The first chapter traces DOOM’s lineage, starting with the dawn of the First Person Shooter genre, with the 1973 Maze War and 1974 Spasim. It was one of the first games to take advantage of Internet distribution channels, and a focal point for discussion of videogame violence. It begins with a brief introduction wherein Pinchbeck recalls his own experiences playing DOOM as a teenager, and argues that DOOM’s legacy ranges Half-Life and Call of Duty to Portal and Mirror’s Edge. The book consists of about 170 pages, and sixteen generally short chapters. It is an appropriate subject, then, for the University of Michigan Press’ Landmark Videogame series, and for Dan Pinchbeck’s book, DOOM:SCARYDARKFAST. And while the book occasionally seems uncertain of its intended audience, in general, it is an excellent study of DOOM and what the game means for the first person shooter genre at large. It pioneered the first person shooter genre, it popularized the shareware method of distribution, and, perhaps most significantly, it created a gamer culture, as its multiplayer brought people together in attempts to shoot each other to pieces. There are a great many videogames that can justify some claim or other for being seminal works that changed the course of the game industry, but id’s 1993 DOOM makes a better case than most. All this and a chaingun-what more can you ask?” (1) – Dan Pinchbeck DOOM: SCARYDARKFAST Hangar It is about a controversial, hyperviolent, scary, funny, exciting game that manages to be both profoundly, self-congratulatory dumb and exceptionally clever at the same time.
“This is a book about the most important first-person game ever made, about the blueprint that has defined one of the most successful genres of digital gaming. He is also sad no one has yet submitted a review of McKenzie Wark’s Gamer Theory. Michael Hancock is a PhD candidate at the University of Waterloo, and book reviews editor at FPS.
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