What age group did id think was gonna play Doom originally?

[Astro X]

What I mean by this question is, did Romero and team think "oh, hey we're developing this epic game, and many many children of like - 5 years old - are gonna play and freaking kill some demons and it's gonna be epic" or they thought that was an age group that was not supposed to be "reached out"?

[dasho]

If they devoted any thought to it at all, I would imagine they assumed that parents still participated in their kids' lives and would make these sorts of decisions on their own.

[Dizastr_Mastr]

Probably young adults seeing as they are more likely to purchase the full game instead of just playing shareware version.

[Azuris]

I doubt that they thought of an certain age, they just made what they thought is cool and fun.

 

The very metal Theme alone is pretty much something that catches Teenager and young Adults.

And with it Kids, that want to see and play the cool Stuff the older ones have.

 

[SleepyVelvet]

I dunno, but my dad bought it and I first played it when I was 4, but my mom banned it eventually because she thought I would turn into some sort of weirdo or something... oh wait.

[indigotyrian]

At the time Doom was being developed serious conversations were being had about graphic content in video games. Consider that Mortal Kombat and Night Trap, both games that were heavily criticized in the infamous 1993 US Senate hearing on video games (the one where Joe Lieberman shows off the Konami Justifier), were released in 1992 when Doom was being made. id themselves knew that they were making something that wasn't really intended for children; Wolfenstein 3D's opening screens display a "PC-13 Profound Carnage" rating in an attempt to self-label.

[⇛Marnetmar⇛]

Seeing as id was a group of irreverent twentysomethings running a small game company at the time, I don't imagine any business discussions about an intended target demographic took place except for maybe Jay Wilbur talking to publishers before they decided to self-publish the game.

[Fiber Wire]

Anyone who wasn’t afraid to play it and was willing to buy it. Just think, all the people who had a problem with Doom are insignificant today no matter how loud they were back then. Doom will be remembered for generations but the politicians and Karen’s of the time will be long since forgotten, only a small footnote about how ridiculous they were will be left of their existence. 

Edited March 16, 2023 by Fiber Wire

[Murdoch]

I think by giving this idea any thought, you are giving the id guys way too much credit. And I don't mean that in a negative way. They were pretty single-minded. They had an idea for a kickass game. They made it, and made history. If they gave even a single thought to the age of their potential audience, I would be shocked.

 

40 minutes ago, segfault said:

Wolfenstein 3D's opening screens display a "PC-13 Profound Carnage" rating in an attempt to self-label.

 

I was thinking about this and how Doom lacked anything similar. Was it actually a genuine attempt to age rate, or was it just for the lols? I am pretty sure I read something about it back in the day but the exact motivation escapes me.

Edited March 16, 2023 by Murdoch

[Lucius Wooding]

I'd have to think teenagers and above. Simply because at the time it launched it targeted DOS as the platform which was not user friendly compared to consoles and Windows 95. Even having a PC at home would usually mean you're an enthusiast user and you'd have to have some level of tech savvy to install it because the difference from 1993 to say, 1996 in terms of accessibility was huge. Not only would a ton more PCs be in homes, but the required knowledge to install and run games would be far less. And multiplayer would be another feature that required a fair bit of setup in 1993, even setting up a 2 player LAN match would probably mystify modern users to no end. I think ID made the game playable for pretty much anybody once it's set up, but realistically getting it to run would be a bit more difficult.

 

Plus you wouldn't really expect a ton of ads outside of gaming magazines and shops and there was no mainstream internet to speak of at that point, so it was a lot of word of mouth in terms of spreading locally. 5-8 year olds might see and want to get Doom but I'm betting 95% of them had an older brother or a cousin who got it first and that's how they learned it existed. 

 

Now, later on a lot more younger kids probably played it because it came out on various consoles after the game was a hit, and more commercials and overall exposure came with it. Personally I'd seen it at a brother's friend's house who had a PC, but first owned it in probably 1996 on the SNES. It's a lot more believable a young kid can figure out how to run a cartridge based game than install several floppies in DOS. And they made the cartridge red and edited out most of the gore (in large part due to limitations of the format), you can't tell me that's not a nod to the younger crowd who by then would hear about it.

 

I think they probably didn't care about kids seeing the game because most people had a pretty cavalier attitude towards violent games until the mid 90s. It was in large part due to Doom that things changed, but don't forget that arcade games, especially Mortal Kombat would probably be more visible and accessible to the younger crowd in public arcades. It just was never a problem until around that time, since the graphics began to improve enough to show some stylistic gore and there was something of an arms race of games inspired by badass action films and the like. That kind of attitude was appealing to a large group of ages as it happens. One of the ways you could make your game stand out was to add a shitload of over the top personality and blood happened to do that pretty effectively. And yeah, in hindsight it seems kinda obvious to apply a movie type rating system to games. But within a span of 10 years we went from Mrs. Pac Man to being able to rip your opponent's spine out. Obviously the parents and senators were pretty out of touch and game developers have never been conservative and uptight about these kinds of things and understandably got away with whatever they could. So it got reined in after an episode of typical outrage, wailing, gnashing of teeth, and pearl clutching.

[TheSlipgateStudios]

I guess edgy teenagers who were into satanism and all that crap

[Tetzlaff]

Interesting question, I would think teenagers and young adults as main target audience as well. Definitely not younger children.

[Eurisko]

Probably the 18-34 demographic

 

[Noiser]

On 3/16/2023 at 8:10 PM, segfault said:

id themselves knew that they were making something that wasn't really intended for children; Wolfenstein 3D's opening screens display a "PC-13 Profound Carnage" rating in an attempt to self-label.

This. Heretic also had an advice regarding the violence of the game.

It's pretty clear these games are not meant for children, I mean... c'mon.

[Kute]

Probably young men. Who else would they expect to play it? Back then especially. But especially Bart. And especially Lisa.

[Murdoch]

18 hours ago, TheSlipgateStudios said:

I guess edgy teenagers who were into satanism and all that crap

 

In Doom you violently relocate the innards of Satan's minions outside their bodies with various kinds of weapons. Somehow, this doesn't strike me as pro-Satanism.

[Individualised]

On 3/17/2023 at 10:34 AM, Lucius Wooding said:

I'd have to think teenagers and above. Simply because at the time it launched it targeted DOS as the platform which was not user friendly compared to consoles and Windows 95. Even having a PC at home would usually mean you're an enthusiast user and you'd have to have some level of tech savvy to install it because the difference from 1993 to say, 1996 in terms of accessibility was huge. Not only would a ton more PCs be in homes, but the required knowledge to install and run games would be far less. And multiplayer would be another feature that required a fair bit of setup in 1993, even setting up a 2 player LAN match would probably mystify modern users to no end. I think ID made the game playable for pretty much anybody once it's set up, but realistically getting it to run would be a bit more difficult.

 

Plus you wouldn't really expect a ton of ads outside of gaming magazines and shops and there was no mainstream internet to speak of at that point, so it was a lot of word of mouth in terms of spreading locally. 5-8 year olds might see and want to get Doom but I'm betting 95% of them had an older brother or a cousin who got it first and that's how they learned it existed. 

 

Now, later on a lot more younger kids probably played it because it came out on various consoles after the game was a hit, and more commercials and overall exposure came with it. Personally I'd seen it at a brother's friend's house who had a PC, but first owned it in probably 1996 on the SNES. It's a lot more believable a young kid can figure out how to run a cartridge based game than install several floppies in DOS. And they made the cartridge red and edited out most of the gore (in large part due to limitations of the format), you can't tell me that's not a nod to the younger crowd who by then would hear about it.

 

I think they probably didn't care about kids seeing the game because most people had a pretty cavalier attitude towards violent games until the mid 90s. It was in large part due to Doom that things changed, but don't forget that arcade games, especially Mortal Kombat would probably be more visible and accessible to the younger crowd in public arcades. It just was never a problem until around that time, since the graphics began to improve enough to show some stylistic gore and there was something of an arms race of games inspired by badass action films and the like. That kind of attitude was appealing to a large group of ages as it happens. One of the ways you could make your game stand out was to add a shitload of over the top personality and blood happened to do that pretty effectively. And yeah, in hindsight it seems kinda obvious to apply a movie type rating system to games. But within a span of 10 years we went from Mrs. Pac Man to being able to rip your opponent's spine out. Obviously the parents and senators were pretty out of touch and game developers have never been conservative and uptight about these kinds of things and understandably got away with whatever they could. So it got reined in after an episode of typical outrage, wailing, gnashing of teeth, and pearl clutching.

SNES Doom is uncensored.

[Lucius Wooding]

9 minutes ago, Individualised said:

SNES Doom is uncensored.

There are still blood and corpse decorations and the like, but no gibs. As I mentioned though, they had to do some insane things to save space including cutting several levels. Given Nintendo's track record, it's likely those were always going to be first on the chopping block.

[Individualised]

3 minutes ago, Lucius Wooding said:

There are still blood and corpse decorations and the like, but no gibs. As I mentioned though, they had to do some insane things to save space including cutting several levels. Given Nintendo's track record, it's likely those were always going to be first on the chopping block.

It was solely due to storage limitations. Gibbing isn't an essential feature of the game, it's just an alternate death animation, so anything purely aesthetic like that was cut from the port. Sculptured/id received absolutely no pushback from Nintendo regarding violent content in the game. Even GBA Doom was censored because of Activision's wishes and not Nintendo's. Nintendo kinda stopped doing that sort of stuff by that time.

[Wyrmwood]

From what I remember although there was no age rating on the PC release, the PSX version actually had an 18+ rating (in the UK at least). As ratings were provided by the publisher and not given by a censor board like movies, I'd assume that was the target demographic. Adults playing video games was not that common back then, it was kinda Doom and early PSX titles like Wipeout that altered that trend, plus the market kind of grew with the kids/teens who adopted gaming. My dad used to call me a big kid for playing SNES in my teens, last time I visited home he was playing Mario Kart with my Mum on a WiiU!

[pcorf]

Age 13-20 for sure!

[Csonicgo]

On 3/16/2023 at 2:18 PM, Astro X said:

What I mean by this question is, did Romero and team think "oh, hey we're developing this epic game, and many many children of like - 5 years old - are gonna play and freaking kill some demons and it's gonna be epic" or they thought that was an age group that was not supposed to be "reached out"?

Anyone who could access the Internet with a decent 386-486 class PS/2 clone. This was mostly the 18-35 demo who were either in university or worked in the tech sector. the barrier to entry was probably decent enough to keep the little ones from playing :)