Masters of Doom

Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture is a book by David Kushner about id Software and its influence on popular culture, focusing chiefly on John Romero and John Carmack. Adopting a novel-like narrative, Kushner chronicles the lives of both men from childhood through the early successes of id Software, the new heights the company reached with Doom, on through to their separation as developers after Quake. Kushner was an early entrant into the field of video-game journalism, and recycled some of his own original reporting in the book.

A budget film based on this book was in production by Showtime at one time, but seems to have been abandoned.

Synopsis
"Masters of Doom is the amazing true story of the Lennon and McCartney of video games: John Carmack and John Romero. Together, they ruled big business. They transformed popular culture. And they provoked a national controversy. More than anything, they lived a unique and rollicking American Dream, escaping the broken homes of their youth to co-create the most notoriously successful game franchises in history—Doom and Quake—until the games they made tore them apart."

- Publisher's description

Trivia

 * Romero mentioned in June of 2015 that a new extended edition of the book is underway.