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taufan99

Why (and how) is/was DOOM pretty popular in the Commonwealth countries?

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I've just recently noticed that many people who contribute/have contributed to DOOM since 1994 come from the Big Three Commonwealth countries (UK, Australia, and New Zealand).

 

Origwad, one of the first third-party maps for DOOM, was designed by an Aussie.

Many Doomers/modders/source port authors, such as Simon "Fraggle" Howard, James "Jimmy" Paddock, and Dean "deathz0r" Joseph, hail from either of those countries.

Rage Software, the now-defunct developer responsible for the less-than-stellar Sega Saturn port of DOOM, is a British company.

Even the Casali Bros., well-known for their contributions to Final DOOM, are New Zealanders.

There's still so many others to mention as well.

 

Now comes my real question, just how big is/was the popularity of DOOM in these countries?

Let us all settle down to discuss here.

Edited by taufan99

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I think because first of all, it's in the same language which makes communicating ideas easier and second because the US cherish confidence and blind violence in games, which is refreshing in other parts of the world who have a history of submissive attitudes mostly connected to religion. What's ironic is that these days the US are stricter than other parts of the world because of their conservative approach: if it worked 200 years ago, don't change it. ;)

 

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Well all those countries are connected by language.A better question in my opinion would have been why Doom is so popular in Eastern Europe.

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2 minutes ago, SOSU said:

A better question in my opinion would have been why Doom is so popular in Eastern Europe.

Wrestling a cyberdemon - not unlike wrestling a bear!

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Just now, Da Werecat said:

Wrestling a cyberdemon - not unlike wrestling a bear!

My reactions moment by moment:
?_? - >_> - 0_0; - >:/ - >:O

Not all of Eastern Europe is Russia >:V

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Wasn't Doom pretty much popular worldwide (in so far as any place where people can afford computers and the time to play video games, at any rate)?

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18 minutes ago, Da Werecat said:

Wrestling a cyberdemon - not unlike wrestling a bear!

Funny, I misread that as "wrestling a beer", which seems at least as appropriate, based on my experiences in eastern Europe.

 

On topic, I'm not convinced the game was disproportionately popular in those countries relative to other countries with English as a major language, high levels of computer use and mid-1990s internet use (which was central to how quickly the game spread initially). If any region punches above its weight in those terms, I'd say Scandinavia, if you take into account its relatively small population.

 

BTW, I was unaware of the Casalis' NZ connection; I always presumed they were English. It appears they actually grew up in England and Australia. Some info.

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20 hours ago, Grazza said:

Funny, I misread that as "wrestling a beer", which seems at least as appropriate, based on my experiences in eastern Europe.

More like wrestle the home-made spirit. Doomguy should be rewarded that and then suddenly challenged with a rage of revenants who look like 9 times. He'd squash them in no time.

 

20 hours ago, Grazza said:

If any region punches above its weight in those terms, I'd say Scandinavia, if you take into account its relatively small population.

It feels to me like Doom was highly popular in nordic countries and also Netherlands during the grand classic megawad times, but now it's lots of Slavs who play it. Russians have their own community playing Doom, which seems pretty large from a glance. GZDoom Builder and its BugFix upgrade are by people who frequent iddqd.ru. I wish I knew Russian to find out what they're saying there (Google Translate takes the fun away).

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37 minutes ago, printz said:

I wish I knew Russian to find out what they're saying there (Google Translate takes the fun away).

There are Russians here on DW so you can ask them if you want :)

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It doesn't over-complicate itself, it's a very pick up and play game, you can start playing in seconds, and the enemies and environments are varied enough to keep it interesting, not to mention the weapon choices. The other strategic options like infighting, telefragging, barrel explosions, and crusher ceilings add further depth and variety and, even after playing the same level multiple times, it still manages to be fun. John Romero also set up levels purposefully so that going through them several times would give you a better understanding of the 3D space.

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I suspect Doom was popular everywhere there were shareware distributors, which is the entire developed world. I think you're reading too much into this.

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I don't think that's the whole story, the easy ability of Doom to be modded into whatever shape you wanted, even back then, was a real draw I'll bet. There are Vanilla mods like Batman Doom that could have qualified as their own games.

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Well, to be fair, having extreme flexibility in modding would be a popular concept everywhere. :P

 

It has to have SOMETHING separating it from literally every shareware title out there.

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I moved to Australia years ago to get in on the giant booming Doom craze over here that lasts even to this day. There are still entire office buildings with dedicated staff designing Doom maps, gameplay mods and source ports even as we speak. It's a commonwealth thing.

lol

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1 minute ago, Doomkid said:

I moved to Australia years ago to get in on the giant booming Doom craze over here that lasts even to this day. There are still entire office buildings with dedicated staff designing Doom maps, gameplay mods and source ports even as we speak. It's a commonwealth thing.

 

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lol

 

Sounds like my kind of place XD

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I do sometimes wonder what makes a particular game so popular in a specific region. For example, Zero Tolerance for the Sega Genesis has a big cult following in Russia. No idea why, they just loved the game enough to mod the shit out of it, while nobody else really seemed to care.

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Doom was very popular in all the countries mentioned in the OP.  But then, Doom was a monster hit everywhere.  I don't think there's anything more to it than that.

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My question is why isn't it popular in Asian regions? Not that there aren't players there, but it appears there aren't very many.

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I was born in 89 so I can only speak about growing up with DOOM as a little kid.

 

You either had a dad who already knew what DOOM was and you saw it on his PC, or you discovered it when looking for games on your Playstation or Nintendo 64, I think those two factors really brought it to the attention of kids who later transitioned to PC when they got older.

 

As for Asian kids... they got stuck in to their RPG's and stuff like that and most of their parents made them study longer and have weekend school too, so it makes sense that when they actually had free time to play a game it would be something they already invested their time in to developing/levelling up/making progress with... at least that's the kind of BS they kept talking about in the yard.

 

Obviously some Asian's played doom and other FPS, but it never sticks with them from my experience, they end up back to Pokemone, FF or something. Now that's my opinion of Asian kids in Australia, I can only imagine it's a much more extreme version of that in Asia since the only kids playing DOOM were probably the minority/outcasts and the gaming culture there is completely different.

 

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What Ginsu0311 said is most likely but not sure every Asia country are the same reasons...at least Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and China players tend like playing RPGs(JRPG/CRPG/Wu Xia theme/Kung-Fu theme etc.) more than ACTs/FPSes for sure in 90s/early 2000s.

 

But, I don't care. :P

 

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