Alex Popa (Jehar) interview on The Loadout.

Not sure how many of you guys know of Jehar here. But anyone interested in Quake and Doom competition should know him by now.

Anyway, he was interviewed on The loadout about a week ago. It was a rather interesting chat and actually mirrored some of the stuff I myself said in a thread over at the Doom 4 forum the other day (ego boosted, someone agrees with something I said).

You can all check it out here.
http://www.twitch.tv/dailydot/b/680706249?t=1h6m34s

While I may not entirely agree on Jehar's definition of common characteristics of Doom and Quake, it was a really insightful for outsiders.

Doom/Quake certainly have a ton of core differences in how the world and entities are set up, and how that trickles through how fights play out. The path of "we need more polys so we'll have fewer monsters that take longer to kill" is traced back to that, so I'm well aware.

As you noted, however, there are several aspects of how Doom, and to some extent earlier Quake-era shooters, differ from how things are put together now. I feel overwhelmingly that these aspects are lost on both the younger audience, and the older audience who never paused to examine what made these games tick.

It was pretty distressing walking around Quakecon seeing blondes on bedazzled phones wearing a Doom shirt.

I'd really like to discuss these factors more in a way that communicates why Doom wasn't just a "hallway shooter" full of "mazes", but in regards to the general gaming audience it's a highly uphill battle.

Just give it the same presentation as the Megaman X Sequelitis and everyone will accept your opinions whether they be right or an Epileptic Tree.

That's exactly the sort of thing that actually moved the conversation forward in the general sphere, and the first thing that springs to mind when I think of effective ways to convey those notions.

Jehar said:

I'd really like to discuss these factors more in a way that communicates why Doom wasn't just a "hallway shooter" full of "mazes", but in regards to the general gaming audience it's a highly uphill battle.

I pretty much agree with you on that, it's quite annoying when others think of Doom that way and you find yourself needing to explain to them how incorrect they are from their casual observations of a game that they either haven't played for a long time to even remember it properly, or just couldn't handle the game for as long as needed to understand it better and just quit with a very shallow first impression of it left on their mind.

He was also interviewed about arena shooters as a whole for my podcast (shameless plug!). It was a great conversation and we got onto some Doom-y points - definitely one of my favorite episode thus far.

Jehar. Did I understand it right that you too were working on a game now. Any information you could give about that?

Jehar said:

It was pretty distressing walking around Quakecon seeing blondes on bedazzled phones wearing a Doom shirt.

Why?

Linguica said:

Why?

Because they are not Doom players I guess.