Doom (franchise)

Doom
Logo of Doom (2016).
Genres	First-person shooter
Developer(s)	id Software Other Midway Games (1993–97) Nerve Software (2005)
Publisher(s)	GT Interactive (1993–96) Activision (2004–05) Bethesda Softworks (2010–)
Creator(s)	John Carmack Tom Hall John Romero
Platforms	List MS-DOS Microsoft Windows Mac OS OS/2 Linux NeXTcube IRIX Solaris RiscPC AmigaOS BeOS Acorn Archimedes AROS Atari Jaguar PlayStation PlayStation 3 PlayStation 4 PlayStation VR PocketStation Xbox Xbox 360 Xbox One Sega 32X Sega Saturn Super NES Nintendo 64 Nintendo Switch 3DO Game Boy Advance Tapwave Zodiac Shield Portable Shield Android TV Shield Tablet TR-DOS iOS BlackBerry OS Windows Mobile HTC Vive
Platform of origin	MS-DOS
Year of inception	1993
First release	Doom December 10, 1993
Latest release	Doom VFR December 1, 2017

The Doom (stylized as DOOM) franchise is a series of first-person shooter video games developed by id Software, and related novels, comics, board games, and film adaptation. The series focuses on the exploits of an unnamed space marine operating under the auspices of Union Aerospace Corporation (UAC), who fights hordes of demons and the undead in order to survive.

Doom is considered to be one of the pioneering first-person shooter games, introducing to IBM-compatible computers features such as 3D graphics, third-dimension spatiality, networked multiplayer gameplay, and support for player-created modifications with the Doom WAD format. Since the release of Doom in 1993, the series has spawned numerous sequels, expansion packs, and a film.

Since its debut, over 10 million copies of games in the Doom series have been sold.

Games

Common elements

The Doom video games consist of first-person shooters in which the player controls an unnamed space marine also referred to as Doomguy. The player has to battle the forces of Hell, consisting of demons and the undead. In the games, the player's character will often go back and forth through hell. Doom II: Hell on Earth follows after the events in Doom, the player once again assumes the role of the unnamed space marine. After returning from Hell, the player finds that Earth has also been invaded by the demons, who have killed billions of people.^[1]

Development and history

The development of the original Doom started in 1992, when John Carmack developed a new game engine, the Doom engine, while the rest of the id Software team finished the Wolfenstein 3D prequel, Spear of Destiny.

Doom II: Hell on Earth was released in 1994, followed by two other official releases based on its version of the Doom engine: Master Levels for Doom II in 1995, and Final Doom in 1996.

Doom 64 was released in 1997, developed by Midway Games and supervised by id Software.^[2]

Doom 3 was announced in 2000. A reboot to the original Doom, it uses new graphics technology. Doom 3 was hyped to provide as large a leap in realism and interactivity as the original game and helped renew interest in the franchise when it was released in 2004. Doom 3 had its own expansion pack released in 2005, titled Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil.

After the Doom 4 project development was scrapped in 2013, id Software's Tim Willits said that the next game in the Doom series was still the team's focus, but it has not been confirmed to be titled Doom 4.^[3] It was later renamed to simply Doom in 2014. The game became a second reboot of the series, rather than a continuation or origin story of earlier games and was released in 2016.^[4]

A sequel to the 2016 reboot, Doom Eternal was announced in 2018.^[5]

Other media

A set of four novels based on Doom were written with permission of id Software by Dafydd ab Hugh and Brad Linaweaver. The books, listed in order, are titled Knee Deep in the Dead, Hell on Earth, Infernal Sky and Endgame. All were published between June 1995 and January 1996 by Pocket Books. Some in the Doom community started calling the unnamed Marine in the games "Flynn Taggart" or "Fly", after the main character of the novels, at least for a time. The first two books featured recognizable locations and situations from the first two games.

Additionally, a comic book was issued in May 1996, produced by Tom Grindberg of Marvel Comics as a giveaway for a video game convention, and original art from that project was put up for auction on eBay in April 2004. It was criticized for ridiculous dialogue and a poor story, as well as erroneous representations of some weapons from the game.

On January 31, 2005, a board game resembling the classic Space Hulk was released, entitled Doom: The Boardgame.^[6]

The first film adaptation was released in 2005, with poor critical reception from Rotten Tomatoes, in 19%, and a 34% from Metacritic. Both pointed out the bad plot and certain moments like the shower scene (giving the movie half of the R rating), taken directly from the early betas of DooM 1993.

In early 2008, a new series of Doom novels by Matthew J. Costello were published, an author who had worked on the story and scripts for Doom 3 and Resurrection of Evil. The series of books aim to novelize the story of Doom 3, with the first installment, Worlds on Fire, published on February 26, 2008.^[7] The second book in the series, Maelstrom, was released in March 2009.^[8]

In 2008, Id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead has stated in an interview that another Doom movie, possibly based on the cancelled Doom 4, might be made.^[9]

Strategy guides released in printed editions include:

• Robert E. Waring: Doom: Totally Unauthorized Tips & Secrets, Brady Publishing, ISBN 1-56686-187-X
• Jonathan Mao Mendoza: The Official Doom Survival Guide, ISBN 0-7821-1546-2
• Rick Barba: Doom Battlebook: Secrets of the Games series, Prima Publishing, ISBN 1-55958-651-6

For the 20th anniversary of the series, the Game-Art-HQ community created an art tribute with 20 illustrations of the characters from the game.

Actress and singer Nina Bergman teased April 17, 2018 on Twitter that Universal are making a Doom film.^[10] The release date is unknown.

Reception

In 1996, Next Generation ranked the series as the 19th top game of all time, for how "despite the hundreds of copycat titles, no one has ever been able to equal id's original, pulsing classic."^[59]

The series' unnamed protagonist, a marine, has had a mostly positive reception. In 2009, GameDaily included "the Marine" on its list of "ten game heroes who fail at the simple stuff" for his inability to look up and down in the original series.^[60] UGO Networks ranked him fourth on its 2012's list of best silent protagonists in video games, noting his courage to continue in silence even when he faces the Hell's army.^[61] In 2013, Complex ranked Doomguy at number 16 on its list of the greatest soldiers in video games for being "the original video game space marine" and "one of the classic silent protagonists".^[62] Both CraveOnline and VGRC ranked him the fifth most "badass" male character in the video game's history.^[63][64]

References