Pinchbeck - Doom: Scarydarkfast

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LANDMARK VIDEO GAMES

The Landmark Video Games book series is the first in the English language in which each book addresses a specific video game or video game series in depth, examining it in the light of a variety of approaches, including game design, genre, form, content, meanings, and its context within video game history. The specific games or game series chosen are historically significant and influential games recognized not only for their quality of gameplay but also for setting new standards, introducing new ideas, incorporating new technology, or otherwise changing the course of a genre or area of video game history. The Landmark Video Games book series hopes to provide an intimate and detailed look at the history of video games through a study of exemplars that have paved the way and set the course that others would follow or emulate, and that became an important part of popular culture.

Myst and Riven: The World of the D'ni
by Mark J. P. Wolf

Silent Hill: The Terror Engine
by Bernard Perron

DOOM: SCARYDARKFAST
by Dan Pinchbeck

DIGITALCULTUREBOOKS, an imprint of the University of Michigan Press, is dedicated to publishing work in new media studies and the emerging field of digital humanities.

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SCARYDARKFAST

DAN PINCHBECK

THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS
ANN ARBOR

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Copyright by Dan Pinchbeck 2013
Some rights reserved

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

Published in the United States of America by The University of Michigan Press
Manufactured in the United States of America
Printed on acid-free paper

2016 2015 2014 2013 4 3 2 1

A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/lvg.11878639.0001.001

Pinchbeck, Daniel.

Doom : scarydarkfast / Dan Pinchbeck.
p. cm. (Landmark video games)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-472-07191-3 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-472-05191-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-472-02893-1 (e-book)
1. Doom 64 (Game) I. Title.
GV1469.35.D68P56 2013
794.8dc23

2012042610

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It's a little daunting to write a book about DOOM. There's a mass of information out there, lovingly collated and compiled by an army of fans who have a vast knowledge about the game, and the challenge is doing justice to them as much as to the game itself. This book would simply not have been possible without them. The honor roll includes Ian Albert, George Bell, Tony Fabris, Ledmeister, Lee Killough, Nathan Lineback, Hank Leukart, Zeta000, and the many unaccredited authors of the DOOM Wiki. Special thanks also go to Jacek Dobrzyniecki, Rowan Kaiser, and Lara Sanchez Coteron for passing on old reviews (and translating them too).

Likewise, I have to pay tribute to the makers of the greatest game ever made, who have been exceptionally generous and forthcoming. Tom Hall, Sandy Peterson, Bobby Prince, and John Romero were all only too happy to subject themselves to questions via phone and e-mail. Tom Hall also supplied the title of the bookbig thanks for that! I'm writing this sitting on a balcony in Mesquite, Texas, looking out toward id Software's offices, where the team has been absurdly welcoming. John Carmack, Kevin Cloud, Matt Hooper, Todd Hollenshead, and Tim Willits were all happy to give up their time, and special thanks go to Donna Jackson, who made my visit such a pleasure. My overriding memory will be Tim's fantastically succinct summation of the difference between Classic DOOM and DOOM 3 as moving from I'm fucked! to I'm fucked in the dark!

I also have to thank Mark J. P. Wolf and Bernard Perron, the series editors, for the opportunity to write this book and for invaluable comments during the editing process. Equally, colleagues at the University of Portsmouth Page vi should be thanked, particularly Steve Hand and David Anderson, both of whom were very patient with me as I vanished into DOOM world toward the end of the writing period. Thanks also go to friends and colleagues around the world who found themselves on the end of rants, arguments, and jet-lagged mumblings about the project. You know who you are.

Finally, thanks to the two most important people in my life: Jessica and Oscar. I love you, and I'd fight through the forces of Hell for either of you any day of the week.

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There Are a Lot of People Totally Opposed to Violence. They're All Dead.

It was early 1994, and the core, as I remember it, was me and my friends Tom and Andy. Tom was the one with the PC. We used to get together in his room in the halls of residence, with the lights off, and play this new game he'd just got. Usually, he was a freak for role-playing gamesmost recently, a top-down steampunk set on Marsand a group of us would occasionally pull an all-nighter on Civilization (MicroProse 1991), but that winter, there was really only one game: id's seminal shooter DOOM. It's difficult to overstate the impact DOOM had on us all. We'd all thoroughly enjoyed Wolfenstein 3D (id Software 1992), of course, but for a bunch of nineteen-year-olds in the pre-PlayStation era, DOOM just blew everything else into bloody gibs.

This is a book about the most important first-person game ever made, about the blueprint that has defined one of the most successful genres of digital gaming. It is about a controversial, hyperviolent, scary, funny, exciting game that manages to be both profoundly, self-congratulatory dumb and exceptionally clever at the same time. All this and a chaingunwhat more could you ask for?

I love first-person games: I think they are the most engaging, furious, immersive digital game form, even when they deviate from the basic run-and-gun model carved out by DOOM and typified by recent shooters like Bulletstorm (People Can Fly 2011) and Killzone 3 (Guerilla Games 2011). There is something absolutely unique about the direct mapping of your perception Page 2 onto an avatar's, something really wonderful about how, in many ways, these games extend the rewarding simplicity of early arcade gaming into the most high-end edges of technological implementation. The contemporary first-person shooter Crysis 2 (Crytek 2011) may look like an oil painting (if not actually better), but at heart, it's just first-person Defender (Williams Electronics 1981). Lurking just below the dystopian musings on free will and capitalism that give Bioshock (2K Boston + 2K Australia 2007) its unique flavor is Wolfenstein 3D with water and a wrench.

DOOM's legacy includes some of the finest moments in gaming yet produced. Without it, Half-Life (Valve Software 1998) wouldn't have pushed how story is delivered in games seismically forward or set the crowbar at a new high for level design. There would be no Portal (Valve Software 2007), no Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2