What if Doom never happened?

So obviously we all know Doom blew the doors off everything when it dropped in 1993. Never before had a game from a first person perspective been so immersive, realistic, detailed or executed so well... previous to it we had very rudimentary FPS games such as Wolfenstein, Spear Of Destiny, Black Stone etc. and obviously because Doom was so good it spawn a lot of clones by other developers (some even licencing Doom's engine to drive them such as Heretic, Hexen, Shadowcaster etc.) From there were got Quake and it's successors and a myriad of other games built of their engines etc. and history followed...

What if Doom never happened though? Would the FPS explosion of the 90's still happened albiet later than it did? Would gaming in general be where it is without the innovations id made with Doom that have now become common place staples in not just FPS but all genres of games? Would Wolfenstein still be the most graphically and technically advanced FPS thing available? Would other studios with their own engines ever have materialised if id didn't pave that path before them?

It's interesting to ponder what gaming would be like had this little gem of technical brilliance never been...

This will be either Duke World or Wolfenstein World. 

10 minutes ago, Pegg said:

This will be either Duke World or Wolfenstein World. 

You reckon Duke Nukem would've gone 3D without Doom showing the potential of how it could be done?

46 minutes ago, Doom-X-Machina said:

You reckon Duke Nukem would've gone 3D without Doom showing the potential of how it could be done?

Why not? Witch Haven would've been created regardless and Wolfenstein 3D has a lot of the mechanics people think Doom invented.

If Doom had never happened, life would be that much more boring.

One thing I'd wonder about this is... if Doom had been skipped over, would Quake still have happened, or Unreal?

Here's an earlier thread on the topic of doom not occurring:

In my mind, something else would've come from id software even if Doom didn't happen. What sort of game they'd put out, it's success and the lasting effect could be hard to guess, but John Carmack was working on the engine during the making of Spear of Destiny so they wouldn't just be sitting idly by doing jack squat with said engine.

If Doom never happened I'd still be play Sonic games and Minecraft all the time. (And I wouldn't have gotten into good rock music)

Sandy Petersen would've become a movie director of Peter Jackson/Stanley Kubrick caliber. 

I think the real question would be "What if Wolfenstein 3D never happened?", because Doom wouldn't be a thing if Wolfy wasn't there to begin with unless if ID decided to stop there.

11 minutes ago, leodoom85 said:

I think the real question would be "What if Wolfenstein 3D never happened?"

First 3D/FPS game I remember was Ultima Underworld - was that before Wolf3D?

True that. Still, Wolfy gave the first step for the genre to be recognized amongst the people :)

PS: we could still play Mario or Sonic or whatever game franchise out there if Doom never existed...

A game like Doom was always going to be made. If not ID, someone else would have. Had Newton not discovered gravity, someone else would have. Anything that can be invented/ discovered, will be. 

I'm spending all my time on Dark Forces World instead 

We would not be having this conversation.

There were already plenty of games cloning Wolf3D so I think the genre would have still taken off though it's impossible to know what would have taken Doom's place (if anything) since the games that followed Doom mostly took lessons and inspiration directly from Doom. The original concept for Rise of the Triad as Wolfenstein 3D Part II likely would have happened for instance.

 I'm glad we don't live in the darkest timeline where we all became Marathon fans and the Mac is the premier home computer platform for gaming!