Doom Report 2

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Canon Game Report:

DoomBy Jose Melchor Elegado 3847

Med3905A

January 10, 2010


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In the world of videogames, A "Canon Game" is a game that is successfully innovative to the

point that an entire genre of games appears that, even with major tweaks here and there, are clearly

patterned after this one game. By genre, we refer to the body of rules, features, conventions and other

details that both the creators and the audience of a particular type of media assume to be present

within that media, and accept without question. A game of a genre follows the genre conventions; the

Canon Game, by being not just the first to use them but by also being the one to make everyone take

notice of them, makes and rewrites the genre conventions. In the same way that Shakespeare is held in

high regard by fans of literature or Citizen Kane is always being studied by scholars of movies, the Canon

Videogame is a historical backtrack to the first time anything like Awesome Video Game no. 563 ever

came into being.

For this essay, we take a look at what is unanimously agreed to be the First-Person-Shooter

game's Canon Game:

Doom is one of the earliest first-person shooters in the history of video games, released by Id

Software in 1993. In this game, the player is a nameless military marine trapped in a science facility on

Mars overrun by devils and demons. The player starts off with a pistol, but eventually gets to find and

use other effective weapons, like shotguns, chainguns, rocket launchers, and even a chainsaw. The

space marine travels the single-floor levels of the facility with the simple objective of find the exit and

kill everything that moves and is trying to kill you (i.e everything). Unlike most other games that show

the game world from a distant camera, in Doom the player sees everything in the first-person view.

Other than the title screen, the player never actually sees the space marine aside from what he's holding

and what's directly in front of him.


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Big guns, ammo, health, armor, manly dude, and things to shoot at that explode in gory fashion?

Doom did it best first.So what exactly about this game makes it "canon"? What did it do differently to other games of

its time, what did it do similarly to other games, what did it have that no other game ever had before it?

same as before

We have the manly square-jawed space marine, the abandoned science facility, and the freaky

alien monsters. The concepts have certainly been done before, at least in movies. Rambo has the

muscular dude with the giant guns, whileAlien has the abandoned science facility in space taken over by

monsters. Combine the two, then mix up the backstory from "aliens from outer space" to "demons from

hell", and we have the premise for Doom.

Rambo, Alien

The first-person view has also been tried before as well, this time in other videogames older

than Doom. The earliest take on this is Battlezone, an arcade game made by Atari in 1980 that used

vector lines to simulate a tank battle with the player in the cockpit. Operation Wolf, a 1987 game by

Taito, used sprite graphics to take the player on an "on-rails" set pathway through a Vietnam War-erabattlefield and shoot down enemy soldiers and tanks. EvenId software made a first-person shooter that

came before Doom; Wolfenstein 3D, a 1992 game that involves the player shooting Nazi soldiers, was

otherwise an earlier version of Doom that proved just as popular. (Reed, 2009)


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Battlezone, Operation Wolf, Wolfenstein 3D: Each experiment brings something new.

different from beforeBefore Doom, Action and Adventure games were the norm (Salter, 2008). Everything happens in

the game all at once, and the player's own skill at spotting and reacting to threats is a major part of what

makes these games work. Despite the genre title, however, the pace at which these games set the

player's mind to was still quite tame. (Salter, 2008) This may be due to the player still being in full

control of the situation by seeing all the opposition around you from a third-person camera; there's less

urgency to deal with a back attack on the player's onscreen avatar when the player can see it from a

mile away. Keep the same pace, but restrict the player's view to the first person and make HIM the

target of enemy attacks, and suddenly a kind of paranoia kicks in concerning what bloodthirsty monster

could be unseen directly behind the player. This extra level of awareness required on the part of the

player makes for a very different action/adventure experience.


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Left: Contra, 3rdperson, player sees all. Right: 1stperson. Was what killed me in front, or behind?

This focus on aiming for maximum action shows through in the design decisions made by the Id

software team. The article, "The History of: Doom", outlines some of the design decisions that the Id

software team discussed as they were developing the game. A "Game Bible" was being written by one of

the team, containing world objects and elements to be included in the game as well as a storyline to be

told within the game. (The History of: Doom, 2009) However, the storytelling part conflicted with the

more pragmatic, bare-bones approach that their lead game designer John Carmack was going for.

(Barnes, 2007). In the end, the story was abandoned. (The History of: Doom, 2009) Along the same train

of thought, despite the high technical capabilities of Doom's game engine at the time, features and

details were kept to a minimum in order to ensure that game runs at a smooth and fast pace. (Barnes,

2007).

The focus was on maximum action; the game itself knew this, and flaunts it. Not just in its

inclusion of a beefy male protagonist with large guns and gratuitous bloody explosions, but even in the

way the game documents itself. The instruction manual reads as if it were said beefy male protagonist,

complete with casual tough-guy descriptions, references to raw meat and slugathons, and a bit of bad

language. Trying to exit the game even has the game talking back to you in the same tough-guy tone.

This testosterone-driven violence, as well as the "shoot first ask questions never" attitude that the game

promotes, has certainly drawn its fair share ofnegative attention from "Concerned Responsible Adults"

(Salter, 2008), as exemplified in the game becoming a scapegoat for the infamous Columbine School

shooting and other such incidents (Associated Press, 2002)


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Samples from the manual, and one of the many exit prompts. Probably where your kid learned to say

"bastard" and "S.O.B."That which was entirely new

Doom is also noted for one key feature, one that up until then was not present in games for the

PC: Network LAN play, where several computers are linked together to allow for a multiplayer round of

Doom, either in a free-for-all against each other or as a team against the computer. The new style of

game plus support for competitive as well as cooperative gameplay only adds more points to what made

this game work. (Barn

es, 2007)

The copycats afterwardsDespite the other games that came before it, it was definitely Doom that convinced the gaming

world that these First Person Shooters were a hit (and therefore, a money farm for game makers). About

ten million copies were sold in the two years after its release, and many other games started appearing


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en masse that copied Doom's formula. (Reed, 2009) Even more recent first-person-shooter games follow

the same formula. Stuff like the manly trash-talking space marine, the variety of guns (not much on

other weapons, just guns), shooting everything in sight, the hunting for doors and switches, and lack of

story, not to mention the player view, can make even recent games like Halo, Counterstrike, and Left 4

Deadlook like they're just different versions of Doom, with a new setting or a slightly modified system

for items, means of travel or whatever new feature it has to set itself apart from the other "doom-

clones". These similarities, however, are rarely contested or called into question, as they are precisely

what people enjoy about the style of game that Doom has codified, the video game genre we now know

as the First-Person-Shooter.

Halo, Counterstrike Left 4 Dead: you all look familiar... and you're all good!

Therefore...Doom was the first of the First-Person-Shooters games that got the entire system working just

right, from the game system and rules to the lightning-fast pacing, from the bloody and creepy

presentation to the awesome tough guy attitude. It's the success in bringing the First-Person-Shooter

formula to the spotlight that makes Doom a Canon Videogame.


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References:

Reed, Kristan. The History of First Person Shooters, part 1. Sept 29, 2009: Videogamesdaily.com

http://videogamesdaily.com/features/200909/the-history-of-first-person-shooters-part-1

accessed January 8, 2011.

Barnes, Aaron.AB

rief History of the FPS. May 24, 2007: Yougamers

http://www.yougamers.com/articles/3624_a_brief_history_of_the_fps-page2/

accessed January 8, 2011

Salter, Anastasia.A Gaming Canon: Slaughtering Space Demons. August 14, 2008: Cerise Magazine

http://cerise.theirisnetwork.org/2008/08/14/a-gaming-canon-slaughtering-space-demons/


McCalmont, Jonathan. The Video Game Canon and the Age of Forgetfulness. June 10, 2010: Futurismic

http://futurismic.com/2010/10/06/the-video-game-canon-and-the-age-of-forgetfulness/



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The HIstory of: Doom. January 27, 2009: Nowgamer.com

http://www.nowgamer.com/features/176/the-history-of-doom?o=0#listing


The Associated Press. Columbine Lawsuit Against Makers Of Video Games, Movies Thrown Out.

March 5, 2002: freedomforum.org

http://www.freedomforum.org/templates/document.asp?documentID=15820


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