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Katamori

So many great stuff, not so many fans -> why?

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When I make Doom LP videos and I read the comments, I'm always amazed that a lot of people don't even heard about source ports and the fact that Doom has a strong community with enormous amount of maps and mods.

It's especially dissapointing as I realize that several people are becoming the fan of games with retro graphics and music, like Minecraft, VVVVVV, Voxatron, Realm of the Mad God, etc.

What's the reason that these people don't deal with mods and stuff like that?

PS.: sometimes I think, there would be better if people could go back and learn about new opportunities in old games, instead of becoming a wannabe indie game developer.

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This retro fad is pretty much dominated by both trendsters and casual players. Casual players are usually not aware about anything not spotlighted in the mainstream, and trendsters are too trendy for old school games beyond their hot-topic Zelda t-shirts.

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Well, there's no money in making WADs, for one. I suppose one could work for donations, but that's not the goal - the goal is being featured on Steam, Xbox Live, PS3 Store, etc. And like Technician alluded to, there are many gaming 'hipsters' involved, because they like the niche appeal, I guess. But not an established niche like Doom; that's a bit too mainstream.

Also, before he comes up, say what you will about Phil Fish (yes, he's a douche), Fez was an amazing experience.

To be perfectly honest, I'm not totally sure. Maybe people like buying games instead of downloading maps and modifications for free? *Shrug.*

I don't want to bash on the indie scene too much, though. I subscribe to maybe a dozen blogs that deal with that area, and there are both good and bad aspects to it.

EDIT: lol, just for kicks I decided to Google Phil Fish. This is what I got (png).

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Doom could be considered "retro", depending on where you want to draw the line.

the sense that i get from being around the indie scene for awhile is that a huge variety of things do get made, it's just that the most successful stuff right now is usually in the "retro" style. this makes sense because it's such a stark contrast to the high-budget, high-price, high-resource, time-consuming American AAA games that are made right now. also i think there is a lot of Nintendo-centrism for American indie games, in particular, because that's what most people were exposed to when they were young (i see a lot more interest in Doom and other PC games in Europe and elsewhere). and platformers are also one of the easiest genres to make, because creating the resources for 1 or 2 man teams is a lot easier. so a lot of it is really necessity. and i won't lie and say that even though Doom is a completely different game from Call of Duty, FPS games still (somewhat rightly) have a very negative connotation for indie developers for being a representation of What's Wrong With The Industry.

but if you look at Terry Cavanagh (who did VVVVVV) for example, he's also done a couple 3D games with "Judith" and "At a Distance". from helping a friend judge the Independent Games Festival last year, i played a whole hell of lot of 3D games that were made with Unity. and The Witness, the new game from Jon Blow (developer of the 2D puzzler Braid) is also a 3D exploration game. i think the retro Nintendo fad will get old and those will start to become more popular.

i do share the frustration of the continual marginalization of Doom modding, and other modding communities from indie developers. i guess if there's a chance to make 500,000 bucks (though that only happens to a lucky few, mostly the developers in Indie Game: The Movie) off a game over making some maps for an old game that only a small community cares about, you're naturally going to go for developing the game. even though it really is like playing the lottery, it's still the "serious career" of the two.

but that's one of the reasons i really like Doom mapping, and the Doom community in general. people do it mostly just because they like it, not because they're trying to get something out of it. in that way, it's a very sincere and pure thing. and i think a lot of indie developers could learn a lot from that.

i will also say, for what it's worth, that i scrapped the idea of working on some kind of edgy, artsy game when i realized that Doom is actually a lot more interesting and has a lot more territory to explore that i'm interested in. and i know some people out there (including some who work in the industry - JP LeBreton, who did that Arcadia Demake is one example) agree with me.

all i can say is: keep Dooming and the world will eventually catch up with you.

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Probably because many mainstream FPS have "outdone" Doom in fighting monsters. Doom wasn't part of many gaming teenagers' lives (if it was, Doom was quickly overshadowed by other games). If there was remnant of that past, they've been shoved to CoD and such, whereas those who actually remember and relish in it come here ;)

Hope I made a little sense.

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Probably because many mainstream FPS have "outdone" Doom in fighting monsters


I can't think of a single one that has done so. It's the sole reason I'm still here. I don't have a particular love for retro games, nor any nostalgia or emotional attachment with Doom specifically.

What's the reason that these people don't deal with mods and stuff like that?


People like new, even if it's retro. People like official, even if it's indie.

Your mod might get popular... If it's a mere recreation of an older game in a newer engine. See Black Mesa Source, GoldenEye Source, Classic Doom 3.

Hunting for mods is just that. You have to be proactive and you have to weed through all the bad stuff. The Doom community has an excellent good-to-bad content ratio compared to most other games, in which you can easily throw away 90% of what is done even if you have lenient standards.

It's no wonder most people prefer to just sit back and have games delivered to themselves. While there is, no doubt, plenty of bad games around, the hurdles in making and publishing a game from scratch serves as a quality control of sorts, removing a significant amount of the objectively terrible games.

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What's an objectively bad game? (I mean, excluding those that have a major technical flaw that make it unplayable). Is such a thing even possible? After all, even 99.999% of the population's tastes doesn't define objectivity. And anyway, in the end these numbers are only relevant to commercial games, who need to sell and make a profit. Doom PWADs and freeware/open-source games don't have this constraint...

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You can always nitpick on the nature of objectivity like a highschool dropout, but if you get certain core elements of your game wrong, it'll end up a bad game. A fast-paced shooter with unresponsive controls makes no sense, for example. Yes, I'm sure you can find someone who's going to pretend he likes it - and that's exactly where subjectivity comes in. People can like terrible games. There's never going to be more than a handful of people going to like terrible games, though (preemptive strike on would-be hipsters going to reply most of the mainstream is terrible, no, no it isn't. You devalue the word by applying it to anything you dislike).

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If id or their handlers could convince steam to have some blurb about the thousands of doom mods and serious archiving of good ones on the doom description, then have some sort of 'ultimate doom 2' pack containing PL and TNT, as well as links to the archives/cacoward pages it might reach a lot more people. Or to have someone like totalbiscuit (finally) mention doom/2 instead of duke3d or something. Hell, get someone to record some wads, title them the name of the wad with doom2 in the description/tags and there might be more interest.

Huskystarcraft on youtube was actually doing a little dooming. I was pretty happy to see it, but after the first ep he moved it to his secondary channel, and I'm pretty sure he didn't do it justice. Or even play some mods.

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ArmouredBlood said:

Or to have someone like totalbiscuit (finally) mention doom/2 instead of duke3d or something. Hell, get someone to record some wads, title them the name of the wad with doom2 in the description/tags and there might be more interest.
(...)
Huskystarcraft on youtube was actually doing a little dooming. I was pretty happy to see it, but after the first ep he moved it to his secondary channel, and I'm pretty sure he didn't do it justice. Or even play some mods.


I'm way not as popular as Husky or TotalBiscuit, but I try to show Doom WADs to people. Probably, it will work later, but sadly, the average age of my audience is so low, and they call it "pixelish sh*t"...seriously. And it's annoying.

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I wouldn't worry about those who criticize the "pixels". As the saying goes, sometimes less is more. Our brains like to fill in the gaps with something called imagination - e.g. as a kid I always pretended map11 was a garden at the center of a giant corporate rocket facility (as the story vaguely mentions).

Or ever heard of nethack? A purple letter "L" will fill you with terror...

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Phml said:

You can always nitpick on the nature of objectivity like a highschool dropout, but if you get certain core elements of your game wrong, it'll end up a bad game.


Doesn't matter, if the parts that I like are done well, I can enjoy the game despite some flaws. And indeed, back in the 8-bit days a lot of games had questionable controls, but still they were enjoyable enough to want to see what surprises later stages had in store.

There's other things to consider too. If you pay full price for a commercial game, you expect higher quality, whereas it's much easier to forgive problems in budget or PD games.

I remember being pissed off after buying Robin Hood: Conquests of the Longbow (a Sierra SCI engine game) for my Amiga 500. The game ran like a dog, despite the game box stating it would run on A500 (and mine even had a HD and 3 megs RAM). But it was so damn slow that it took several minutes for the game to draw a new scene every time you walked off the screen. Well that's a major flaw in a full price game, you can't easily overlook that. And it's the closest I've ever experienced to "objectively bad", because it falls into the class of showstopper bug. It ran so slow it might as well not have been running at all. ;-)

Of course, later on I upgraded to A1200, and it ran fine...

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ella guro said:

that's one of the reasons i really like Doom mapping, and the Doom community in general. people do it mostly just because they like it, not because they're trying to get something out of it. in that way, it's a very sincere and pure thing. and i think a lot of indie developers could learn a lot from that.

i will also say, for what it's worth, that i scrapped the idea of working on some kind of edgy, artsy game when i realized that Doom is actually a lot more interesting and has a lot more territory to explore that i'm interested in. and i know some people out there (including some who work in the industry - JP LeBreton, who did that Arcadia Demake is one example) agree with me.

all i can say is: keep Dooming and the world will eventually catch up with you.

Beautifully said, ella guro.

Like so many gamers, I've always had very vague intentions to get into some kind of game design, but was put off by the part where, if you want to go full-time, you're going to have to sell things. In that way, Doom mapping (and eventually, perhaps modding) is the perfect outlet for my creativity.

As you say, there's a certain sincerity involved in Doom mapping/modding* - partly because it's out of the mainstream, and even the sub-mainstream of indie gaming. One doesn't get into Doom mapping/modding for recognition. There has to be some genuine love there.

*We need a portmanteau of these words, because I see them used in tandem all the time. 'Mopping?' 'Madding?'

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Phml said:

I can't think of a single one that has done so. It's the sole reason I'm still here. I don't have a particular love for retro games, nor any nostalgia or emotional attachment with Doom specifically.

Which is why I've stuck "outdone" in quotation marks. I personally don't feel that any game as surpassed Doom in terms of unlimited fun and customization options, but after talking to some of the people around me, they prefer other, newer games over Doom/2.

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Technician said:

This retro fad is pretty much dominated by both trendsters and casual players. Casual players are usually not aware about anything not spotlighted in the mainstream, and trendsters are too trendy for old school games beyond their hot-topic Zelda t-shirts.


This.

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"I'm sorry, Zelda, but the princess is in another castle." LOLOL! liek if ur a geek liek me n remebmer this CLASIC! +1
sent from my iPhone

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^Hilarious. Seriously though at least Doom has a decent-sized fanbase unlike poor Heretic and Hexen. :(

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Katamori said:

a lot of people don't even heard about source ports

"how much space on hard drive windows 98 takes, because I want to download and play doom?" is going to give me nightmares.

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The reason I still play doom is that there is simply no modern equivalent. If something came along with fancy graphics fast pace and a million monters shooting you from all directions then I'd be all over it, but til then...

Also I find myself going back to a lot of old games, not out of some kind of nostalgia trip - some games just never stop being fun to play.

The trend in retro graphics probably has a lot to do with the current generation of game makers having been brought up on the old classics.

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Katamori said:

What's the reason that these people don't deal with mods and stuff like that?


I think the simple reason is that getting mods to run for a vintage game is too complicated for casual gamers.

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Well on board with the thread, a few months ago some Swedish guy named PewdiePie, did some Ghouls's Forest 3 doom mod playthrough. I'm saying this because he has like 1,000,000 + subscribers.

A lot of the comments on the video were saying...

"Wow those graphics are bad"

"SLENDER GAME IS SCARIER!!!!"

"Looks really boring"

....and etc. I don't see why though they would say that. I mean Doom is so much better then 'Slender' mostly because DOOM is actually fun. Eh, well then again a lot of his fanboys are just hipsters. So of course they'll say that about DOOM because it's was 'Mainstream' once.

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I think Unreal Tournament is a pretty decent modern alternative. Fast paced and no need to think very much.

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