The least controversial, most incontrovertible aspect of DOOM‘s impact is its influence on the technology of games. Nevertheless, let’s take this opportunity to follow a few of them to wherever they lead us as we wrap up this series on the shareware movement and the monster it spawned. Sometimes the threads are contradictory - sometimes even self-contradictory. Hopefully the former will be enough to give the game its due.Īs the title of this article alludes, there are many possible narratives to spin about DOOM‘s impact. I can muster respect for the id boys’ accomplishment, but no love. I can’t help but see it as at least partially responsible for a certain coarsening in the culture of gaming that followed it. I trust that most of you will be pleased to hear that I no longer feel so inclined, but I do recognize that my feelings about DOOM are, at best, conflicted. In fact, for a long time, when I was asked when I thought I might bring this historical project to a conclusion, I pointed to the arrival of DOOM as perhaps the most logical place to hang it up. I should admit here and now that I’m not entirely comfortable with the changes DOOM brought to gaming. It didn’t change gaming instantly, mind you - a contemporaneous observer could be forgiven for assuming it was still largely business as usual a year or even two years after DOOM‘s release - but it did change it forever. The release of DOOM marks the biggest single sea change in the history of computer gaming. Yet if the precise numbers associated with the game’s success are slippery, the cultural impact of the game is easier to get a grip on. Players of it likely numbered well into the eight digits. But these numbers, impressive as they are in their own right, leave out not only the ever-present reality of piracy but also the free episode of DOOM, which was packaged and distributed in such an unprecedented variety of ways all over the world.
The boxed-retail-only DOOM II may have sold a similar quantity it reportedly became the third best-selling boxed computer game of the 1990s.
It’s been estimated that id sold 2 to 3 million copies of the shareware episodes of the original DOOM. That “probably” has to stand there because DOOM‘s unusual distribution model makes quantifying its popularity frustratingly difficult. Let me begin today by restating the obvious: DOOM was very, very popular, probably the most popular computer game to date.
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