First-Person Shooters rose to prominence on the PC in 1992 with the release of Wolfenstein 3D. Created by id Software (whose history has been thoroughly explored and skillfully written about in Masters of Doom by David Kushner), Wolfenstein transported the player into the body of a bloodied commando shooting through a fortress filled with Nazis and their attack dogs.
It was the first time most consumers had seen this kind of world brought to life. It was certainly the first time they’d seen it from this unique perspective. Players were shocked and fixated. Released as shareware (one part of the game was free while the complete product cost money), it became the most popular game online by far, attracting mountains of praise from every corner of the happily electrified gaming universe.
As would become id Software’s modus operandi, the game attracted vast positive and negative attention simultaneously. The smooth, unmatched gameplay and the cutting edge graphics excited PC owners. The Nazi imagery and casual violence against dogs and humans alike attracted hostility in North America and Europe including an outright ban in Germany that was lifted only recently.
The next game by the outfit would be one of the most important, highly praised and influential games of all time.
Released in December 1993 as shareware (a third of the game was available for free), Doom marks the beginning of modern online gaming. Thanks in part to the astronomical success of the game, the id Software founders were quickly ascending from wild success stories to absolute rock stars with their consistent production of hits in the 90s.
The game is known for blazing a number of new trails.
The innovative 3D graphics represented new technological heights. The graphics helped Doom look like no other game ever had. Doom was both darker and brighter than any other game had ever been. The ability to skillfully shift back and forth was a major breakthrough.
The technology built by John Carmack gave the team a newly developed power over the all-important artist’s tool that is light. The game looked more realistic, meaner and more inviting for the millions of players looking to explore a hellish landscape. The gameplay was faster and smoother. The unrestrained violence, intensity and shock value was higher than ever before.
Most importantly, the game was playable over networks. At first limited to local networks (LANs) and direct connections over modems, it was DWANGO (Dial-up Wide-Area Network Game Operation) that provided online matchmaking to a growing army of Doom lovers starting in 1994.
The gore went to new extremes and antagonized powerful cultural enemies in America and abroad. In 1999, Doom and Duke Nukem (a contemporary FPS that roughly and gladly pushed cultural boundaries) along with several movies were blamed by vocal critics for the Columbine High School massacre in which two heavily armed students murdered one teacher and 12 other students.
According to freedomforum.org, "The lawsuit was filed by the family of slain teacher Dave Sanders and on behalf of other Columbine victims." The judge threw out the lawsuit and warned that any other decision would have a chilling effect on free speech.
It is hard to overstate the impact that Doom had on modern gaming.
Doom made huge technological advances with the 3D engine.
The bloody visuals from artists pushed boundaries with horror and fear. The soundtrack included intense industrial music and animal screams.
Online deathmatches, invented here, revealed an entirely new dimension to gaming.
As one of the most celebrated games of all time, it was launched as shareware.
Perhaps most important, the gameplay brought the FPS genre to a new plateau.
Doom took the road less travelled time and time again. Astoundingly, the bold choices seemed to pay off nearly every time.
Gaming centers opened up offering pay-to-play machines featuring Doom and promoting tournaments for the best of the best. Texas, home to id Software, was well on its way to becoming a mecca of competitive gaming as venues such as Austin Virtual Gaming offered tournaments that players and even designers (most notably John Romero) competed in. It was at AVG where Romero would suffer his first defeat in Doom.
Doom also saw the birth of demos or replays, a tool that allows players to record gameplay and share it with fellow fans.
A European fan could now watch an American play a game from six months ago as though the match was taking place live. The fan could dissect the strategy and get into the mind of the player in a way that was not previously possible. Demos would become a staple and near-requirement of the competitive gaming world.
The advent of demos saw the birth of the speed run scene. In speed runs, players compete by trying to finish single player levels as quickly as possible. Although speed runs are played on all manner of modern games, the single player nature of it is a call back to the old high score competitions of arcades.
Doom demos recorded player movements, making it easy to send watchable proof of your run to a competitor in a small file.
Speed runs have spread to countless single player games (from Mario 64 to Half-Life). It remains an active competitive niche even two decades later.
Demos and replays also opened up the world of skill movies (also known by a number of other names including "frag movies" and “highlight films”) that would explode in popularity over the next half decade as they helped promote players, teams, competitions and games in general.
Finally, demos resulted in the advent of machinima, cinematic productions most often containing a narrative. Although these sorts of movies often have little or nothing to do with competitive gaming, they do aid in promoting the games themselves as the films have become a popular medium over a decade and a half. Frag movies often take machinma ideas and use them to great effect.
The two leading personalities at id Software were John Carmack, the lead programmer of Doom, and John Romero, the lead designer. Due to their previous successes (Commander Keen, Catacomb 3-D and then Wolfenstein 3D among other games), Doom (one of the most highly anticipated and well received titles of the era) and their subsequent dramatic victories and failures, the two Johns remain icons in the gaming world.
Please, go read Masters of Doom by David Kushner when you are done with this book.
Fans and professionals alike revere the games the two Johns created together, telling the stories of their lives and careers as though they were passing a scared legendarium from generation to generation, gamer to gamer.
John Romero, complete with metal rock star hair and ego, is said to have coined the now ubiquitous term ‘deathmatch’ while developing the multiplayer mode for Doom. The name set the tone for the gruesome game itself as well as the deathmatch genre of FPS gaming for years and years to come.
One of id Software’s most important contributions to the industry was their tendency toward openness with their software. Wolfenstein 3D, a minor wonder at the time, was one of the first games to ever license its software to other developers. The licensing strategy was a serious financial boon for id and pushed the FPS genre forward on the back of id’s progress. Although the practice of selling a developer’s technology (the game engine specifically) in this manner was once taboo, even frowned upon, it is now the norm in the gaming industry.
Allowing the licensing of software opened up new ways to do business for the industry. Quake’s engine (from id Software’s 1996 hit) was used in celebrated games such as Half-Life.
Doom continued forward along this path toward revolutionary openness.
Before Doom, the idea of user modification of software (modding) was a minor and, ultimately, greatly limited experience. To an extent never before seen, Doom allowed users access to many of the same tools that id programmers used in creating the game. This granted users the power to create modifications (mods) such as new maps, weapons, characters and more that would, by their very nature, extend the lifespan, expand the depth and broaden the appeal of the game.
Allowing serious modding was a huge step in gaming and in competitive gaming, one that has echoed through the decades. From this decision and the thousands of dedicated fans who took up the challenge, you can directly trace a line to some of the most important competitive games of all time. Counter-Strike (which evolved from a Quake mod called Action Quake 2), Team Fortress Classic (originally a successful 1996 Quake mod titled simply Team Fortress) and many other modifications for Half-Life (a 1998 FPS built on the licensed Quake engine and considered by many to be one of the greatest games of all time) allowed that game to remain near the top of the industry and competitive gaming industry for over a decade.
In other genres, significant franchises such as StarCraft, Warcraft and many more have thrived in no small part due to their fan base’s creative abilities for over a decade. When fans are able to control their game, stagnation can be staved off for years with clever mods written by bright modders keeping a game fresh, fun, relevant and well played.
"I look back at Quake as the golden age of game modding," said John Carmack in 2011, “before the standards rose so high that it required almost a full time commitment to do something relevant. I am very proud that many of today’s industry greats trace their start back to working with Quake.”
Major game publishers all over the world are packed to the brim with developers who got their start modding Quake.
Once again, the American military came calling to license the Doom technology in order to train soldiers. Unlike previous notable incidents, id signed off on the military’s proposals with no known qualms.
id Software became a multi-multimillion dollar entity with a profit margin that most media outlets described in hallowed tones and sometimes compared favorably to heavyweights such as Microsoft. id’s fan base grew and the competition intensified in and out of the game.
As Street Fighter 2 took head to head competition in the arcades to new heights, Doom and Doom 2 (with the inclusion of DWANGO at $8.95 per month and then the greater rise of the net shortly thereafter) took competitive gaming to the internet, to the country and to the entire world.
The first major Doom 2 tournament was held at Microsoft’s "Judgement Day ‘95" a Halloween event held first and foremost to promote Windows as a major gaming platform. It had undeniable star power: Jay Leno entertained and Bill Gates played coy with a shotgun to promote the new Windows’ version of Doom.
Dennis "Thresh" Fong, an 18 year old born in Hong Kong who had spent half his life in the United States, was one of twenty top gamers as decided by international qualifiers flown in to compete in front of some of the most powerful and well known men in the industry.
Thresh recalled the day’s events with GotFrag.com in 2005.
Deathmatch '95 was probably the biggest gaming tournament ever up to that point in gaming history. The tournament coincided with the launch of Microsoft Game Studios and was held at Microsoft HQ in Redmond, WA. As you can imagine, Microsoft doesn't do anything small, so the event was a huge extravaganza, with the competition being one of the highlights of the launch party.
By virtue of having already played most of the top players around the country and beaten them, I was considered one of the favorites to win the tournament. Another player who went by the handle ‘Merlock’ was considered the other favorite. Due to a random draw, we ended up facing each other in the semi-finals. I ended up beating him something like 10-5. Merlock got so upset he slammed the keyboard and threw his chair off-stage. It was quite the scene, particularly since LAN tournaments weren't all that common back then.
For his efforts in victory, Thresh’s prize was state of the art hardware. In a five-year gaming career, Thresh became one of the first modern esports stars, successfully competing in franchises such as Doom, Quake and (much less successfully) StarCraft. In a 1999 profile piece, the Washington Post asserted that Thresh had "earned $250,000 in prize money, endorsement fees and book royalties."
"More than any other single person, he [Thresh] put a face on the gamer community," wrote King and Borland in Dungeons and Dreamers, “at a time when a curious world was trying to figure out just what this strange new activity was all about. He helped reassure some of those outsiders that gaming might be a reasonable pursuit, that starting into the computer screen and trying one’s best to kill one’s opponent as quickly and as often as possible didn’t necessarily create a homicidal maniac.”
Thresh’s star would continue to rise in the competitive gaming world and then in the tech world at large as he later founded successful companies in Xfire, GX Media and more.
Deathmatch ‘95 and many subsequent competitions illustrated finally that deathmatches weren’t simply a distraction or a sideshow. Instead they were the beginnings of a sport that demanded center stage and full attention.