If Requiem and MementoMori had been released commercially instead of TNT and Plutonia

I am playing through Requiem currently and have recently played through Memento Mori. And I thought to myself, "Would I have paid for these had they been released as commercial iwads instead of Plutonia and Evilution?"

For me, I probably would have.

So I throw open the question here also. Would you guys have paid money for these two megawads had things worked out differently back in the mid 90's?

It was the mid-90s and Doom was huge. We would have all bought Laura Beyer's Doom if it was in stores in a fancy box with an id logo on it.

Hah. True.

Then let me rephrase the question slightly.

Do you think that Requiem and Memento Mori could stand on their own merits as commercial releases under different circumstances? I think so.

I didn't buy, play, or even paid attention to the existence of Final Doom until I got the Super Id Pack on Steam, so no.

Yes, and if the current shell of id contracted some dudes to make some kickass maps, I'd probably support them. Thank goodness this community puts out so much free content or I'd be flat fucking broke

I remember our DW megawad play through of MM being rife with disappointment as quite a few levels were obviously primarily for co-op and about 5 of them were just plain awful, so definitely not that. Evilution is the weaker link in Final Doom, IMO, so you could maybe replace it with Requiem, but I'd need to play it again to know for sure.

If you had to pick two classic megawads to replace the Final Doom pair I'd have to encourage time travel and say Eternal Doom III and Alien Vendetta, as they keep the same sort balance the original two had and are quite consistently high quality in my memory.

It's been a long time since I played Memento Mori, so I'm going to have to say I think Requiem and Alien Vendetta would have worked out pretty good as Final Doom. Maybe in an alternate universe!

Well I guess I still wouldn't have paid for it regardless.

If it was on Steam? Sure!

I have this compulsion to buy all official Doom stuff available on Steam.

P.S.
But at the same time I'm patient enough to wait for the -75% discount, muahahaha!

There's the question of how it would be called, too.

Ultimate Doom and Final Doom are taken already, so I suppose they could have been Terminal Doom, Omega Doom, Capstone Doom, Complete Doom, Perfect Doom, Last Doom, I-Swear-There-Are-No-More-After-This-One Doom, and Actually-Here's-Yet-Another Doom.

Maybe Doom Forever?

But no matter what set of 32 levels was released under any name, the only sure thing is that the Doom community would still get divided and bitch & moan over the mappers "selling out".

I remember the disappointed reviews of Final Doom from back then. Casual gamers expected more than just a mission pack for hardcores and thought id was just milking it. And they weren't wrong. MM could be swapped with Evilution and nothing important would be truly gained or lost. Requiem is impressive and cinematic for Doom's standards and it taught mappers to push the envelope, but it came too late. Quake was released and Doom was fast losing the interest of the mainstream.

Nowadays we're enthusiasts sticking with an oldie, so we support other Doom fans empathically, but back then? No way. Not for any of them and definitely not for the steep prices games in CZ cost in the 90s.

dew said:

thought id was just milking it

Little did they know....perhaps they expected -back then, already- some sort of official "next gen" but still backwards compatible Doom -an official Boom, if you wish, but the reality is that the same exact engine is being milked for all it is worth up to this day. There are tons of threads where the "hows" and "whys" of this decision are discussed, so no reason to repeat them here.

Maes said:

the reality is that the same exact engine is being milked for all it is worth up to this day.

I'm not sure I understand Maes. People make money to this day from the Doom engine? How so?

Never paid for a megawad so no.

Patrol1985 said:

I'm not sure I understand Maes. People make money to this day from the Doom engine? How so?

Let's see...the XBLA, Wii, Doom Classic in Doom 3: BFG Edition and pretty much all modern console/virtual gaming/whatever versions still use the original Doom engine with a few fixes (there are some good articles and discussions about it), and id is still selling Doom in -almost- its original form with the DOS and Windows 95 exes (though you could argue that what they are really selling is the IWADs).

If that's not milking an ancient engine for all that it's worth, then I don't know what is. And despite the source code having been released, AFAIK it would take $$$$ for a third party to make a new commercial game based on it.

As Phobus said, Eternal Doom + Alien Vendetta could work better as a Final Doom replacement. But even then, yes,I would pay for something like Memento Mori + Requiem.

EDIT

Maes said:

Let's see...the XBLA, Wii, Doom Classic in Doom 3: BFG Edition and pretty much all modern console/virtual gaming/whatever versions still use the original Doom engine with a few fixes (there are some good articles and discussions about it), and id is still selling Doom in -almost- its original form with the DOS and Windows 95 exes (though you could argue that what they are really selling is the IWADs).

If that's not milking an ancient engine for all that it's worth, then I don't know what is. And despite the source code having been released, AFAIK it would take $$$$ for a third party to make a new commercial game based on it.

I think he meant 3rd parties making money from doom engine, like HacX. Could anyone say that doom mapping skills could get you hired in the current game industry?

doomgargoyle said:

Could anyone say that doom mapping skills could get you hired in the current game industry?

If Doom Mapping Skills is all you have, I seriously doubt it.

doomgargoyle said:

I think he meant 3rd parties making money from doom engine, like HacX. Could anyone say that doom mapping skills could get you hired in the current game industry?

Well, there are people who ask money for Android or iOS ports of Doom, though that's another can of worms.

"Getting hired in the current game industry" can mean anything from being hired to a small startup/mom&pop op who want to make some small mobile or web game (in which case, the mapping skills or rather, a knowledge of the game's structures might indeed be directly useful), to an AAA company, which probably won't hire you unless you already made it to the front page of "Coder of the Year" magazine or worked in a Fortune 500 company already :-p

In the average situation, I'd say that having SOME map design experience over none is always better, but that knowledge of the engine and/or familiarity with mapping for more recent games will certainly be a superior asset.

Now, if you mean a total nobody suddenly taking it up to himself to license the Doom engine regularly and sell a totally new game based on it, then probably not. Doom still sells in its original form because it's Doom. A total nobody would have to find another strategy (e.g. playing the "retro" card for all that it's worth), or rather, license a more modern source port. Come think of it, many modern indie shooters ain't got shit over a decent ZDoom/GZDoom coop mapset ;-)

If id had released Final Doom 2 and Final Doom 3 on the Playstation, I and my friends would have bought it twice each. I had two Playstations and two copies each of Doom and Final Doom specifically for co-op and deathmatch. I must have been made of money back then. I have always, always thought that id messed up by moving on from the original Dooms. Mouselook and giant cyborgs are no replacement for maps that never, ever play the same way twice.

As for megawads, I remember playing Requiem more than a decade ago on co-op. It was frustrating that the maps could be broken in co-op mode, but my friend and I enjoyed the megawad. If it had id's stamp on it, yeah I'd have bought it.

Can't remember MM and MM2 except for brief snatches of the early maps but IIRC, I didn't know what all the fuss was about, Requiem was a lot better.

Alien Vendetta is so far beyond the Doom megawads of the time that it almost felt like a different game, but I'd have thrown money at the shop assistant while crapping my kegs if it had been on commercial release. It has always been the pinnacle of Doom for me; other megawads can do it larger (Speed of Doom), louder (Deus Vult 2) and more brutally (Sunder), but none of these even comes close to the visual narrative or the co-operative orgasm of av.wad. Add in the PSX sound effects and it is brain-melting.

Doom almost jumped the shark after AV.