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Doom Turns 25: The FPS That Wowed Players, Gummed Up Servers, and Enraged Admins (theregister.co.uk)
On December 10, 1993, after a marathon 30-hour coding session, the developers at id Software uploaded the first finished copy of Doom for download, the game that was to redefine first-person shooter (FPS) genre. Hours later IT admins wanted id's guts for garters. The Register: Doom wasn't the first FPS game, but it was the iPhone of the field -- it took parts from various other products and packaged them together in a fearsomely addictive package. Admins loathed it because it hogged bandwidth for downloading and was designed to allow network deathmatches, so millions of users immediately took up valuable network resources for what seemed a frivolous pursuit to some curmudgeonly BOFHs.
The game was an instant hit -- so much so that within hours of its release admins were banning it from servers to try and cope with the effects of thousands, and then millions of people playing online. It spawned remakes and follow-up games, its own movie (don't bother) and even a glowing endorsement from Bill Gates.
The game was an instant hit -- so much so that within hours of its release admins were banning it from servers to try and cope with the effects of thousands, and then millions of people playing online. It spawned remakes and follow-up games, its own movie (don't bother) and even a glowing endorsement from Bill Gates.
Don't forgot that Doom also gave us:
* Total Conversions or "themed" levels, such as Aliens, Barney, etc. /gamerule keepInventory true
* Mods -- the ability to change core gameplay rules. e.g. Minecraft allows "house rules" such as:
* In-game map which was also awesome. (Looking at you Vermintide 2!)
I'm reminded that the entire FPS genre seems to have regressed. This commentary of FPS map design 1993 vs 2010 succinctly summarizes the problem of how everything has being script / trigger driven. In some games the dam loading screen takes ages (Gran Turismo 6).
It is also pathetic that FPS no longer ship with map editors. Worse, DLCs only come with ~3 maps. Hell, even Age of Empires 2, a 19 year old game STILL has new maps being made. e.g. The "Nothing" theme is currently popular.
And then game devs wonder why no one plays their game after 5 years. /sarcasm But ooh, shiny!
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Enlightenment, noun and verb; The Journey is more important then the Destination of becoming aware of a higher perspective.