what do you use doom as

On a good day: to immerse myself in the ambience of a good map, lose myself in another world, and fire my creative juices so I can open up a map editor and spend hours creating worlds of my own

On a bad day: kill time and demons while alleviating tension and finding comfort in something familiar

Actually the two experiences overlap a lot now that I think about it

i use it not only for entertainment but also to study

trough my life studing was always hard i cant sit somewhere and read books because i get distracted too easy and while i can get more concentrated while listening to music i cant read while doing it so i usuallly leave a video about the subject running in the background while i play some doom and it works like a charm for me

For relaxation and fun.

2 hours ago, DollarStoreChili said:

I've seen stuff out there that playing first person shooters can sharpen some aspects of person's brain.

it improves cognitive abilities. player must evaluate the position and react in a very short time, and also develop some strategy while doing that. it is a hard and complex task. of course, it is more complicated, but the basics is like this. ;-)

Stress relief.

I wrote a while poem about how Doom helps my mental health. Excerpt:

Quote

I've thought in this, and I surmise -

I contemplate - it's even wise

To extricate and exorcise

My demons in affray.

Quote

This game presents a focussed stage,

To lose oneself in focussed rage -

To loose aggression here uncaged

I will be their grief.

 

And when the world's too much again

I'll chainsaw up an imp or ten

This shotgun violence...

... yields my Zen.

A garden grows beneath.

Quote

 

 

Aside from actually playing it, it's as @Bobby “lolmcswagger” said: a canvas. Creating is at least as good for mental health as pretending to destroy things.

Edit: excuse strange quotation blocks: editing on phone, I can't fix them.

8 minutes ago, ketmar said:

it improves cognitive abilities. player must evaluate the position and react in a very short time, and also develop some strategy while doing that. it is a hard and complex task. of course, it is more complicated, but the basics is like this. ;-)

I have no doubt that people with specific coordination issues would benefit from training their fine motor control with a fast-paced FPS like Doom.

I'd argue that Doom is better than most classically multiplayer games for this, because it can be more predictable.

MP shooters aren't such effective, yeah. it's not about predictability, more about the number of things the player must evaluate and control. also, MP shooters are more about training skills in (and for) a well-known environment, but playing doom wads is about adapting to unknown (or less known, at least) environments. those are different skills, that's why good deathmatchers are not necessarily good in SP, and vice versa.

I use Doom to give myself faith in humanity (the community is so wholesome and creative)

I use it as a nice beer. Nothing beats having a long day and coming home to have a nice drink o' Doom.

Oh, and it's also nice as a cool desktop wallpaper, really impresses people when I show em my computer.