Doom (1993 video game)

Lore & Background

The initial team consisted of five people: John Carmack, John Romero, Adrian Carmack, Kevin Cloud, and Tom Hall. Hall initially wrote a science fiction plot, but he and most of the story were removed, with the final game featuring an action-heavy design by John Romero and Sandy Petersen. The game was published as a set of three episodes under the shareware model, with the first episode released free to market the full game.

Reader's Guide

Doom is widely regarded as one of the most important video games in the first-person shooter genre. The game has been cited by video game historians as shifting the direction and public perception of the medium as a whole, sparking the rise of online games and communities. It led to an array of imitators and clones, a robust modding scene, and the birth of speedrunning as a community. Its high level of graphic violence led to controversy from a range of groups.

Did You Know?

• The game was developed under the working title 'Doom' from early on, with the name inspired by a line from the 1986 film The Color of Money.
• The game's multiplayer deathmatch mode allowed two to four players to compete over a network, and the DWANGO service, which launched in 1994, supported online multiplayer.
• Doom was not included in any 'first ten' video game canon list by the Library of Congress in 2007; the Library's video game preservation initiative did not produce such a list.

The Making of a Demon-Hunting Classic

The project's early creative direction was shaped by designer Tom Hall, who penned a science-fiction narrative for the game. However, Hall and the bulk of his written story were ultimately stripped from the project. The final product instead leaned into a relentlessly action-driven design led by John Romero and Sandy Petersen, giving the game its signature pace and aggression. id Software chose to distribute Doom as a trilogy of episodes under the shareware model, offering the first episode at no cost to hook players into purchasing the full package.

A Pioneering Approach to 3D Combat

Doom presented its first-person shooter experience through what is commonly called 2.5D graphics: the world rendered in a three-dimensional perspective while player movement remained locked to a flat two-dimensional plane. Rather than full polygonal models, enemies and pickups appeared as flat two-dimensional images displayed at fixed angles, a rendering trick known as billboarding. Despite these technical constraints, the game delivered a remarkably fluid combat loop. Players managed ammunition, health, and armor across labyrinthine levels filled with toxic waste pits, crushing ceilings, and keycard-locked doors. Five difficulty settings scaled enemy counts, damage output, and attack speed. On the multiplayer front, two to four players could team up in cooperative mode or clash in deathmatch over local networks, with a four-player online option arriving a year later via the DWANGO service.

Shaping an Industry and a Culture

Critics and historians alike have called it the father of the first-person shooter genre and one of the most consequential games ever made. Its influence extended well beyond the genre itself. Video game scholars credit Doom with reshaping the public's perception of the medium as a whole and igniting the early wave of online multiplayer communities. It spawned a flood of imitators and clones, cultivated a thriving modding scene, and is widely recognized as the birthplace of speedrunning as an organized community. The game's unflinching graphic violence also drew sustained controversy from a wide range of groups. The franchise has since expanded into sequels, a 64-bit port, two feature films, and numerous official and unofficial ports across platforms.

From Mars to Hell: A Story Told in Fragments

Doom's narrative is deliberately sparse, with plot conveyed almost entirely through the instruction manual and brief text screens between episodes. In a future setting, an unnamed space marine (later nicknamed Doomguy by fans) has been reassigned to a dead-end posting on Mars after assaulting a superior officer who ordered his unit to open fire on civilians. The Union Aerospace Corporation, which runs radioactive waste operations on the planet, permits the military to conduct secret teleportation experiments that go catastrophically wrong. When a base on Phobos desperately requests reinforcements and Deimos vanishes entirely, the marine joins a combat force to secure the moon. He holds his perimeter as ordered, only to watch his entire response team get annihilated. Stranded with nothing but a pistol, he pushes into the base seeking vengeance, fighting through possessed humans and demons before defeating two Barons of Hell guarding a teleporter. He is then ambushed and hurled into the Deimos research facilities, where he ultimately slays a colossal cyberdemon before descending further into hell itself.