The rise and fall of the company is documented in great detail in the book "Masters of Doom". "Doom" was just one of a series of blockbuster games Romero had designed, and Ion Storm was founded in no small part on his celebrity status within the industry. This elevation of the game creators over the products themselves caused problems early on, evidenced in a 1997 advertisement which hyped the subsequently delayed "Daikatana" by boasting "John Romero's About To Make You His Bitch...Suck it down".