Why does Doom have more long-term popularity?

I feel as though in the past three years especially, the popularity of the original Doom games and/or the size of the Doom community in general has been a bit on the down-slide. In comparison to the source port 'boom' especially. 10 years ago I didn't think I'd still be checking the Doomworld front page, who'd a thought. Sure the news has slowed down vastly, but the amount of Doom fans / forum members is still quite impressive by any game's standards.. Never mind one that's well over a decade old.

For me? I love doom because it is more than 10 levels long.

Oh and Lotta other reasons as well :)

I love Running and Gunning better than " we better sneak over here and not shoot " Style of gameplay.

In Doom its actually Possible to DIE(Not have some magical Rechargeing Sheild like on Halo etc)

Doom dont need a $3000 Machine to play it..

Doom has heaps of free maps available to download from the Interwebz

The only Prob I have with Doom is I cant figure out how to go Online with it.. but My connection prob not good enuf anyway to Im not worried bout it.

My views on Doom are obviously Biased since I have been playing Doom since I was a little nipper(3 or 4 years old I think) I used to play it with Dad lol! I used to run around and soon as a Monster appeared i'd pause it and call Dad apparantly(thats what he tells me lol)

Im 17 now and I Still enjoy Doom. If a game can keep me Entertained for that number of Years then its a good game :)

I Spit in the faces of people who say Doom is boring. Mostly Halo fans who think Doom sucks because they cant beat level 1 LOL.

Oh and 1 more Reason. without Doom there wouldn't be Duke Nukem 3D.

Lord_Dweedle said:

Stuff about Halo players

I tend to find that most kids that are addicted to Halo or any new-age fps is because they are more of graphics-whores than anything else (Or just want to play the "hip" game). As I said in an earlier post in this thread, Most kids that are in mid-teens like I am LOVE to criticize how "shitty" Doom's graphics are, and it bugs the shit out of me. I guess you just have to learn to shrug them off, though. They are the ones that are limiting games by how they look.

BTW about internet multiplayer, you might want to check out Skulltag.

Mattfrie1 said:

I tend to find that most kids that are addicted to Halo or any new-age fps is because they are more of graphics-whores than anything else (Or just want to play the "hip" game). As I said in an earlier post in this thread, Most kids that are in mid-teens like I am LOVE to criticize how "shitty" Doom's graphics are, and it bugs the shit out of me. I guess you just have to learn to shrug them off, though. They are the ones that are limiting games by how they look.

BTW about internet multiplayer, you might want to check out Skulltag.

I just find it dissapointing that modern FPS games are so short and all Show and no Go imo.. I wish more people my age would enjoy classic games like Doom..

To be honest tho the First Halo game is actually really good but I find it sickening how people call Halo 2 and Halo 3 the " BEST FPS GAME EVARZ LULZ WASSAP " when games like Doom 2, Unreal Tournament and Quake 2 are more Replayable.. But this is my Opinion and others have there Opinions.. if only everyone thought like me.. muahaha lol I jk.

Checking out Skulltag now.

Quasar said:

Personally I think that the room left for the imagination by the inexplicit, abstract representation of the settings in DOOM is a key ingredient in both its initial popularity and its prolonged life.

Modern games dictate every detail. There's nothing to interpret or explain because the games go out of their way to do all of that for you. They're ever less like stories and more and more like movies.

This is a major part of it and precisely why I love Doom and don't play modern games. Bravo for articulating it so succinctly. I've talked about this many times over the years but never managed to put it so well.

I've been thinking more about this topic, and here's what I came up with.:

Doom was ground-breaking. Nobody had ever done what Doom did before - both the technical aspect of the 3D world and the ideological aspect of bringing such violence to a computer game - it had a cohesion of development which has probably never been rivaled. and as a percentage of development time, it's probably had more playtesting than any other game, as the guys would stay back till all hours gaming with each other, then sleep on the couch and do it all again the next day.

It's a different process these days. The action-FPS has been made (Doom), the humor-FPS has been made (Duke), the fantasy-FPS has been made (Heretic/Hexen), the simulation-FPS has been made (Mechwarrior), the story-FPS has been made (Half-Life), the RPG-FPS has been made (Strife/Deus Ex), the deathmatch-FPS has been made (UT/Q3).

It would be a gargantuan effort to create a new subgenre of FPS that works as well. Mirror's Edge tried this, with its' extreme physics and "embodiment" angle, and did an okayish job if reviews are to be believed. Crysis gained notoriety because of its' intense realism and crushing hardware requirements. Only history will tell if they stand the test of time. Games like Prey, Sin, Shogo and Turok are already largely lost to history.

Game makers today don't have the time to create a new engine from scratch. It's mostly an elite few like John Carmack creating an engine, and licensing it to others, who then put their HUD, models, textures and sounds onto it and call it a new game.

People are hired to make a game for money, and aren't making it because they were Apple hackers with such a passion that they actually enjoy sleeping in the office under pizza boxes and bouncing ideas and mock-abuse off each other like lifelong best friends - like id Software was during the development of Wolf3D and Doom.

Gamers are a new breed now. Back in 94, computers were still a largely mysterious artifact, used by geeky children like us, and business people. It wasn't "cool" to go on the internet, like it is with the Generation Y of today. I think few new gamers will look at Doom, the graphics are crap, even with the trilinear brightmapped sprite filtering and colored lighting that still impresses us. Graphics matter more than gameplay as we approach 2010, despite Doom's extremely small start-to-gratification time.

Not to mention the months and months Romero spent hyping the game up, and pushing it in the deathmatch circles after the release of Doom 2. This is largely the reason Quake sucks so much, the project leader was off blasting noobs with the BFG, instead of leading his development team into cohesion. As a result, it was a hodge-podge of fantasy, gothic and tech themes held together on a shoestring storyline. Quake never "gelled" as well as Doom did.

Doom was a game, made by the right people, in the right place, at the right time. It was a perfect blend of Carmack's ability to push technology to its' limits, Romero's ability to develop an idea into fruition before technology changed, and people like Sandy's ability to map, and Adrian's desire to draw gory shit his entire life.

Today technology moves so fast, and development requires more people, I think it would be difficult if not impossible to bang out another game in such a short period of time, that has had the right amount of personality, technology, passion and FUN built into it as Doom had.

Let's not forget the development of random level generators (Slige, which was succeeded by Oblige), providing players with thousands if not tens (or even hundreds) of thousands of potential maps to blast demons in with while the layout remains dynamic.

I know Half-Life (Randmap) and Half-Life 2 (HL2RMG) had mapgens but over time, the development stalled and halted on both of them. The major flaws with these that the rooms connected in a similar fashion that SLIGE's did, but had a very strong modding potential (prefabs, room prefabs and an easy GUI for settings like Oblige has). Soldier of Fortune 2 also had one built into the game, but the maps created became somewhat predictable with the objective style choices.

Not alot of Modern FPS games have Custom Maps to download(I may be mistaken) But Ive never seen any Custom Campaigns for games like Halo etc etc.. and if there is Custom Campaigns for them the Files must be massive.. another reason why I love Doom.. it dosn't kill your Bandwidth when you download maps lol

Super Jamie said:

Sin

Which was in a way Duke with the Quake 2 engine. Highly realistic environments with ambient sounds to match, and tongue-in-cheek humour from the characters and the various messages etc. to be found.

(sadly the gameplay was a bit flawed...most enemies have to empty 10 clips to kill you and ofc the flashlight bug in the expansion pack. But still great fun).

Actually SiN is one of my more fondly remembered FPS, certainly one of the few I was actually impressed with enough to finish, even with all its' flaws.

Blood also did the tongue-in-cheek gore thing, and Shadow Warrior was hilarious. The Build engine seems well-suited for that kind of comedy action gore game, I wonder if that was Ken Silverman's intention when he made it?

hmmmmm maybe Id is brainwashing people through their games

One thing that has not ben mentioned yet, I think for many of us, Doom was pretty much the first game we ever played, and we may not have even known how groundbreaking it was in it's FPS style and 3d stuff.

So to our young developing minds, Doom became the definition of what a FPS was supposed to be, so if we ever played anything different, there was always something a little off. Even more so if the game wasn't as good as doom.

Theoretically, this may be the same for games like Duke and Wolfenstein, they also enjoy modding communities made up of many people who played those games first.

But still I think Doom's perfect mix of features really stands up in comparison to everything since.

phi108 said:

One thing that has not ben mentioned yet, I think for many of us, Doom was pretty much the first game we ever played, and we may not have even known how groundbreaking it was in it's FPS style and 3d stuff.

it was not the first game for me, but the first fps after wolf3d... which felt somehow incomplete with its untextured, level floors and ceilings. and when doom came out it was _exactly_ how i always imagined a complete 3d world (even if its 3d was fake ;), immersive like no other game i played yet.

Quasar said:

Personally I think that the room left for the imagination by the inexplicit, abstract representation of the settings in DOOM is a key ingredient in both its initial popularity and its prolonged life.

Modern games dictate every detail. There's nothing to interpret or explain because the games go out of their way to do all of that for you. They're ever less like stories and more and more like movies.

I also strongly agree - you've nailed one of my favorite aspects of Doom, which I've seldom thought about in such clear terms. I like how the textures are realistic-looking from the average distance, or even up close, while yet remaining suggestive and undefined enough to lend themselves to many interpretations (as with many other aspects of the game). I like how you can create almost any kind of world just using the original stock Doom textures. I like how any map you create (if you do it well) turns out completely immersive and otherwordly, no matter what theme you choose to portray (and ultimately the only limit to that is your own creativity and understanding of the engine).

Christoph said:

I also strongly agree - you've nailed one of my favorite aspects of Doom, which I've seldom thought about in such clear terms. I like how the textures are realistic-looking from the average distance, or even up close, while yet remaining suggestive and undefined enough to lend themselves to many interpretations (as with many other aspects of the game). I like how you can create almost any kind of world just using the original stock Doom textures. I like how any map you create (if you do it well) turns out completely immersive and otherwordly, no matter what theme you choose to portray (and ultimately the only limit to that is your own creativity and understanding of the engine).

This is why the removal of many doom textures and the addition of bricks to the doom2 pallette was so geigh. The more real world recognizable a doom(2) level is the less interesting it is! On that note, I'll go play some Doom. Not Doom 2.

Actually by Doom I meant all the official versions of Doom (including Doom2) - I have nothing against Doom2 or well-implemented bricks. But for some reason I really have a thing for techbases, no matter how cliche or overused people say they are (but it still has to be good!).

What i like about doom(2) compared to todays games is many things:

* The weapons are perfectly balanced! Even if there is only 8 its enough. Sure it would be cool to have a railgun, grenade launcher, sniper rifle etc in doom but the original weapons is just enough

* The monsters are awesome and fits so well into the game. It would be no fun for example to just go around killing soldiers. The different kinds of monsters and their different attacks on the player creates a wide range of variation to the game

* The are so many user made maps for doom that u would never get to play them all. Some are bad and some are good but theres always the outstanding megawads like requiem, alien vendetta, hell revealed, memento mori etc that u will remember forever. First really great megawad i played trough way back in the days were Requiem.
I can still remember every single map of it and i remember thinking "wow can doom maps be this good?"
The great wads just keep on coming so they will never run out thanks to great and easy editors like doom builder.

* Not much other games had the same hectic playstyle with hundreds of monsters coming at you at you at the same time. Todays games just cant handle that much enemies at one time. Only game i played that even came close to dooms playstyle were Painkiller and even that wasnt the same cause the monsters would always just rush you in hordes and not lurk behind some dark corner like in doom.


* The possibility to enjoy doom with modern 3d graphics, 3d models and configurations that engines like risen3d and doomsday provide.
This is one of the main reasons why i still play.

Doom is fun, simple as that. Plus you can play it with only five keys if you want. Unlike modern games with all thier ducking, jumping, laying prone, leaning around corners, snap turning, swimming, crawling, hanging on ledges, hanging on a ladder facing 45 degrees outwards with your legs pulled up to present a smaller target (and don't even think about just shotgunning the enemies in the face either, you HAVE to do the ladder hang) malarkey.

I want to get this FPS Creator X10 thing when i get a new computer (holding out for Windows 7, not having Vista), i wonder if i'll be able to create such a simple, fast-paced game in that? Only with fancy water, ragdoll effects and headshots... i bet you're forced into slow movement and a zillion pointless controls with it.

bullsquid said:

* The weapons are perfectly balanced! Even if there is only 8 its enough. Sure it would be cool to have a railgun, grenade launcher, sniper rifle etc in doom but the original weapons is just enough

cool for sure. but i think that switching weapons during a fast-paced deathmatch using the keys up to [0] or farther would be a pain in the ass. i use only ports that allow me to remap my weapons keys around WASD for that reason. besides, where's room for innovation in later fps if doom had all weapons already :p
chaingun and shotgun could be a bit faster or more powerful imo.

[* The monsters are awesome and fits so well into the game. It would be no fun for example to just go around killing soldiers. The different kinds of monsters and their different attacks on the player creates a wide range of variation to the game

monsters are awesome, yes. they also fit the design of the game and don't look goofy, despite being rather cartoony.

[/B]* The are so many user made maps for doom that u would never get to play them all. Some are bad and some are good but theres always the outstanding megawads like requiem, alien vendetta, hell revealed, memento mori etc that u will remember forever. First really great megawad i played trough way back in the days were Requiem.
I can still remember every single map of it and i remember thinking "wow can doom maps be this good?"
The great wads just keep on coming so they will never run out thanks to great and easy editors like doom builder.[/B]

good old iikka keränen and adelusion maps. these are outstanding despite being now about 12 years old.

Not much other games had the same hectic playstyle with hundreds of monsters coming at you at you at the same time. Todays games just cant handle that much enemies at one time. Only game i played that even came close to dooms playstyle were Painkiller and even that wasnt the same cause the monsters would always just rush you in hordes and not lurk behind some dark corner like in doom.

actually not by the virtue of the superior doom AI, but because mappers used them better than the designers of painkiller did with their creatures.

you're right, the lack of monsters in modern games combined with the slow gameplay isn't my taste.

I dunno so much about weapon balance - the ssg kinda messed that up when it came along, both in single and DM. The only game I've found to have perfectly balanced weapons is Unreal - 10 weapons, none too strong or weak, and none of which get forgotten during the game.

Doom was a historical event in gaming history. It was like a revolution that pointed the direction for games to follow for over a decade later.

Doom was something that people had never seen before. It was like seeing the first car, or the first jet airplane, or the first space shuttle.

Besides those things, doom was a quality game that pushed the edges of what gaming technology was doing at the time. It would be like someone inventing something that can travel at the speed of light, when all we have is airplanes that can go as fast as the speed of sound. Doom was a major break through in what people "thought" a game should be like.

And like all revolutions, Doom will forever have its place in history.

I can't honestly say I have the slightest clue why Doom should still be going. I mean, hell, my actual interest in Doom has dwindled quite a bit in more recent years (though not entirely), and I know that rings true for many others--but the community still thrives.

My best guess would be that it's the community that keeps it going--keeps itself going. It's cyclical. People keep making new mods and maps, or developing new tools, or updating the engine, and that keeps people interested, and then more people take the initiative to make new mods and maps, or develop new tools, or update the engine... and so on, ad perpetuum.

That, and Doom was first. That always helps.