Given that the iconic Doom franchise is set to return with another instalment with the hotly anticipated Doom: Eternal on the 22nd of November this year, I've been considering the legacy of this most legendary juggernaut of video gaming licenses, a title that many entirely ignorant of video games as a culture and art form are aware of, that many who do not generally play video games have encountered and enjoyed.
I doubt that way, way back in the mid 1990s, ID Software -as they once were- could have ever anticipated how cataclysmically Doom would reshape the market and what people assumed of video games. As well as putting the company itself on the map, it established the PC as a legitimate -and even superior- video gaming platform, kick-starting the renaissance that only reached its high watermark over a decade later.
Doom is one of those rarest of artefacts; one that transcends its cult boundaries and the dimensions of its medium's sub-culture to become part of the fabric of media history. It has transformed the way video game studios produce games, the way they market and distribute, what audiences expect and anticipate from the medium.
All of this is well documented in various articles, videos and essays across the internet and beyond; it's difficult even broaching Doom these days without slipping into cliché or rote testimonials. As such, in this series of retrospectives, we'll be focusing on one specific aspect of the game's legacy:
Its significance to horror.
I doubt that way, way back in the mid 1990s, ID Software -as they once were- could have ever anticipated how cataclysmically Doom would reshape the market and what people assumed of video games. As well as putting the company itself on the map, it established the PC as a legitimate -and even superior- video gaming platform, kick-starting the renaissance that only reached its high watermark over a decade later.
Doom is one of those rarest of artefacts; one that transcends its cult boundaries and the dimensions of its medium's sub-culture to become part of the fabric of media history. It has transformed the way video game studios produce games, the way they market and distribute, what audiences expect and anticipate from the medium.
All of this is well documented in various articles, videos and essays across the internet and beyond; it's difficult even broaching Doom these days without slipping into cliché or rote testimonials. As such, in this series of retrospectives, we'll be focusing on one specific aspect of the game's legacy:
Its significance to horror.
Whilst it might be difficult for video game audiences of the present day to comprehend, Doom was considered one of the key horror titles of its era, boasting not only a story inolving Hell, demons and demonic possession but an atmosphere the like of which few had experienced in the medium before. In 1995, video games were still in that awkward, transitional phase between adolescence and early-adulthood, Western markets belaboured by assumptions that they were children's toys and could only be such, largely thanks to the manner in which predominant companies such as Nintendo chose to comport themselves.
The notion of horror in video games wasn't exactly new, but it was rare and still largely taboo. The likes of Mortal Kombat had already roused the ire of right-wing, reactionary journalism with its ridiculously absurd blood and gore, whilst the ill-fated “Full Motion Video” effort, Night Trap, had earned the entire industry severe reprimand and the earliest instance of regulation (though, in this case, that was largely due to ignorant, media-inspired hysteria). Other instances of horror in video games had certainly raised eyebrows, with the likes of Splatterhouse being heavily censored or banned entirely, numerous other titles that enjoyed releases in Japanese and European markets simply banned from sale in the UK and US.
But, the times, they were a changin', and video games were growing up along with their audiences.
Whereas many contemporary efforts attempted to by-pass the inevitable parental and media-driven back-lashes by apologising for themselves, attempting to demonstrate that they were not corrupting or perverse to the souls of the innocent, that there was some genuine ethical and perfunctory qualities to their work, ID Software went in the entirely opposite direction. A relatively small studio at the time, the design team took on board every hysteria and claim made against video games -largely by people who'd never played them and wouldn't be able to if they tried- and poured it into their product like fuel into a Hell-fashioned engine.
Whilst it might be difficult for video game audiences of the present day to comprehend, Doom was considered one of the key horror titles of its era, boasting not only a story inolving Hell, demons and demonic possession but an atmosphere the like of which few had experienced in the medium before. In 1995, video games were still in that awkward, transitional phase between adolescence and early-adulthood, Western markets belaboured by assumptions that they were children's toys and could only be such, largely thanks to the manner in which predominant companies such as Nintendo chose to comport themselves.
The notion of horror in video games wasn't exactly new, but it was rare and still largely taboo. The likes of Mortal Kombat had already roused the ire of right-wing, reactionary journalism with its ridiculously absurd blood and gore, whilst the ill-fated “Full Motion Video” effort, Night Trap, had earned the entire industry severe reprimand and the earliest instance of regulation (though, in this case, that was largely due to ignorant, media-inspired hysteria). Other instances of horror in video games had certainly raised eyebrows, with the likes of Splatterhouse being heavily censored or banned entirely, numerous other titles that enjoyed releases in Japanese and European markets simply banned from sale in the UK and US.
But, the times, they were a changin', and video games were growing up along with their audiences.
Whereas many contemporary efforts attempted to by-pass the inevitable parental and media-driven back-lashes by apologising for themselves, attempting to demonstrate that they were not corrupting or perverse to the souls of the innocent, that there was some genuine ethical and perfunctory qualities to their work, ID Software went in the entirely opposite direction. A relatively small studio at the time, the design team took on board every hysteria and claim made against video games -largely by people who'd never played them and wouldn't be able to if they tried- and poured it into their product like fuel into a Hell-fashioned engine.
Video games are Satanic, a very common remonstrance from the Christian right of the era? Well, check this out, motherfuckers: A video game that not only directly involves Hell and its denizens, but actively incorporates genuine Satanic and occult imagery, from icons on architecture to runes and markings, pentangles drawn in human blood, human sacrifices littering every hallway, portals shaped like inverted crucifixes and everything in between.
Video games glorify violence? Woah! See the spray of blood from that demon as you empty both shotgun barrells into its snarling face? What about the howls of pain and sprays of pixellated vitae as you bring the chainsaw down on their grotesque, mutated skulls?
Video games are disturbing, amoral and evil? There is no sense of morality in Doom; the worst has already happened. Hell has infested the realms of humanity, humanity itself has become a puppet for demons to torture and mutilate as per their leisure. The only option is to ignore any semblance of doubt and plough through, slaughtering anything you might come across, anything even remotely tainted by the foulness seeping through the Hell Gate.
ID Software knew exactly what they were doing when they designed and marketed Doom; the aesthetic is less horror film and more Heavy Metal album cover, less designed to genuinely disturb than to satirise. In that, Doom cleverly anticipates every exaggerated, distorted criticism that might be levelled against it and lampoons them through sheer excess. It is not merely violent but, as the game's difficulty levels attest, “ultra violent!” It is not merely Satanic but Satanic to a degree whereby it becomes almost absurdist or surreal.
And, fascinatingly, it worked. Doom could have so, so easily been one of the earliest examples of a home-grown video game that found itself banned or pulled from shelves owing to backlash over its content, but that didn't happen. Certainly, the familiar, self-proclaimed bastions of conservative morality got rather hot and othered by it all, but even their response to the game was largely diminished in comparsion to titles such as the aforementioned Night Trap, which is so tame in every way compared to Doom, it would barely warrant a PG-13 rating these days. Part of that is not only due to the witty and pre-emptive satirisation the game presents (most of the frothing moral-minded in question would likely have been unable to appreciate it in any instance) but also the medium of its marketing:
Unlike most games before it, Doom became a child of the then-infant internet, its first chapter (a significant chunk of gameplay) free to download from ID Software's website, the rest available either on disc in stores, by mail order or via direct download. This was an entirely new distribution strategy in video gaming, and one that meant the game erupted first in niche circles, amongst tech-heads and video game fans, carving itself a significant niche before wider culture ever became aware of it (by which point it was far, far too late).
So, Doom dropped, or, more appropriately, erupted from the depths of Hades like some demonic leviathan, altering the landscape of video gaming forever with its thrashings and volcanic excretions.
But what was it like for us, who were children or teenagers at the time, who were unaware of the wider political and cultural factors at play and just saw it as a new and frightening phenomena?
The original Doom games rarely feature in lists or hierarchies of those that have been influential in horror markets. This is due to a number of factors, most notably the efflorescence of horror that occurred in its wake: barely a year later, we had Resident Evil. A short time after that, Silent Hill. In PC markets, the criminally under-appreciated System Shock, which took the base mechanics of Doom and reoriented them in a more concertedly horrific direction. In the wake of Doom, horror became an established genre in video games, whereas before it was either incredibly niche or entirely unheard of.
Doom exploded into a market where there was little like it, where we fragile and innocent little souls were still enraptured by the latter-day releases on our Sega Megadrives and Super Nintendos. We had genuinely seen nothing like it before, never encountered imagery of the type it contains or experienced atmosphere as it evokes. Everything about the game now is so enshrined within not only video game culture but culture in general, it's difficult to imagine a time before it, but those of us that were immersed in the medium back in 1995 remember well the cataclysm that rippled through the market when Doom hit, the seismic shifts that altered the topography of our world.
For those who know the original Doom titles from their more recent releases, it might be difficult to comprehend how frightening and disturbing the game actually was. Satanic and occult imagery wasn't entirely unknown within video games (certain micro-computer titles such as the works of Horrorsoft here in the UK and the Darkseed titles readily incorporated examples), but there was nothing that threw it in the player's face so consistently, that had entire levels and arenas shaped like pentagrams or inverted crucifixes, that boasted labyrinths or chambers strewn with the mutilated, the sacrificed, the suffering. Albeit crude to the present-day eye, with its pseudo-3D, its pixellated sprites and environments, we had seen nothing quite like it, nothing that immersed quite so completely. This was largely due to the fairly revolutionary first-person format, placing us behind the eyes of the Doom Marine so there's no distance between player and avatar: when the demons emerge from around darkened corners or teleport in before our eyes, it's our throats they leap for, our faces they start to gnaw on. The dissolution of distance created by the first-person format may seem like a negligible concept now, given that it has become an entire sub-genre in and of itself, but it was Doom that originally enshrined that format and made it so essential.
Part of Doom's peculiar horror lies not only in its imagery, which escalates as the game progresses (early levels are generally shorn of the occult and Satanic imagery that comes to dominate the latter chapters, favouring instead science fiction motifs and designs), but also in its utter lack of exposition or even, arguably, story. The game is subdivided into chapters, each one boasting a minor, tongue-in-cheek blurb that ultimately boils down to: “time to kick demon ass,” but beyond this, there is nothing in the way of narrative beyond what the levels imply. Beginning in the Mars facility where the extra-dimensional calamity has occurred (a gateway to Hell being ripped open by corporate shenanigans), early levels are laid out in a foreboding manner, the enemies scattered and largely isolated, consisting primarily of the various demonically possessed humans that will be encountered throughout. The game peppers the player with suggestions of what is happening in the form of visuals and symbols (it's possible to find areas where the corruption of Hell has seeped through, altering the architecture, the landscape etc, but nothing anywhere near as dramatic as what latter instalments would include).
Later chapters gradually escalate these factors, the machinery and industrial architecture gradually giving way to incongruous, archaic elements such as dungeons, castellations, labyrinths of volcanic rock, rivers of blood, lakes of toxic filth. The game balances these elements brilliantly, given the limitations of its engine, gradually introducing them to ramp up the player's own sense of dread and disturbia, until finally the Doom marine finds himself setting foot on the shores of Hell itself. These latter levels throw out subtlety and gradual escalation for gratuity, the onslaught of disturbing and distressing imagery, bizarre level design, feindish puzzles, death-traps and gauntlets quite beyond anything the player has experienced up to that point.
Beyond the imagery and atmosphere that the game exudes from every screen, there is often a sincere sense of anticipatory dread as the player navigates the darkened, tight-packed corridors, the distressingly open arenas and exposed chambers, waiting for the tell-tale grunt or growl of an emerging demon, the tortured cry of a possessed soldier. Each of the enemies has their own distinct warning cries, which are used as much for building terror as a tactical factor. Players will come to recognise the grunts, growls and hisses of particular demons, allowing them to best plan their strategies before diving in guns blazing. The various vocalisations also have the effect of inducing dread, especially when they derive from a particularly problematic foe or the enemy can't be seen. The hideous, spider-like hisses of the Cacodemons, the pig-like snorts of the “Pinky” demons, all serve to enhance the sense of threat and escalating dread, as do the various ambient sounds that litter the environments.
In terms of sound design, Doom was as revolutionary as it was in every other factor. Whilst it might seem crude to the point of minimalist now, little of the era boasted so much in the way of ambient or environmental cues, the mechanical whirring of doors, the opening of locks, the activation of traps, that often occur whether the player is present or not, serve to emphasise the ethos of these environments as more than merely video game arenas; as actual locales and work-places where people once operated. This is enhanced by the general layout and design of many earlier levels, which are designed to evoke the Martian facilities where the calamity originally took place. Players found themselves enraptured by these environments, by the dark and derelict ethos they draw, the sense as of something unholy seeped into the walls, swelling from the layers and levels below. The original Doom and its sequel stand in that regard as seminal examples of environmental storytelling within video games, quite apart from the FMV sequences, exposition, reams of text etc that would become standard in the years to follow.
The game does not waste time cueing the player to be scared; there are no orchestra stings, no environmental signs or signifiers (save the most subtle). Moments of horror occur spontaneously and often without warning: areas in which the lights will suddenly go out, walls audibly peel back and demons start to grunt and growl in hunger, in which the player will find the floor abruptly giving way beneath them, plunging them into strobe-lit, Dario Argento-style nightmare situations in which they must master their disorientation in order to survive the packs of demons that emerge through the shadows. Like all notable works of horror, the game doesn't allow itself the luxury of assumption, the emotions it induces various and distinctly flavoured, from the slow-building dread of its earlier chapters to the outright disturbia and surrealism of the latter, it subtly shifts from moments of atmospheric and environmental dread to symbolic disturbance, from aural suggestion to jump-scares and back again. The escalating Satanic imagery has the effect of suggesting a work that is truly tainted, investing the game with a spiritual dirt that latter instalments would acknowledge and run with to the Nth degree.
In terms of sound design, Doom was as revolutionary as it was in every other factor. Whilst it might seem crude to the point of minimalist now, little of the era boasted so much in the way of ambient or environmental cues, the mechanical whirring of doors, the opening of locks, the activation of traps, that often occur whether the player is present or not, serve to emphasise the ethos of these environments as more than merely video game arenas; as actual locales and work-places where people once operated. This is enhanced by the general layout and design of many earlier levels, which are designed to evoke the Martian facilities where the calamity originally took place. Players found themselves enraptured by these environments, by the dark and derelict ethos they draw, the sense as of something unholy seeped into the walls, swelling from the layers and levels below. The original Doom and its sequel stand in that regard as seminal examples of environmental storytelling within video games, quite apart from the FMV sequences, exposition, reams of text etc that would become standard in the years to follow.
The game does not waste time cueing the player to be scared; there are no orchestra stings, no environmental signs or signifiers (save the most subtle). Moments of horror occur spontaneously and often without warning: areas in which the lights will suddenly go out, walls audibly peel back and demons start to grunt and growl in hunger, in which the player will find the floor abruptly giving way beneath them, plunging them into strobe-lit, Dario Argento-style nightmare situations in which they must master their disorientation in order to survive the packs of demons that emerge through the shadows. Like all notable works of horror, the game doesn't allow itself the luxury of assumption, the emotions it induces various and distinctly flavoured, from the slow-building dread of its earlier chapters to the outright disturbia and surrealism of the latter, it subtly shifts from moments of atmospheric and environmental dread to symbolic disturbance, from aural suggestion to jump-scares and back again. The escalating Satanic imagery has the effect of suggesting a work that is truly tainted, investing the game with a spiritual dirt that latter instalments would acknowledge and run with to the Nth degree.
Whilst it's more commonly cited as an influence upon action games and first-person shooters, the legacy of Doom not only within video game horror but in broader mediums is evident: from the Wes Anderson cult classic, Event Horizon, which marries similar settings, situations and back mythology to a more concertedly horrific storyline, to the likes of direct by-products such as the iconic System Shock (the antecedent of the late epoch-making BioShock series), Doom boasts a genetic legacy that is now so enmeshed within popular consciousness, it is all but impossible to chart.
Far from merely influencing first-person or action games, Doom opened up the way for types of horror that had never been seen before, acting as a gateway to the efflorescence of entire horror sub-genres within video gaming. Doom demonstrated that video games were and are far from merely children's toys; that they can be works which appeal to adult tastes just as sincerely, allowing for the cultural shift that would define the years after.
Whilst it might seem crude and even adolescent in some respects now (the Satanic imagery is so overt and extreme as to be self-parodic, the violence so gratuitous as to be absurd), at the time it redefined where video games sat on a cultural level, opening up the market so that other, far more overtly horrific titles and franchises might follow: Resident Evil, Silent Hill, System Shock et al, all owe a debt to Doom, not only in terms of the techniques and imagery they exhibit but the fact of their existence. Without Doom's impact, they may never have occurred at all, or may have suffered significantly bowdlerised releases, owing to the market still labouring under the assumption of its primarily adolescent audience.
Now, we have entire franchises and sub-genres that Doom accounts as its descendents, from the seminal Outlast series to the sublime Amensia: The Dark Descent, from The Call of Cthulh: Dark Corners of the Earth to Half Life.
Whilst all of these later generation titles boast sophistication and subject matter far, far in advance of their antecedent, the raw, infernal DNA of Doom can still be felt pulsing throughout every vein, coursing through every corrupted fibre of their beings.
Is it still scary now? No, not really; video games have evolved incalculably since 1995. We have had revolutions and entirely new sub-genres of horror cropping up in various markets. Doom's peculiar brand of horror is of its time, an historical artefact, worthy of discussion in that regard, but something that is difficult to appreciate outside of context. The game still plays very deftly, being so simple, and is a lot of fun to navigate, but what was once densely atmospheric has now lost a great deal of its lustre, owing to the inevitable march of time, the numerous generations of children and grandchildren it has spawned.
But, for those of us who were its audience at the time? We'll always remember the first time we heard the “Pinky” demon slathering, the Cacodemon hissing, the Baron of Hell roaring its hunger for human meat, and might perhaps permit ourselves a shudder of nostalgia.
Far from merely influencing first-person or action games, Doom opened up the way for types of horror that had never been seen before, acting as a gateway to the efflorescence of entire horror sub-genres within video gaming. Doom demonstrated that video games were and are far from merely children's toys; that they can be works which appeal to adult tastes just as sincerely, allowing for the cultural shift that would define the years after.
Whilst it might seem crude and even adolescent in some respects now (the Satanic imagery is so overt and extreme as to be self-parodic, the violence so gratuitous as to be absurd), at the time it redefined where video games sat on a cultural level, opening up the market so that other, far more overtly horrific titles and franchises might follow: Resident Evil, Silent Hill, System Shock et al, all owe a debt to Doom, not only in terms of the techniques and imagery they exhibit but the fact of their existence. Without Doom's impact, they may never have occurred at all, or may have suffered significantly bowdlerised releases, owing to the market still labouring under the assumption of its primarily adolescent audience.
Now, we have entire franchises and sub-genres that Doom accounts as its descendents, from the seminal Outlast series to the sublime Amensia: The Dark Descent, from The Call of Cthulh: Dark Corners of the Earth to Half Life.
Whilst all of these later generation titles boast sophistication and subject matter far, far in advance of their antecedent, the raw, infernal DNA of Doom can still be felt pulsing throughout every vein, coursing through every corrupted fibre of their beings.
Is it still scary now? No, not really; video games have evolved incalculably since 1995. We have had revolutions and entirely new sub-genres of horror cropping up in various markets. Doom's peculiar brand of horror is of its time, an historical artefact, worthy of discussion in that regard, but something that is difficult to appreciate outside of context. The game still plays very deftly, being so simple, and is a lot of fun to navigate, but what was once densely atmospheric has now lost a great deal of its lustre, owing to the inevitable march of time, the numerous generations of children and grandchildren it has spawned.
But, for those of us who were its audience at the time? We'll always remember the first time we heard the “Pinky” demon slathering, the Cacodemon hissing, the Baron of Hell roaring its hunger for human meat, and might perhaps permit ourselves a shudder of nostalgia.
