How controversial can wads get?

[Tompig]

There are moonman and even columbine wads, make whatever you want to make.

 

Can I post XYZ on these platforms is a different question, as is how will XYZ be received.

But art is the truest form of freedom, let your only prohibitions be what you want to say, and the reaction you want to cultivate. (and it is worth reiterating be careful regarding your physical location.) 

[BigBoy91]

There's always ModDB. Pretty much anything goes there. See what kind of reception you get on there, and you might be able to see whether or not you wanna upload it here.

[Edward850]

5 hours ago, SplinkWizard said:

Refer to Doom 4 Remake controversy. Some clown was packaging a bunch of HD mods with gzdoom and unregistered pwads and sold them for like 60 dollars. A Lot of people who were not in the loop were confused when Zenimax actually stepped in and sent a cease and desist.

That cease and desist turned out to be fake. The author created it as an attempt to seek attention.

[Ludi]

2 hours ago, Andromeda said:

Context?

 

Kama Sutra MAP30. That's all I'll say :)))))

[Kute]

ericharris.wad

[Nikku4211]

It's funny how controversial a map made for a 1993 column-based BSP engine normally populated by low-resolution sprites and low-res textures can be.

 

It really goes to show that there are many ways for retro video games to provoke a strong reaction from people, especially of disgust, terror, and anger.

 

But yeah, you can be the most controversial with your implications in a Doom map, or controversial opinion soapboxing.

 

But I wouldn't advise doing that. Not only do most people play Doom in order to escape harsh reality, but it's going to make your WAD lose relevance in the near future.

Unless it's a really good WAD, and I mean Top 300 Cacoward-worthy gold content.

 

But even then, more people would probably already dismiss the WAD and consider it an attention grab not worth playing, and thus won't even give it a chance to prove otherwise.

 

Granted, since you're against war, the real controversy over it would happen over at Russia, not here.

But I still think it'd be better if you had just made a normal Doom map that comes with a donation to humanitarian efforts to patch up Ukrainian civilians like what John Romero did.

[Maribo]

16 minutes ago, Nikku4211 said:

Not only do most people play Doom in order to escape harsh reality, but it's going to make your WAD lose relevance in the near future.

Political content doesn't lose relevance just because the event has passed. I would also personally argue that all content is political, but that's a discussion that probably isn't a Doomworld favorite.

 

This is actually something that bothers me about video games in general, this hardline belief that video games (and by extension, Doom) are purely for escapism, and that's.... not necessarily true. People are shaped by the things they experience and it's really not unreasonable to think that someone would react to their lived experiences in something they use for creative expression: Doom mapping. Deus Vult is one of the most well known wads in the Doom community and it has a pair of secrets where you shoot portraits of Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden, are we just going to pretend that isn't political at all? Should we just sweep stuff like that under the rug as an edgy shitpost and not a direct reaction (consciously or unconsciously) to things like 9/11, the Gulf War, etc?

 

Decay's post is the best response to the OP. This post is more about this weird attitude that Doom should be free of politics, or that there's some arbitrary limit as to when you can make a relevant statement.

[Tetzlaff]

9 hours ago, Mordeth said:

Since I see @Solek_1312 is posting from Moscow, let me cut straight to the actual question here: if you post anything remotely seen as glorifying the Russian invasion, I will ban you on the spot.

 

He is using the Novgorod flag, a symbol from the Russian opposition.

[Nikku4211]

1 hour ago, Maribo said:

Political content doesn't lose relevance just because the event has passed. 

Yeah, they can lose relevance for many other reasons too. 

I can't guarantee that whatever WAD may or may not be made from this thread will avoid all the other reasons political content loses relevance.

 

Of course, maybe near future is a bit of a stretch, but there are a lot of things, including political events, that do lose relevance...

Sometimes, even for major events, some nuances may lose relevance, and some relatively minor details important now may become obscure 10 years from now.

 

1 hour ago, Maribo said:

People are shaped by the things they experience and it's really not unreasonable to think that someone would react to their lived experiences in something they use for creative expression: Doom mapping.

That's definitely possible.

 

Even if most Doom maps of this nature end up just typical aside from political stuff being added to it.

 

Like, remove the Thatcher from Thatcher's Techbase and you'll just have a generic villain and fun WAD.

Remove the Hussein and Bin Laden from Deus Vult and you're just shooting a photo of a generic dictator and a generic terrorist in secret areas... and a fun WAD.

 

I can guarantee that Deus Vult is popular for reasons other than said political easter egg, because they're just secrets born out of anger at global political events.

 

When it comes to politics in Doom WADs, I'm willing to bet that for every Thatcher's Techbase(where the entire WAD is shaped as a political statement), there's going to be a couple more Deus Vults(where political stuff is merely just secrets and easter eggs, not major to the WAD itself).

 

Not that politics being put into a Doom WAD is common in the first place (I'm not even going to bother to dig into the 'everything is political' rabbit hole) because a lot of people who play Doom want to escape reality. I understand people need to vent their frustrations at the real world in a creative manner, and that's understandable.

 

But a map or mapset should be a gameplay experience first and foremost, and it's probably not easy for most people to make an entire map or mapset shaped as a political statement without forgetting to focus on the gameplay.

 

That being said, prove me wrong.

 

Prove to me that it is easy. While it's obviously possible to some extent, prove to me that it's not harder to make a WAD both practically inseparable from IRL politics and just as fun as your average non-IRL political WAD compared to just making a fun non-IRL political WAD, and that more people should do it publicly.

Prove to me that the Doom community will benefit if WADs based on real life political events became way more commonplace. I'm not saying it will be negatively affected as a whole since people just ignore things they don't like anyway, but prove to me that IRL political WADs will actually improve a community whose majority already agrees with the WADs' political statements in the first place.

[Maribo]

This post reads a bit like you think I'm suggesting that people start making political allegory wads en masse, and that I also think that it would be an easy thing to do. I said neither of these things. I was merely pointing out that video game communites, which includes the Doom community, have an aversion to the idea that their form of art can competently be an explicit political statement, or have any political edge to it at all.

 

We also fundamentally disagree that wads should be a gameplay experience primarily. Taking it from a "non-political" aspect, there are plenty of people you can find who go through wads on HNTR/ITYTD or even with -nomonsters because... they want to enjoy the architecture, texture work, detailing, etc. Sunder is probably one of the biggest recipients of this treatment, and I've seen similar write-ups from people who dislike playing things like Sunlust, but load up a Ribbiks wad because they want to just look at it. I'm sure the same can be said for things like Ancient Aliens, Heartland, BridgeBurner's works, you name it. Just because gameplay is the primary focus that most people hinge their design on, doesn't mean it should be the near-exclusive metric by which a wad is judged.

 

I, for one, would welcome the Doom Walking Simulator trend, and that isn't a joke or a shitpost. Sure, a Doom map is an unorthodox method for delivering things like narrative, but does that mean we should stop trying? People used to write halfway decent story sections in txt files a lot more commonly than they do now, it's like the experience of Doom eventually got (mostly) filtered down into a hyper-refined Player Versus Monsters format, and has been stuck there for quite a while. And there's nothing wrong with primarily enjoying Doom for the gameplay. I would be a hypocrite if I said it wasn't my main draw to the game, but I would also be lying if I said that I think it is a requirement for a Doom wad to present itself with a focus on gameplay, or even be fun at all. And no, that doesn't mean I'm saying "oh so unfun troll wads and wads that are purposefully boring are cool then?" (though I do believe they actually are fine in their existence even if I dislike them, apart from intentionally malicious things like zipbombs or wads intended for direct harassment). I'm saying that they aren't required to be fun in the same way a book or a movie or a song isn't required to be fun.

[roadworx]

28 minutes ago, Nikku4211 said:

-snip-

you have a point with saying that they should be doom wads first and foremost, but i mean...if they are actually good, then what's your point? none of us know op's mapmaking abilities, they could be absolutely fantastic at mapping; you're basing your entire argument around something that's not possible to know until it gets released.

[jerrysheppy]

1 hour ago, Maribo said:

We also fundamentally disagree that wads should be a gameplay experience primarily. Taking it from a "non-political" aspect, there are plenty of people you can find who go through wads on HNTR/ITYTD or even with -nomonsters because... they want to enjoy the architecture, texture work, detailing, etc. Sunder is probably one of the biggest recipients of this treatment, and I've seen similar write-ups from people who dislike playing things like Sunlust, but load up a Ribbiks wad because they want to just look at it. I'm sure the same can be said for things like Ancient Aliens, Heartland, BridgeBurner's works, you name it. Just because gameplay is the primary focus that most people hinge their design on, doesn't mean it should be the near-exclusive metric by which a wad is judged. 

I, for one, would welcome the Doom Walking Simulator trend,

 

I mean... walking simulators are games!  I think the wrong turn is in accepting the premise that "gameplay" only consists of inserting shotgun shell A into imp B.

But this is probably a different thread.

[Kinsie]

You can be as controversial as you can be with any other artform. Just keep your target audience in mind, and remember the age-old maxim: "Play stupid games, win stupid prizes".

[Snaxalotl]

None hopefully. I don't play doom to see peoples political takes, and I'd say most people here feel the same way.

[Maribo]

36 minutes ago, jerrysheppy said:

 

I mean... walking simulators are games!  I think the wrong turn is in accepting the premise that "gameplay" only consists of inserting shotgun shell A into imp B.

But this is probably a different thread.

Oh yes, trust me, I believe they are games. Many of them do backseat traditional mechanic or strategy-based gameplay for an atmospheric or narrative-driven experience though, so they were just the easiest example to post for the point I was trying to make. I think we're on the same page. :)

[Mr. Freeze]

I'd argue the act of playing Doom in a post-Columbine world is political in and out of itself. 

[BigBoy91]

WhatDaFuck lives on.

[Balls of Steel Forever]

(Rant about how Mordeth is the worst most horrible person ever was here)

[Doomkid]

Locking this before anymore craterbrains use it to soapbox lol (some trash was split)