I am one of those people who, though still in my 30s, has stopped asking for anything for Christmas or birthdays because I do well taking care of family needs while fulfilling my own wants any time of year. I mentioned before I tend to get my own presents (budgets permitting, of course) so for this Christmas it seemed prudent to add a couple books to a larger order I was making anyway (might as well as nothing got added to the shipping cost). Both are pick-up-and-put-down-anytime autobiographies by founders of two of my favorite game companies who, up to the point these works got published, were not known for telling their life stories to such a detailed depth. Co-Founder of MicroProse
I know: it's been too long since I made any posts covering MicroProse, premier military simulation maker of the 1980s. Of course, it was Sid Meier who drove most of those early releases although that is not the genre he would build his ultimate legacy upon. Actually, that is only a piece of the bigger picture of a man who struck gold both in design and programming genius but who was in reality just having fun building the kind of games he wanted to play.
Unlike many, if not most, early computer gaming pioneers (including the other today's post covers), Sid Meier gravitated not to the Apple II family but the 8-bit Atari line which was both an asset (Atari systems were the best available the first few years) and a liability (he stuck with Atari well past its prime despite the urging of his MicroProse colleagues to transition earlier). Like many others, he started with solo and contract developments before meeting his other half, "Wild Bill" Stealey, who succeeded in forming an independent business from the effort. Meier is a reserved personality (like yours truly, in fact): for him it was never about the fame or fortune, just the fun.
That balance between immersion and fun was the winning formula defining MicroProse in those earlier days. Naturally, Sid couldn't be directly involved in every MicroProse game (especially once they hired new talent and made acquisitions to diversify their library) but as his company's lead programmer and designer he seemed content for others to lean on him when needed, hence his name appearing in the credits for titles he never so much as drafted a page of a design document nor wrote a line of code. His programming approach of "winging it" is somewhat unique and testament to his innate grasping of the complexities of computer code.
As much as Sid enjoys programming, it is not refined code that makes a program successful. One of the things so fascinating about following Meier's career is how he started so full of ideas and never lost the resolve to explore them at some point, even those that got too little exposure due to the circumstances (C.P.U. Bach) or never made it to a finished product (Dinosaurs). I used to believe his professional cycles were fairly conventional, starting small in order to eventually work up to that magnum opus, but reading Meier's book proved me incorrect: every game he's ever produced was originally conceived with ideas that had been swirling in his head for years, from his family's gifting of a well-illustrated Civil War book being made live with Gettysburg! to a Caribbean vacation between MicroProse successes inspiring the genre shift to Pirates! with many other stories similarly consistent. Civilization may be his baby but his remarkable genre diversity had so much light shed on it by understanding in Sid's own words why they came to be.
Meier himself is a professing Christian, serving as music leader at a Lutheran church near where he lives and works in Maryland (Vic Mignogna, known for the superb fan series Star Trek Continues, is likewise a musician on the side who served as worship leader at First Baptist Houston). While he never covers his own faith in his memoir (perhaps understandable since its focus is on his gaming history), both content in his book and statements on his church website suggest he is more liberal in his acceptance of Biblical truths. As with Joe Siegler of Apogee, I would leap at the chance to meet Sid Meier someday so we can talk about not just the games we both love but the faith in Christ we share and how best to spread the Gospel to as many as we can (the one time I met Chuck Norris, Jesus is what we talked about).
A Life in Computer Games is not contemporary as much since it's been out for several years, but it remains widely available. Like with any subject matter of a particular niche as gaming, few other than fans would be particularly interested. In my case I can attest having read through this I found out facts regarding MicroProse and Meier's non-MicroProse efforts that I never knew with all my internet research; thus, I can proclaim I definitely got my money's worth of this acquisition. While I enjoyed this thoroughly I missed out on further details about MicroProse history in the 90s (since Meier was less involved in their other projects by that time), therefore I may someday have to be that kind of fan who volunteers to compose the complete company history.
Co-Founder of id Software
Since the day had I checked out David Kushner's Masters of Doom from my local library it remains one of my top favorite non-fiction books as well as the measure by which I judge retrospectives on game companies and developers (including another in my collection: Service Games by Sam Pettus, a detailed history of Sega from founding to Dreamcast which was originally published as blog posts at the Eidolon's Inn site). I still enjoy a round of Wolfenstein 3d or Doom from time to time and reviews suggested John Romero's new memoir filled in blanks left by Masters of Doom plus corrected prior inaccuracies. Testimony on those points proved truthful, yet I'd finished with the sense of disappointment which comes from not really learning anything new about subject matters of interest, the games and companies themselves, that I paid money for these books in hope of discovering. To be fair I can't blame Romero's writing of Doom Guy: A Life in First Person for this issue: he goes into much greater autobiographical detail and ties well into how that influences his game designs. It could be Masters of Doom, which zoomed its perspective out more to cover the professional exploits of both John Romero and John Carmack, is the superior work for satiating that particular curiosity (for instance, Doom Guy never mentions Jason Blochowiak despite his credited role in Wolfenstein 3d and several id-produced Softdisk titles). Nevertheless, particularly for those who might have missed Master of Doom there is definitely some rich history found in these nearly 400 pages.
What may be of interest is Romero takes the personal, first-person (no pun intended) approach; readers get the opportunity to not so much know the games (not a big deal: just play the games to accomplish that goal) but the man behind them. On whichever topics he chooses to focus his attention to detail is impeccable, something he attributes up-front to his spectacular recall capacity. He speaks fondly of all his family, friends and colleagues over the years, and humbly accepts whenever he went wrong.
Romero's troubled childhood is no secret, but here he takes it into graphic detail (advisory included). A significant emphasis is placed on the racism his family experienced (as expected coming from someone in the 2020s who leans Left), but his life is still an amazing rags-to-riches story testifying to importance of family stability which is something weaker today than it was back then. From what I could ascertain he never places blame where it is undue and goes out of his way to be understanding in the face of cruelty.
Not only Romero, but also Carmack, are avowed atheists, an affliction more common among those who have "extra smarts" since such a personality is able to grasp so much more than average thus become inclined to believe in what it can understand while rejecting what it cannot. Doom Guy at least proves Romero has matured past his prior God complex written about in Masters of Doom; unfortunately, it is known spiritual resolve made at a young age is less likely to be subject to change when older. I agree with Romero's fellow Doom designer Sandy Petersen (a Mormon) in that there is no wrong in portraying demons and Satanism in media so long as right perspective is kept (Petersen: "they're the bad guys"), nor do I accept the notion that mature content is inherently harmful...so long as it is kept from immature consumption and its influence regulated accordingly (for the record: I'm as anti-censorship as it gets, with the provision that certain content should not be freely available to minors without parental or other loving oversight and We The People should be the ones in charge of defining those terms).
Is Doom Guy: A Life in First Person a worthwhile read? Certainly, though in my case I cannot say when I'll pick it up to read again (but at least it can join my collection of other Doom-related books). Masters of Doom, despite only covering up to 2001, is the better read for development history of the games and companies themselves.