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Watermelon

Doom/Doom2 wad becoming free [not]

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Is there a reason Doom/Doom2 has not become free yet? I understand that it probably still generates money, though with more and more doomers leaving (at least the competitive scene is dying, no idea how Zdoom is fairing right now), though it feels like the 2000-2010 generated the most epic stuff. Of course, this is subjective as people here probably only like stuff from the 1990's that only run on vanilla doom2.exe.

The competitive scene right now is feeling it quite hard. Everyone is or has grown up and is taking on real life jobs (as expected), but no one is filling up the gaps. Eventually your time and my time will come... or maybe it won't, but what does the future of doom hold?

So far the most activity I see from the online community is mainly Zandronum stuff like AOW/GVH/ZH and the like. The classic doom I play looks like it's at an end, or heading down the hill to the point of no return. Is there anything that can bring back the activity instead of seeing the same 10 people at most on?
Offline could be completely different. No one really knows about the untapped dark mass that plays strictly offline, but online is hurting quite bad. Therefore, I wonder if making doom as a free wad would allow advertising to other players and bring new blood into the community. However, this could be a futile effort because most people may not want to check it out anyways or would just torrent it.

Can anything save the competitive scene from dying? Could this? Or will it just possibly extend its death?

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Not only are they still selling it, they also are still actively republishing it (Doom 3 BFG Edition also includes both Ultimate Doom and Doom II as bonus content; they just released "Doom Classic Complete" on the Playstation Network with UD, D2, Final Doom, and the Master Levels).

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Why are they still selling it? Is it greed, or is it significant enough of an income earner to generate solid revenue? If this is the case however, then why is the competitive scene on its knees?

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Because not everyone wants to play the same fucking CTF maps and Dwango5 time and time again for the rest of their natural life.

That's why I left anyway.

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Come on man, Ferraris are high maintenance vehicles. Costs a packet to keep those suckers going. Not to mention rocket fuel as well... Just buy it. Tell your friends to buy it. You owe id the lifestyle that they've become accustomed to.

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Zandronum works fine with Freedoom last time I checked. I think installer gives option to download Freedoom if no other iwad is found. ZDaemon will also download Freedoom if it cannot find an iwad.

One single really good serious player skin that someone is willing to release under Freedoom's license will help the most.

Most Zan mods are modified so much that using Freedoom will hardly be noticeable anyway.

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To be fair, id software isn't really accountable for competitive dooming that Odamex, Zandronum, and Zdaemon promote, so I don't think blaming idsoftware for selling a product with really high replay value instead of giving it away for free to help out those source ports really holds much water.

Yes it would be cool, but that's not really their market. The people promoting these multiplayer Doom source ports should have like some kinda weekly event to generate interest and give doomers something to look forward to, like every thursday or every saturday or something.

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Watermelon said:

Why are they still selling it? Is it greed, or is it significant enough of an income earner to generate solid revenue? If this is the case however, then why is the competitive scene on its knees?

It's not greedy for them to sell their own product that they made themselves. As far as "the competitive scene" - I doubt Id have even heard of it or care that it exists. The majority of people buying Doom nowadays are probably doing so just to play the original levels for nostalgia's sake. Competitive play (either online deathmatch or demo speedrunning) is a niche area where most of the players are probably people who have been playing Doom for a significant amount of time.

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Still selling the old games has demonstrated that it's still capable of generating new customers -- to a certain extent at least. My friend has a younger brother who recently bought BFG Edition for his Playstation 3 and he went through all the original levels, and despite some bits where the oldschool level design was rather confusing to him, he quite liked it. (And this is someone who plays a lot of CoD, including the campaigns)

Of course, this is only one customer and who knows, maybe they're not actually making any new ones at all. I have my doubts, though.

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A lot of relatively modern games that went free such as APB were games that obviously would have flown under the radar and were made freely available for the publicity. I had no idea about it until my brother started playing it, and he would never have tried it if it weren't free either. Doom is notoriously the pinnacle of first person shooters -- it doesn't need the publicity. People are still playing it, and more importantly, still pretty open to paying to have it again or try it for the first time.

Not to mention the shareware episode is 9 (really awesome) maps long, which is enough to whet your appetite if you need a Doom fix.

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glenzinho said:

Come on man, Ferraris are high maintenance vehicles. Costs a packet to keep those suckers going. Not to mention rocket fuel as well... Just buy it. Tell your friends to buy it. You owe id the lifestyle that they've become accustomed to.


Jokes aside, they don't have Ferraris anymore.

Watermelon said:

Why are they still selling it?


Why wouldn't they?

It's not going to bring them a lot of money. But a tiny trickle of income is better than nothing at all, especially when they take like six years to make a game. (Quake 3: 1999; Doom 3: 2007; Rage: 2011.)

AAA games like Rage require tons and tons of people to work for years and years. And the success isn't guaranteed; Rage was plagued by technical issues (that were more the fault of the drivers than that of the engine itself; but it's not like the average gamer cares about this kind of subtlety) and didn't sell as much as it was expected. In the meantime, Id still has to pay its employees. It's not greed. They've got food to buy and bills to pay. It's not like these games are expensive.

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Gez said:

AAA games like Rage require tons and tons of people to work for years and years. And the success isn't guaranteed; Rage was plagued by technical issues (that were more the fault of the drivers than that of the engine itself; but it's not like the average gamer cares about this kind of subtlety) and didn't sell as much as it was expected. In the meantime, Id still has to pay its employees. It's not greed. They've got food to buy and bills to pay. It's not like these games are expensive.


Indeed. Doom is a cash-cow franchise. It's by no means the killer app it was during the 90's, but it still generates revenue. Remember, id are a business. They need to keep the funds coming in or they fold.

That's why it gets my back up when people on these boards (and others) bitch about rereleases. I own Doom for every system I have that can run it (ie a lot) and have no issue with id doing what they need to do to keep operating in what is a ruthless and unforgiving industry.

Consider Rockstar for a second. They released GTA: Chinatown Wars for the DS which got rave reviews across the board and was generally hailed as one of the best games for the system. It flopped. Bad. The reason? The DS' core userbase (ie young girls and middle-aged mas) weren't interested in causing mayhem and pushing drugs. In order to claw back some revenue, the game was ported to the PSP. Same story with the PS2 ports of the first two PSP GTA's. R* aren't exactly prolific, either.

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Clonehunter said:

I was lazy and copied the date from Wikipedia. I guess I should have looked at MobyGames instead. :p

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Because id and Bethesda are greedy motherfuckers that are trying to resell the same game over and over again. It's pretty much the same thing that Activision does with Call of Duty every year, but at least they add new maps and weapons on every edition :P


What makes me mad is that Electronic Arts - which is also considered the vilest and greediest gaming company of our time - made Battlefield 1942 a free game on it's 10th anniversary, and even after 18 fucking years, id couldn't do the same thing. Hell, not even Wolfenstein 3D is free yet.

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Sergeant_Mark_IV said:

What makes me mad[/B] is that Electronic Arts - which is also considered the vilest and greediest gaming company of our time - made Battlefield 1942 a free game on it's 10th anniversary, and even after 18 fucking years, id couldn't do the same thing. Hell, not even Wolfenstein 3D is free yet.

yeah, i can smell your sense of entitlement to free things leaking out of my display.

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Why does time alone instantly mean that something should become free? id has obviously indicated that they can make money by re-releasing doom on new platforms -- and this might even make new customers for the Doom series entirely. (Like my friend's younger brother, for example. He quite liked Doom 1 and Doom 2 somewhat, and at the same time he's of the generation that the censorship or whatever won't actually bug him in the slightest, though at the same time the appeal of the secret levels in Doom II might be lost a bit -- if he ever finds them, heh)

I'd like to know accurate statistics to how much work went into making these ports a thing, though. I'm assuming it's low enough that it won't even have any noticeable impact on the development time of Doom 4 or any future id projects, but then again I really don't know what went into the porting process for these things.

I'd certainly like to see something new, of course, but that can take the time it needs to be a polished project.

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InsanityBringer said:

...and at the same time he's of the generation that the censorship or whatever won't actually bug him in the slightest...

Any rational person shouldn't be bothered by this in the slightest, ever. The reaction of certain people to this and other things with these ports (which, lets face it, we don't need to buy or even think about) just stinks of fanboy nerdrage.

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If the censorship thing keeps up the next thing you know Doom 4 will barely contain any enemy hit blood like most other modern shooters.

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InsanityBringer said:

I'd like to know accurate statistics to how much work went into making these ports a thing, though. I'm assuming it's low enough that it won't even have any noticeable impact on the development time of Doom 4 or any future id projects, but then again I really don't know what went into the porting process for these things.


For porting Doom 1 & 2, most of the work was done by Nerve when they ported it to the Xbox 360. Id then reused the Xbox code from Nerve and ported it to the PS3 and back to PC. Presumably, it took them like a couple of days at most.

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glenzinho said:

Heh, it's actually Doom 3:2004!


Dammit Google, why did you give me the Doom movie year. I shouldn't of double guessed my self to check. Dammit Google, get your Doom shit straight yo.

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Im pretty sure the original dooms are still making some money. Vanilla doom is fun dont get me wrong but its the user generated content is what keeps things fun and interesting.

Doom is pretty basic too so its easier to mod and go crazy with which most modern games lack.

It would be nice to see more people playing doom online though. Idk about the other online source ports but i know zandronum and skulltag hasnt had up to 100 people online at a time or maybe it did but surely not now.

Just because the game is cartoony doesnt mean only young kids will like it. Im 24 and i keep comming back to doom, can i say the same for modern fps games?

Modern fps games ill continue to get worse and worse and more people will relapse back to doom or other older fps games.

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