Doom Modding

Life lessons from shooting cacodemons.

Doomis back on people’s minds. The 2016 release was well received - even making its way onto the family friendly Nintendo hardware. In an era where the stamp of success is so often how “innovative” a game is - Doom 2016 didn’t just tear up the rule book, it took petrol and a lighter to it, and dared us to step out from behind cover and stare into the flames. Doom turned its back on the stale state of the modern FPS, and doubled down on the fast frantic action that blew so many minds, and frightened so many parents, back in the ‘90s.

The irony of course is that Doom 2016 was “innovative” precisely because it looked to its roots - and deftly reinterpreted them. It sounds easy, and in a way it is. The hard part is, it’s only possible to return to your roots when those roots are so damn healthy. Doom 2016 stares you down and shouts “f**k you, we had it right 24 years ago”, and it’s hard to disagree.

I’m Dean, and I’ve been invited here to write about Doom - the 1993 original - and as strange as it sounds, about a new map I’m making for it. Doom has been influential on my life, and a gateway into a career in game design that I am blessed to have.

But I have a confession. If you ask me I’ll tell you I’m a game designer - always was, always will be - but my career has taken me in some unexpected directions. I’ve spent a lot of time working for education companies as a “learning” or “content” designer. Even on the more traditional entertainment games, my roles have dealt with production

methodology and company organisation just as much as what you might consider “game design”.

A lot of that stuff might sound a bit boring, or maybe even unrelated. For me though, it’s a thrill to put my skills to use outside of entertainment. It makes me feel like an explorer, taking this knapsack of knowledge and stepping out beyond the horizon. Who knows what we’ll find.

When I think about games, I don’t think about PCs or graphics or rocket jumps. I think about ways of presenting problems, and methods of guiding people toward solutions. I believe that games are the most powerful tool we have for educating, motivating, providing meaning and promoting positive behaviour and critical thinking.

I believe that games will change the world and be everywhere (not just on screens!), and game designers and those with their skillsets and ways of thinking, will be sought after and in short supply - which is good news for anyone who calls themselves a game designer!

SO IF IT’S THE FUTURE OF GAMES THAT EXCITES ME, WHY AM I RETURNING TO THE PAST?

Before I thought so high-mindedly about games, I played them. I played a lot of them. But even more than that I tried to make them. In school I picked up enough knowledge to try and learn to code, and was capable of putting together Space Invader clones, as well as slightly more advanced Space Invader clones. The other avenue I spent time pursuing was modding, which provided a lot more freedom and the chance to use your favourite game as a starting point for whatever you’d like to create.

Doom was my jam, and when I think back to my teenage years, I think games, and I think Doom.

I want to take a moment, to, well, get dark. I hit my teens and was modding and playing Doom in the early two-thousands. Gaming wasn’t mainstream, but it was in the mainstream - a year or so earlier the Columbine massacre heralded in the modern era of American school shootings and the revelation that its perpetrators were avid fans and modders of Doom was lost on no one.

If my pontification of the future of games sounds fanciful, well, consider how far we’ve come, and the following statement:

I have been invited here to write about how Doom has influenced my life.

Twenty years ago there were two people most of the Western world knew of who had been “influenced” by Doom. Between the two of them they shot dead 12 people, before turning guns on themselves.

In 2017, in this same Western world, more people play games than not.

If I were to summarise the lesson we have learned or the progress we have made, I would say that people now understand that there is depth and complexity to games, beyond their occasionally demon-exploding face value.

Returning to Doom to make a new level, this lesson is as obvious as hell.

While I started spending my time making maps, my career has since given me the opportunity to generalise my game design skills. I now believe that design skills and ways of thinking can be used to achieve anything, whether that be making entertaining experiences that help us forget the world, to helping us organise and approach problems in order to save the world.

But is any of that true? Have I been developing and extending my skill set into new areas, or have I just been drifting further from my roots? Am I getting better at team organisation, but at the expense of more practical or baseline game design skills?

I’m making a Doom map to find out. The last time I opened a Doom map editor was over 10 years ago. If my understanding of myself, and the generality of design skills and thinking is correct, then I should today be able to design an amazeballs level, right? After all, all the time I’ve spent making educational content or thinking about how teams organise is all practice towards the same fundamental set of game design skills… right?

Can I apply all m y fancy five dollar words and high minded thinking to something as pure and visceral and downright fun to play as Doom?

That’s the journey I’m on. And I want to reflect on, and share some of the less obvious lessons that have helped me design a better Doom map.