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DOOM (1993): THE FIRST-PERSON SHOOTER TAKES CONTROL

On December 10, 1993, the “Two Johns”—John Carmack and John Romero¹—unveiled the infamous Doom for PC,² described in its manual as “a lightning-fast virtual reality adventure where you're the toughest space trooper ever to suck vacuum.” The game was an instant success, catapulting Carmack and Romero's company, id Software, to the short list of the world's most eminent shareware game developers. It also spawned a genre now labeled the “first-person shooter” (FPS) or just “shooter,” a genre that is still dominating the industry. Doom offered gamers visceral 3D-like graphics and intense, arcade-like action that could be soloed or enjoyed simultaneously against their friends in a mode affectionately dubbed “Deathmatch,” now a commonly used term. Although it wasn't the first FPS, it was by far the most successful and influential PC game of the 1990s, if not of all time.

Doom puts players in the role of a bullet-chewing marine who's sent to Mars after assaulting an officer who ordered an attack on civilians. The Martian post was mind-numbingly boring, at least until the researchers on the Martian moons began making headway in their interdimensional space travel project. You and your combat troop were sent to Martian moon Phobos to secure the situation; they rushed in while you guarded the perimeter. However, you've now lost radio contact with the troop, who are likely dead, and have no way off the moon. Your only hope is to re-enter the station, facing the waiting terror with nothing more than a pistol—though there's every indication that more formidable firearms are to be found in the base.

This story, which seems inspired by such sci-fi and horror classics as Alien (1979) and The Evil Dead (1981), is well suited to the gameplay. However, although the game did serve as the basis for a series of novels and a movie, no one bought this game for its storyline. The game's success was owed, in part, at least, to the developers’ marketing as well as their technical savvy. Before moving on to the game's technical achievements, we should reflect on id's unusual marketing strategy.

Doom begins in a room free of monsters to give players a chance to master the interface.

Doom took advantage of two revolutionary trends in software distribution and production: shareware and user-generated content. The first of these was a well-established practice by 1993, and id had tried it before to great success with their earlier PC games Commander Keen (1990) and Wolfenstein 3D (1992), a vital predecessor that we'll discuss shortly. Then, as now, the majority of commercial software was published by traditional publishers, who did everything in their power to prevent others from illegally copying and distributing their products. Shareware publishers, however, encourage users to copy and share their programs, then employed a variety of methods to generate revenue. Usually these amount to a screen or message that displays while the program loads, asking users to send a donation to the developer. Sometimes trivial or even crucial features are unavailable until the user has paid a fee to receive a “registered copy” or a special key code. In the case of the original Doom, the user received a fully working game, but only the first part—to see the rest of the game, users were asked to send money. However, the free version included one pivotal feature: multiplayer gameplay over a local area network (LAN). This fact made it much easier for large groups of gamers to organize LAN parties, as they would otherwise have had to purchase an individual copy for each machine.

The shareware method proved exceptionally successful for id, but it took some doing to get the game uploaded to the University of Wisconsin's FTP server, where id had planned to release the game.³ According to David Kushner, author of Masters of Doom, ten thousand users swarmed to the server, generating enough demand to crash the network.⁴ Fortunately for id, many users weren't satisfied to own just the shareware version and eagerly sprang for the full registered version. According to estimates at the Doom Wiki, Doom and its sequel Doom II have sold over two million copies each.⁵ Kushner's lively narrative describes in vivid detail the hectic bliss at id when hundreds of thousands of dollars flooded into the tiny company, swelling the bank accounts and egos of its team. id would later abandon shareware, though they still seem committed to the open source and free software movements, eventually releasing the full source code to Doom and other games to the public, greatly extending the life of the titles beyond their original platforms.

Several types of demons roam Doom’s levels, eager to make you an ex-soldier.

The other innovation—user-generated content—made perhaps a more significant contribution to the gaming industry. Again, id was certainly not the first game developer to encourage and even create tools to help gamers expand or modify their products. However, Doom's immense popularity and the tools’ impressive capabilities drew wads of dedicated and creative talent to the task. As a result, hundreds of gamers happily went to work designing new levels or taking the engine in unexpected directions. These user-built levels are called WADs, an acronym that stands for “Where's all the data?” id had specified in their licensing agreement that these WADs would be distributed free; makers were not allowed to charge for them. However, that fact didn't stop shady dealers from collecting WADs and selling them at unscrupulous or ignorant outlets. id countered by offering their own compilations via retail.

Ah, Doom’s boomstick, one step closer to the BFG (Big Fucking Gun).

Some of the better WAD makers eventually got involved with commercial game development. These include Tim Willits, later lead designer at id, and Dario Casali, whose work attracted Valve Software. Some of the more notable WADs include Eternal Doom, which offers 34 giant levels to explore, and Hell Revealed, an intensely difficult WAD designed to test an expert's prowess. A few off-the-wall WADs include Chex Quest, a game that served as a promotional tie-in for the cereal, and Mockery, a WAD that Scott Cover made specifically to illustrate the errors made by novice WAD makers. However, the wad became popular enough to inspire a subgenre of “joke mods.” There are also programs such as SLIGE that can create randomly generated WADs.⁶

Before continuing the discussion of Doom, we should take a moment to examine id's 1992 game Wolfenstein 3D. This game, loosely based on the much older Castle Wolfenstein (see Chapter 2, “Castle Wolfenstein (1981): Achtung! Stealth Gaming Steps out of the Shadows”), prototyped many of the critical graphical and gameplay elements that would show up in Doom and later shooters, sans the familiar FPS control scheme, ability to significantly modify and extend the game,⁷ and critical multi-player components. The game puts players in control of William “B. J.” Blazkowicz, a soldier trying to escape a Nazi stronghold. Although its graphics are somewhat crude compared to Doom, it still allowed gamers to experience 3D-like graphics rendered on-the-fly with a first-person perspective. According to Kushner, Romero and Carmack were inspired by Blue Sky's Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss (Origin, 1992; PC, Windows Mobile, and others), an incredibly ambitious role-playing game doomed by its steep hardware requirements. Carmack was convinced he could achieve similar effects on lower-end PCs, and proved it with Wolfenstein 3D.⁸

Blue Sky's (later known as Looking Glass Studios) Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss beat id to the feature punch in many respects, but its steep hardware requirements and relatively complex interface may explain its relative obscurity.

Of course, Wolfenstein 3D's impressive performance was not entirely without precedent, as id's two earlier titles, Hovertank 3D and Catacomb 3D, both from 1991, were pioneering games in their own right and formed the foundations from which the far-better-known shooter was built and greatly extended.⁹ In Hovertank 3D, the player controls Brick Sledge, a mercenary hired by an unknown organization to rescue people from enemy-filled cities under the threat of nuclear attack. The game used a combination of scaled sprites and rendered walls, much like Wolfenstein 3D, but the walls in Hovertank 3D were untextured and solid in color. Catacomb 3D, where the player, as the high wizard of Thoria, must save the troublesome but useful Nemesis of Kelquest from his suspended animation in magical amber, showed the character's hands and added other, now familiar, character-based features, along with textured walls. Both of these mostly forgotten early games—with their extremely modest system requirements, relative to their groundbreaking features—contributed greatly to Wolfenstein 3D's emergence as such a polished product and ultimately to the even greater success of Doom.

id's Hovertank 3D (left) and Catacomb 3D (right), could be considered the earliest testing grounds for technology and concepts later used to popular acclaim in Wolfenstein 3D and Doom.

Now let's turn our attention back to the actual gameplay of Doom. At the start of the single-player campaign, the player is presented with a view of a futuristic room (the moon base) and a hand pointing a pistol. At this point, the player is offered a variety of control schemes, though most will tend toward the character's line of sight. A combination of mouse and keyboard control that is popular today. A typical configuration is to move with the arrow keys (this configuration later conformed to the standard W, A, S, and D keys) and aim and fire with the mouse. Spinning the mouse around changes the view; holding down the Alt key allows the arrow keys to strafe (locked in left and right movement).¹⁰ Holding down the right shift key and the arrow keys makes the character run—an often-vital skill. Though moving and aiming can be terribly confusing and disorienting for the novice, most gamers will likely master the interface in a few minutes. To this end, id placed no monsters in the first room, so players are free to experiment with the control schemes until they feel ready for their first encounters. Other controls are for opening doors and operating switches. All of the action is depicted from “first-person perspective,” meaning that the player is seeing from the character's point of view. This setup is intended to make players feel a more immediate connection to the action.¹¹

After leaving the first room, players will begin fighting demons and possessed soldiers. These enemies are dispatched readily with a shot or two from the pistol. However, the player must be careful not to waste ammo—an empty gun is merely a paperweight. There are also armor pickups, radiation suits, and health packs, a.k.a. “stimpacks,” a “booster enzyme that make[s] you feel like a new man,” to quote from the manual. By far the most welcome of all these powerups was a bigger and badder weapon. Persistent players eventually replace their pistol with shotguns, chainguns, rocket launchers, plasma rifles, and eventually the infamous BFG 9000, which can clear an entire room of monsters. Each weapon requires a specific type of ammo, and rationing out the ammo is an important part of the strategy. For instance, since pistol clips are far more plentiful than shotgun shells or rockets, it's better to use them for wimpy demons and save the rarer ammo for more powerful enemies. There's also a berserker rage powerup that greatly boosts the character's muscles, turning his fists into weapons of mass destruction.

Doom’s built-in automapper helps keep players on track.

Monsters aren't the only perils awaiting the player. Ceilings can cave in, slime/lava is radioactive, and barrels can explode. Indeed, the manual suggests (and any observant player will quickly discover) that these explosive barrels can be used to quickly clear a room of enemies—simply wait until they are near the barrels and shoot them from a safe distance away.

At the bottom of the screen is the character's “mug,” an animated face that changes upon receiving damage. The face winces when the character takes a blow, for instance, and quickly becomes bruised and bloodied as his health declines. This feature is important, because it helps balance out the first-person perspective; it's a constant reminder that the player is controlling an actual character rather than a floating camera.

In the mid-1990s, it seemed all but a prerequisite to have a Doom game for your system. Back of the box for the single-player-only version of Doom for the Sega 32X shown, which was often compared to the superior multiplayer-capable, though music-less, Atari Jaguar version. Doom was at home on a wide range of computers, consoles, and handhelds, including the 3DO, Nintendo Game Boy Advance, Super Nintendo, Sega Saturn, and Sony PlayStation.

id was quick to follow the original Doom with many upgrades, sequels, and spin-offs. Doom II: Hell on Earth appeared on October 10, 1994, and featured the same basic gameplay as the original, though with a larger area to explore. The critical difference was that Doom II was intended for the retail market; it was never released as shareware. This game received official expansion packs that were based on levels designed by users, including Master Levels for Doom II (1995) and Final Doom (1996).¹² The retail versions of Doom were quite profitable for id, who soon found themselves awash with cash.

The Doom games have been ported to an amazing array of platforms, both popular and obscure, like this conversion of Doom II for the Palm OS–based Tapwave Zodiac handheld, back of box shown.

id has also published spin-off games that utilized their Doom engine. These include Raven Software's Heretic (1994) and Hexen (1996), well-received games with a fantasy setting.¹³ These games are noted for introducing a more sophisticated inventory system and the ability to look up and down. In 1996, id released Quake, another FPS that became a definitive series of the genre. This tremendously successful game and its sequels again put players in command of a soldier, and the plot is also based on a similar contrivance to the Doom games: government officials experimenting with teleportation technology (“slipgates”) have unwittingly granted access to a race of vicious “death squad” marauders. It's up to the player to enter the slipgate and dispatch “Quake,” a mysterious and powerful enemy who is responsible for the death squads.

Although for many it took the release of the Microsoft Xbox platform to legitimize FPS gaming on consoles as an alternative to using a computer, the genre had seen several strong console releases years earlier, though often with compromised performance and control schemes. The Nintendo 64 was a favorite target for id's properties, with the release of games like Quake and Hexen (back of box pictured). Below Hexen is the back of the box for Rare's original creation from the James Bond film, GoldenEye 007, one of the most popular console FPS titles prior to 2001’s Halo: Combat Evolved for the Xbox.

Quake II, released in 1997, is a much different game than its predecessor. The game employs a science fiction setting. The player's character, a marine named Bitterman, is sent with a team to the home planet of a cybernetic race called the Strogg. Their mission is to destroy Makron, the Strogg's leader. As we might expect, Bitterman's team is quickly liquidated at the start of the game, and it's up to him to single-handedly complete the mission.

Perhaps id's most radical departure from the Doom setup is Quake III Arena (1999), which is entirely focused on multiplayer gameplay. After the first Doom, many gamers found themselves much more interested in playing with other humans rather than computer-controlled opponents. Because these early games existed in the early days of the Internet, mutiplayer sessions took place over LANs. This setup required that gamers assemble in the same physical location, then plug all of their computers into the same local or private network. This activity soon became a cultural phenomenon known as “LAN parties,” and many games besides Doom were enjoyed during these events. LAN parties ranged from as little as two to four connected computers to the massive DreamHack party of Jonkoping, Sweden, which holds the Guinness Book of Records with 10,638 computers all connected to the same network. LAN parties have contributed much lingo to modern gaming culture, such as the term “frag” for killing one's opponents. The next Quake game, Quake IV (2005), returned to the story in Quake II with a long single-player campaign. Of course, there are also multiplayer options.

id's Doom 3 (2005) was a highly anticipated release that pushed the boundaries of the then-current 3D graphics technology, particularly in regard to the use of light and shading. Unlike previous Doom games, the third lacks black humor and dark wit. Instead, the game strives for pure horror, placing players smack in the middle of a situation reminiscent of an Alien movie. Speaking of movies, it was around this time that the franchise received its first (and so far only) film treatment: Andrzej Bartkowiak's Doom (2005). This film, like so many games based on movies, did not fare particularly well at the box office.

Of course, id and its licensed partners are not the only developers who have produced first-person shooters worthy of note. Indeed, one could easily write an entire book covering the evolution of the genre. Two of the most popular are Valve's Half-Life (1998) and Bungie's Halo: Combat Evolved (2001). Half-Life introduced several ambitious innovations to the genre, but is perhaps most notable for weaving in a more sophisticated narrative. Its sequel, Half-Life 2 (2004) is even more story-focused, with characters and a plot that rivals that of a good science fiction film. Halo: Combat Evolved is also acclaimed for its excellent story and writing, but is also noteworthy for successfully adapting the genre to the console market. Although there had been plenty of earlier attempts (including many ports of Wolfenstein 3D and Doom), with the key exceptions of Rare's GoldenEye 007 (1997) and Perfect Dark (2000) for the Nintendo 64, these largely failed to make much of an impact. The precision control and sometimes complex control schemes demanded by the genre seemed to necessitate a keyboard and a mouse. Bungee and Microsoft solved this problem admirably; the game's control scheme took full advantage of the Microsoft Xbox's well-designed game controller. Indeed, now there are as many fans of the genre who prefer game controllers to the keyboard and mouse setup, making development of FPS games for every conceivable platform commonplace.

Quake III Arena took a purely multiplayer approach to its design, allowing for lots of great human-on-human conflict, as seen here in a screenshot from the Sega Dreamcast version.

Despite selling well, Doom 3 received a relatively lukewarm reception for its focus on improved audiovisuals over advancing the series’ play mechanics.

There are, of course, a multitude of other games we could mention, such as Looking Glass Studios’ System Shock (1994; Apple Macintosh, PC), 3D Realms’ Duke Nukem 3D (1996; PC, Tiger game.com, and others), Red Storm Entertainment's Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six (1998; PC, Sega Dreamcast, Sony PlayStation, and others), Dynamix's Starseige: Tribes (1998; PC), Valve's Counter-Strike (2003; Microsoft Xbox, PC), Crytek's Far Cry (2004; PC), and Monolith's F.E.A.R. (2005; Microsoft Xbox 360, PC, Sony PlayStation 3).¹⁴ All of these games contributed new ideas and are well worth playing today. However, they are all variations on the model introduced by id's Doom, which is most certainly the progenitor of the incredibly successful FPS genre.

¹Other important figures at id at the time included Tom Hall, Adrian Carmack (no relation to John Carmack), and Sandy Petersen.

²Since the game's original release, official and unofficial ports of Doom have been created for nearly every capable platform.

³Internet usage was not yet widespread, so shareware games depended upon a wide variety of distribution methods. These methods included individually dialed Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) and mail order companies whose sole business model was selling disks filled with shareware and demo software.

⁴Kushner, David. 2004. Masters of Doom (ISBN: 0–8129–7215–5). Random House.

⁵See http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Sales. The figure considers other estimates from a variety of published and online sources.

⁶The top 100 WADs of all time have been collected and reviewed at Doom World, a must-see site for anyone interested in WADs. Visit http://www.doomworld.com/10years/bestwads/.

⁷Wolfenstein 3D did allow for some modification of its graphics and maps, but not to the extent found in Doom.

⁸It's important to note, however, that although Wolfenstein 3D looked great and moved smoothly, the original Ultima Underworld still featured a far more advanced engine, with features like floor and ceiling textures, terrain of varying height, and lighting effects that would not be realized in an id creation until Doom.

⁹See http://www.idsoftware.com/games/vintage/hovertank/.

¹⁰Use of the mouse often negates the need for a strafe modifier key.

¹¹As author Loguidice recalls, “Playing this game for the first time on a fast Pentium 90 computer up close to a 15” flat-screen CRT monitor created one of those ‘wow’ moments in gaming for me that are few and far between. The immersive effect was particularly stunning when walking down the game's dimly lit interior corridors.”

¹²The Ultimate Doom (1995) was a retail version of the original Doom that featured a new, fourth episode, “Thy Flesh Consumed.”

¹³These games could be said to have taken inspiration from id's earlier Catacomb 3D games.

¹⁴First Encounter Assault Recon, or F.E.A.R., is arguably considered a survival horror FPS. For more on the survival horror genre, see Chapter 1, “Alone in the Dark (1992): The Polygons of Fear.”