Take-home points

• Doom is a great introduction to video games
• Gameplay is simple and easy to learn
• The difficulty can be adjusted to your abilities
• The first episode is free and publicly available
• There is a ton of fan-made content available for free online
• The software will run on just about anything

OK, so why Doom?

If you’ve heard of any PC video games in your life, there’s a good chance that they include The Sims, Minecraft, or Doom. Doom was released by ID Software in 1993, sparking a cultural phenomenon and quickly becoming one of the most influential games ever made. Doom popularized the first-person shooter genre and brought the medium further into mainstream culture.

So, why am I having you play a game that’s almost 30 years old?

Because I believe that setting up and playing Doom is one of the best ways to learn how to install, maintain, and play games on PC. Here’s why:

1. It’s simple

One of the big problems with getting into video games if you’ve never played before is that most games made within the last 20 years are designed with the assumption that you have played something similar. In-game tutorials and directions are cut to the bone to keep more experienced players from getting bored, and most game’s mechanics, control schemes, and game genres are derived from dozens, if not hundreds, of iterations over the history of the medium. As this process takes place over years of video game development, the result is a build up of jargon and genre conventions that make it increasingly difficult to jump in without having experienced the evolution of the medium. It’s like starting Westworld or Game of Thrones midway through a season; you’re so busy trying to figure out what’s going on that you can’t even enjoy the show.

As if that weren’t enough, the complexity of modern controllers and the control schemes that accompany them can be staggering for new players. The average controller has more than a dozen buttons and two control sticks, both of which are used simultaneously in most games.

This is partly why the originial 1993 Doom is such a good starting point. You don’t have to worry about years of built-up design cruft, because this game started it all. Note The game mechanics are simple: navigate the level, shoot anything that moves, find the exit sign, beat the level. Using the tutorials I’ve laid out here, your installation of Doom will use 6 buttons on your keyboard, plus a mouse. As you progress through the game, the levels steadily become more difficult, but you also gain access to new weapons that help you move forward, and there are plenty of options to modify the difficulty.

2. It’s free

Today ID Software is a large and successful video game development studio, owned and operated by an international publishing company, but back in the 90’s it was a group of less than a dozen guys publishing and distributing games on their own. In order to promote the release of Doom, the team offered the first episode (a collection of 9 levels named “Knee-deep in the Dead”) for free, and if you have access to a computer and an internet connection, it’s still free to this day. The full version of the game is available for a decent bargain, and frequently goes on sale. My tutorials here cover the installation of both the free and full versions of the game.

If you manage to play through the above and still crave more, ID Software also released a sequel, Doom II, and a collection of fan-made levels called Final Doom, both of which run on the same game engine as the original and can be played from the same installation (tutorials coming soon). And if that still isn’t enough, ID Software released the source code for Doom to the public under a General Public License in 1999, and fans have been creating levels and mods ever since, all of which can be downloaded and played for free (tutorial coming soon).

3. The software will run on just about anything

“Will it run Doom?” is a relatively obscure corner of the internet where people come together to try to get Doom to run on every computer they can get their hands on. Posted in just the last couple years are:

• a smart watch
• a treadmill
• a microwave
• and a voting machine
• My favorite is an ATM, but I couldn’t find the link.

The point is that you really don’t need to have a cutting-edge PC to play it. In fact, the open-source engine I use in my tutorials is available on Windows, MacOS, and Linux. If it’ll run on a microwave, it’ll run on your laptop.

4. It’s fun

I love Doom, and based on the way I talk about it, I wouldn’t be surprised if you thought I’ve been playing it since the 90’s, and that my glasses might be rose-tinted. The truth is, I played Doom for the first time two years ago when I was just starting my Postdoctoral studies, ~29 years old, after decades of playing more modern games.

This game holds up.

Now, I play through Doom 1 and 2 about once a year and I love every minute of it. Sometimes after a tough day, I’ll plug in some headphones, turn off the in-game music, and listen to a podcast or some chill lo-fi hip hop (music you can study to, you know what I’m talking about), and just play. I wouldn’t have put this much effort into this series of posts if I didn’t believe that tons of people who have never touched a video game in their lives would experience the same thrill and joy that I do when I play this game.

That being said, I know the violence is not everyone’s cup of tea, so I am currently testing out a few violence-free games for future tutorials. Expect more content coming soon.

If you have any questions or issues with the content on this page, you can reach out to me on twitter or via email.

Peace and happy gaming!

Note

Purists will make the case this isn’t exactly true, since Doom was heavily inspired both by multidirectional shooters (like Crystal Quest 1987) and first-person dungeon crawlers (the Wizardry and Might and Magic games of the 1980’s). Also, in 1991 and 1992, ID software made both Catacomb 3-D and Wolfenstein 3-D, both prototypical first-person shooters that clearly set the stage for Doom. However, neither of these games had anywhere near the cultural or technical impact of Doom. The genre may not officially start in 1993, but Doom is the spark that lit the fire.