Prepare to Meet Thy Doom Audiobook By David Kushner cover art

Prepare to Meet Thy Doom

And More True Gaming Stories

 Preview
LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 months free
Try for $0.00
Offer ends July 31, 2025 at 11:59PM PT.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 3 months. Cancel anytime.

Prepare to Meet Thy Doom

By: David Kushner
Narrated by: Wil Wheaton
Try for $0.00

$0.00/mo. after 3 months. Offer ends July 31, 2025 at 11:59PM PT. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $17.90

Buy for $17.90

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use, License, and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

From Masters of Doom author David Kushner comes Prepare to Meet Thy Doom, a compilation of true gaming stories covering many facets of America's biggest entertainment business: the video game industry. In addition to more than a dozen fascinating tales of game creation, play, business, and controversy, Prepare to Meet Thy Doom follows up on Kushner's previous best seller, Masters of Doom, with a long-awaited update on id Software founders John Romero and John Carmack.

©2015 David Kushner (P)2015 Audiobooks.com Publishing Engineering
All stars
Most relevant  
Gripping listening, very interesting if you're into video games. But the chess article feels kinda inappropriate, style-wise, it makes uncomfortable listening.

Interesting material

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Interesting group of stories but I would have liked it better if there was less on GTA and included more on something else.

A bit too much on GTA

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
some of the stories felt like a sales pitch l. but most are just fun

the stories were fun

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
David Kushner starts off by billing "Prepare to Meet Thy Doom" as the successor to "Masters of Doom", a rambunctious tale of the formatin and success of id Software while following both John Romero and John Carmack lives in and out of gaming. In reality, Prepare to Meet Thy Doom is a collection of stories David Kushner wrote many non-gaming A-list magazines such as Rolling Stone / Wired / Playboy / Salon / Blendr / Spectrum. While both Johns kick off the story with "Where are they now?" pieces, the rest of the book is a mish-mash of unrelated tales over the past decade. Stories aren't limited to video games, as it diverges to the world of DnD and even chess. The book's high point is when David Kushner gushes over Atari founder, and original anti-establishment digital bad boy, Nolan Bushnell, who put the roof up on the start up culture. Kushner's excitement is palpable, and makes for a better read, and better researched than the few other books in the same vain like Jeff Ryan's "Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America".

There's also a few interesting stories on distant memories like Second Life, which has been nearly 3-4 years since I recall any major media discussing it, the ambitious and somewhat forgotten Spore and once activist lawyer (now disbarred) Jack Thompson. There's even a story dedicate to a flo like AFP which sent me to google as it bombed so badly that I had never heard of it. The end of book trails after Rock Star, and due to the nature of reprinting separate articles for separate publications, finds a few steps retraced.

It's an interesting retrospective through of-the-time case studies but really could use follow ups for "at the time of publication" as most (if not all articles) collected are freely available online. I enjoyed the stories but would have liked to see Kushner's lens focused again on another set of digital misfits.

An interesting and unsorted collection

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
If you’re looking for an in-depth follow-up to “Masters of Doom”, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. While the first book was a deep dive into the creative lives of Carmack and Romero, this one is nothing more than a smattering of articles on the videogame industry originally printed in magazines over several years. The check-in with Carmack and Romero to see what they’re working on “now” is so short you could miss it if you blinked. As for the rest of the articles in the book, some are interesting but most are laughably dated. I hadn’t even heard of one of the games covered and had to look it up Wikipedia to see if it had undergone a name change or had busted before being released.
All in all, the book was interesting for its snapshots-in-time feel but isn’t worth a credit or full price. Either wait until it’s discounted below 30% of original price, or go look up the individual articles online.

Not bad but not what I was expecting

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The first book is amazing.
This is not really a book.
It is of a collection of vaguely related short pieces.

Collection of articles

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The reading was pleasant as I expect from Wheaton. I felt the stories seemed to repeat content. Perhaps with a slightly different perspective that the previous story but they felt to similar in essence. Still enjoyed it overall.

Interesting content yet somehow repetitive

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
David Kushner's collected articles are entertaining bite sized morsels of videogame recollections, but after the superb first helping of Masters of Doom, this collection only leaves you feeling bloated. I could have probably stomached it if there had been some updates or better pacing, but I was left hanging on only by Wil Wheaton's excellent narration.

Desserts After the Main Course

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The title really says it all. The book is an interesting listen, but because multiple developers were focused on, I felt like the whole of the book had less focus than the previous entry. Wil Wheaton is always a pleasure to listen to, and book is good listen. Would recommend.

Not Quite the Successor I wanted, but still good

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
As other reviewers have stated, much of the content is rehashed. Knowing this prior to listening eased any possible concerns.

Fun tales, though falls short of its predecessor.

Will Wheatons spews more Nerdom

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews