Doom’s Developers Engineered a Smash Hit by Giving Their Game Away for Free
As the newly released Doom Eternal smashes records, discover how the original game became a phenomenon
Editor’s note: On March 20, id Software launched its latest video game, Doom Eternal, and set a new sales record for its long-running franchise. Here, we take a look back at the origins of Doom, the 1993 hit that defined the first-person shooter genre and introduced it to millions of gamers across the globe. In this adapted excerpt from his book Masters of Doom, journalist David Kushner explains how the id team combined groundbreaking technology, an innovative art style, and an unconventional distribution model to make the game a worldwide phenomenon.
Everything felt right for id Software in the fall of 1992. Their games Wolfenstein and Spear of Destiny had been the talk of the computer magazines. But now, everyone at id Software was ready to move on to their next challenge.
Id founders John Romero and John Carmack had been playing a long-running Dungeons and Dragons game with their team. Inspired by the demons Romero had summoned in the game, Carmack said: What if we had a game that pit demons against technology, where the player uses high-tech weapons to defeat beasts from hell? Romero loved the…
