This guy hates Doom for sure

[Orchid87]

http://culture.vg/reviews/videogame-art/not-art-doom.html I liked this review portal for the in depth arcade style games reviews but now I don't even know what to think.

[dew]

Oh yeah, I've seen that one. Guy seems butthurt that he has no power over killing a popular thing he doesn't get. Still not half as unhinged and badass as this old beauty:

https://everything2.com/user/Ashley+Pomeroy/writeups/Doom

[Da Werecat]

Hipster hipster hipster. Autism autism autism.

 

Hipster.

 

Autism autism.

[Deleted_Account]

The only thing I took from this article was Greece, basketball and hipsteroautism.

[Orchid87]

6 minutes ago, dew said:

Oh yeah, I've seen that one. Guy seems butthurt that he has no power over killing a popular thing he doesn't get. Still not half as unhinged and badass as this old beauty:

https://everything2.com/user/Ashley+Pomeroy/writeups/Doom

Haha I did enjoy the read

[Da Werecat]

The whole article looks like a drawn out joke.

 

Okay, not the whole article - I only read a few paragraphs at the end. Then again, you don't have to experience the entirety of something to form an opinion, as the author clearly shows us.

[SArais]

I can't even read the article the title for it is so stupid. I would argue doom IS art.

[Nine Inch Heels]

1 hour ago, dew said:

Oh yeah, I've seen that one. Guy seems butthurt that he has no power over killing a popular thing he doesn't get. Still not half as unhinged and badass as this old beauty:

https://everything2.com/user/Ashley+Pomeroy/writeups/Doom

Wow... I mean... Good grace... How did you (or someone else) find this abomination? That one made me drop my jaw real quick, and I'm not too impressionable all things considered.

 

For those who don't want to read it all, here are some quotes to get the appetite going:

 

Quote

-Doom is a symphony of annihilation, for the game's primary characteristic is obliteration. Obliteration of the enemy, of the player, and of the player's self.

 

-Doom is also a powerfully erotic game, notwithstanding the numbing of the physical self. It is mentally erotic, capturing the release of control at the height of orgasm, the constant stimulation of eternal deathmaking.

 

-Doom is a male space. The player is invariably male, for obvious reasons. Of the monsters, only the comical Cacodemons seem obviously female, their ungainly, ill-formed gaseous nature and leering, slavering mouths characteristic of the female species.

 Really give it a look, dew is right to call it unhinged and badass.

[fraggle]

1 hour ago, dew said:

Oh yeah, I've seen that one. Guy seems butthurt that he has no power over killing a popular thing he doesn't get. Still not half as unhinged and badass as this old beauty:

https://everything2.com/user/Ashley+Pomeroy/writeups/Doom

I read this years ago and I think I've even linked to it a few times in my comments here. It's certainly an entertaining read, and I think it's not entirely serious - there's definitely something of a humorous tone to it, though maybe others don't detect it (I used to be moderately active on everything2.com myself, years ago, so I know the culture there a bit better and what passes for humor).

 

Though as the saying goes, many a truth was said in jest. While it's clearly exaggerated to absurd extremes for comic effect, some of the stuff there does seem almost on point. "Doom is a male space" for example. From perkristian's work we know that Doom's sound effects were deliberately designed to make the weapons sound more powerful. The feedback loop to the player essentially emphasizes feeling like some kind of manly tough guy. I expect that some kind of Freudian analysis of the game could be quite ... interesting.

[Doomkid]

That seems like really overthinking it to me since women enjoy feeling like tough badasses in games as well. That desire does not hinge on one's gender.

 

Anyway, this reviewer seems more interested in slow paced story driven games, based on the chunk of this article I managed to read before the wankyness of the overall tone made me want to gouge my eyes out!

Edited April 16, 2017 by Doomkid

[RjY]

Edit: on second thought I'm not getting into this

[40oz]

I'll bite.

 

I want to give this guy a fair objective assessment to his opinion, and I'll summarize it here in a way I believe the author of the article would probably agree with. Especially because I'm sure there are people here who don't want to be bothered to read this whole thing. Which is fair because the author needs to understand that his writing style is exhausting and super nebulous. His strong points come like 5 or 6 megaparagraphs in and then seemingly stops abruptly. All the stuff prior is mostly existential haze and describing feelings and attitudes and setting the scene for how he played games back then which are more or less terribly uninteresting with an article titled as an explanation why Doom isn't good.

 

To summarize, here are his main points:

 

1. He played Doom with friends back in 1994, and bought it at the same time as he bought another game called Full Throttle, which he enjoyed much more for reasons he couldn't articulate at the time.

 

2. His interpretation of level design coincides with functional narrative and story telling and possibly less to do with the player's direct interaction with the game. For example he goes into detail about how Shinobi 3 has better level design than Doom because the themes blend aesthetically from one to the other, where Doom is mostly made up corridors and indistinct military buildings with little defining features. (This complaint has been discussed on this very forum plenty times before [why does the E1M7 Computer Station have nukage oceans in it?])

 

3. The author describes Doom as being a game for two types of people: poor or ignorant. Doom is a game for people who didn't have the money to afford more than a few games a year, so Doom naturally clicked with a lot of people who wanted an endless interminable journey of exploration and repetitive killing. Doom is also a game for people who are ignorant to other genres of games that are more diverse and immerse the player into a story with clearly defined objectives, problems, goals, storyline, characters, etc. The author describes himself both as rich and worldly in the field of video games and art.

 

4. The author indicates that he is aware of the existence of WADs and that they come with new levels to play but is admittedly disinterested and does not care enough to find out exactly what they are.

 

5. The author states that if you play Doom and are involved with the Doom community, you are to some degree, autistic, and celebrate your autism under the cloak of being a hipster.

 

My response:

 

Doom isn't for everyone of course. And I think there's some truth to the point that Doom is for people who probably didn't play a lot of games. I've heard a lot of stories of people's first experiences with Doom and for many of them, it was a game they saw someone else playing and when they picked it up, they couldn't get enough of it. Doom, I think, was pretty seminal in the way it made casual bystanders interested in games, and viewing PC's as gaming machines. The author has a pretty pompous way of describing himself as someone who simply didn't have the drive to waste his time with a non-linear first person maze runner when he had a wealth of knowledge about more gripping games at the time. It's quite silly however, to say that Shinobi has inherently better level design, when all you need to do is run towards the left of the screen to eventually progress through the game. There's really nothing complicated or immersive about that to me. The magic of Doom for me, has much more to do with providing just enough visual stimulation to leave the rest to your imagination. I think if someone was a regular gamer before playing Doom, it's understandable that the imagination must have been quite eroded by that time and a game would have to be pretty clear about telling the player where he is and what he's supposed to be doing to be of any interest to him. I personally preferred Doom's style of showing without telling and leaving things up to the mysteries of the player's interpretation. But I can understand why this wouldn't work for everyone, and at this time I find most games far too direct and restrictive about what the player is allowed to do. No comment about the Doom community being centralized with autistic people. It's farcical to say there aren't any weirdos here. But his writing doesn't seem to verify that he's very level-headed himself.

Edited April 16, 2017 by 40oz

[Merry Widow]

In my humble opinion, the guy basically is full of shit.Just my humble opinion, mind you.....

[Gez]

42 minutes ago, 40oz said:

To summarize, here are his main points:

 

1. He played Doom with friends back in 1994, and bought it at the same time as he bought another game called Full Throttle, which he enjoyed much more for reasons he couldn't articulate at the time.

 

2. His interpretation of level design coincides with functional narrative and story telling and possibly less to do with the player's direct interaction with the game. For example he goes into detail about how Shinobi 3 has better level design than Doom because the themes blend aesthetically from one to the other, where Doom is mostly made up corridors and indistinct military buildings with little defining features. (This complaint has been discussed on this very forum plenty times before [why does the E1M7 Computer Station have nukage oceans in it?])

 

3. The author describes Doom as being a game for two types of people: poor or ignorant. Doom is a game for people who didn't have the money to afford more than a few games a year, so Doom naturally clicked with a lot of people who wanted an endless interminable journey of exploration and repetitive killing. Doom is also a game for people who are ignorant to other genres of games that are more diverse and immerse the player into a story with clearly defined objectives, problems, goals, storyline, characters, etc. The author describes himself both as rich and worldly in the field of video games and art.

 

4. The author indicates that he is aware of the existence of WADs and that they come with new levels to play but is admittedly disinterested and does not care enough to find out exactly what they are.

 

5. The author states that if you play Doom and are involved with the Doom community, you are to some degree, autistic, and celebrate your autism under the cloak of being a hipster.

I'll give him 1 since it's intrinsically subjective. I'll give him 2 also because why not. 3, 4, 5 are plain stupid. He's straw-manning in 3 (I strongly doubt there are any reliable statistical studies showing Doom players don't enjoy other genres as well; I know I personally do), proving he's himself willfully ignorant in 4, and projecting in 5.

[Da Werecat]

I feel like adding that judging Doom by its first official installment (a part of it, even) is a mistake. The author goes further and also judges the whole Doom modding scene. Apparently, the thought that a sequel and more than 20 years of community work could improve on the formula or provide variety never crossed his mind.

[Cynical]

For those unfortunates who don't know, Icycalm/Alex Kirkegaarad is basically a "professional troll" (seriously, his forum and most of his site content are behind an absurdly expensive paywall) who takes contrarian stances on every matter for attention.  He previously declared Doom, Quake, and Half-Life -- all games that he derides in that article -- some of the greatest games of all time; he's walking that claim back now since "fuck CoD, I want more games like the old FPSs!" has become a popular sentiment.

[Da Werecat]

Makes sense.

[Doomkid]

6 minutes ago, Cynical said:

For those unfortunates who don't know, Icycalm/Alex Kirkegaarad is basically a "professional troll" (seriously, his forum and most of his site content are behind an absurdly expensive paywall) who takes contrarian stances on every matter for attention.  He previously declared Doom, Quake, and Half-Life -- all games that he derides in that article -- some of the greatest games of all time; he's walking that claim back now since "fuck CoD, I want more games like the old FPSs!" has become a popular sentiment.

I would actually consider myself fortunate for not knowing this previously, but thanks for the info - it definitely clarifies this quite a bit!

[Nine Inch Heels]

3 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

I would actually consider myself fortunate for not knowing this previously, but thanks for the info - it definitely clarifies this quite a bit!

Does that mean we're not getting a Doomkid video refutation? :(

[40oz]

I'm tempted to invite this guy to WXR to debate about this.

[Cynical]

26 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

I would actually consider myself fortunate for not knowing this previously, but thanks for the info - it definitely clarifies this quite a bit!

You're actually missing out by not knowing his history.  He's got a rather hilarious saga -- he committed close to a million dollars in wire fraud on E-Bay, and has been on the run as a fugitive ever since, hopping from country to country under assumed identities and uploading reviews of games he hasn't played to his website that he charges people $50/year to view (and they have to post weekly news for him or they get banned, and he's likely to just ban them anyways).  He recently got out of jail for another charge (he was in for 18 months in some European country from robbing a store and stabbing a police K-9), and at one point, he faked his own death.

 

When he's not in jail or reviewing games he hasn't played, he runs a gaming clan called "The Cult" where he does things like have a worse than 1:10 K/D ratio in Planetside and fails to get past early-game quests in Divinity: Original Sin when playing online with his "clan" because he won't let anyone use healing potions because "they're for casuals".

[40oz]

Anyone know how i can contact him? I went to the FAQ and it says if you have any trouble logging in, send an email to anyone from the team, but I click the team link and it redirects me to the login page :/

[Cynical]

Dunno about email, but his Steam page (and a link to his Steam group) are here: http://steamcommunity.com/id/icycalm

[Unholypimp1n]

Anyone else read like 4 sentences then skip to the end of the article?  Seriously his article was so long and drawn out it was a miracle he ever made it to the end.  Talk about borefest!

[geo]

All I saw when I clicked the link was:

 

Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text. Wall of text.

[Teivman]

Kidnap him and throw him into a pile of rusty nails :)

[MrGlide]

8 hours ago, Piper Maru said:

hipsteroautism.

Ya, this guy seems like a total douche chugger. 

[Doomkid]

2 hours ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

Does that mean we're not getting a Doomkid video refutation? :(

Honestly, I can't be bothered to put in the minimal amount of effort that would take for someone who wrote such a lame-brained article.. :P

 

 

1 hour ago, Cynical said:

You're actually missing out by not knowing his history.  He's got a rather hilarious saga -- he committed close to a million dollars in wire fraud on E-Bay, and has been on the run as a fugitive ever since, hopping from country to country under assumed identities and uploading reviews of games he hasn't played to his website that he charges people $50/year to view (and they have to post weekly news for him or they get banned, and he's likely to just ban them anyways).  He recently got out of jail for another charge (he was in for 18 months in some European country from robbing a store and stabbing a police K-9), and at one point, he faked his own death.

 

When he's not in jail or reviewing games he hasn't played, he runs a gaming clan called "The Cult" where he does things like have a worse than 1:10 K/D ratio in Planetside and fails to get past early-game quests in Divinity: Original Sin when playing online with his "clan" because he won't let anyone use healing potions because "they're for casuals".

Oh man, the plot thickens.. This is hilarious!

[princetontiger]

Doom is a masterpiece. Doom is in the same league as Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Centipede, Frogger, Super Mario Brothers, and many other incredible games that really pushed gaming into a new era in the late 20th century. People thousands of years from now will skim the greatest hits of each century, and Doom will most definitely be there.

[dew]

2 hours ago, 40oz said:

I'm tempted to invite this guy to WXR to debate about this.

Whore.