Doom

Doom, first-person shooter electronic game released in December 1993 that changed the direction of almost every aspect of personal computer (PC) games, from graphics and networking technology to styles of play, notions of authorship, and public scrutiny of game content.

The authors of Doom were a group of programmers, led by John Romero and John Carmack, formed in Texas to create monthly games as employees of Softdisk magazine. While at Softdisk the group also produced shareware titles for Apogee Software, beginning with the Commander Keen franchise (1990–91). On the basis of the success of this series of addictive platform games, the group formed id Software in February 1991.

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From the beginning, id focused on the development of superior graphics. Carmack had already demonstrated, by writing a smooth-scrolling PC version of Nintendo’s Super Mario Brothers 3, that personal computers could rival video consoles. Now he turned his attention to three-dimensional gaming graphics, writing a “graphics engine” for id’s Wolfenstein 3D, an action game published by Apogee, that depicted the environment as the player’s character would see it. This set the stage for Doom as the next step of this game genre, the “first-person shooter.” (Typically, in first-person shooters the players move through mazelike corridors and rooms filled with adversaries—controlled by other players or the computer—and through stealth or more accurate shooting try to outlive their opponents.) Doom added numerous technical and design improvements to the Wolfenstein 3D model: a superior graphics engine, fast peer-to-peer networking for multiplayer gaming, a modular design that let authors outside id create new levels, and a new mode of competitive play devised by Romero called “death match.”

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The game’s plot was an immersive mix of science fiction and horror. The player, seeing through the eyes of an unidentified space marine, is sent to investigate an incident on the Martian moon Phobos. Humanlike opponents give way to increasingly demonic enemies as the player punches, shoots, and chainsaws through an array of hellish settings. The game was a phenomenal success—it contributed so much to the genre that, initially, all similar titles were referred to as “Doom clones,” and it immediately established competitive multiplayer gaming as a critical element in future PC titles. At the same time, the subject matter of Doom (slaughtering demons in outer space), its moody graphics and audio (combined with realistic depictions of blood and gore), and its vocabulary (such as “shooters” and “death match”) focused public attention on the level of violence depicted in computer games.

After succeeding with the first installment of the series, id Software released Doom II: Hell on Earth in 1994. In 1997 the U.S. Marine Corps converted Doom’s monsters into opposition forces and used the resulting game, Marine Doom, to train troops in tactics and communications. After the series went on hiatus through the late 1990s, Doom 3 was released to great critical acclaim in 2004. In 2005 the popular video game title was made into a motion picture of the same name.