DOOMed to be Controversial Forever

[briankoontz]

The purpose of "Doom is controversial" for gamers is to make the other side appear to be lunatics. Zero serious human beings in my experience have been concerned with Doom over it's violence. There's been much more concern over loss of work productivity back when Doom was popular.

Gamers themselves fuel the "controversy" surrounding Doom out of a longstanding desire to not want to analyze games - rather exploit the most ludicrous attacks on games to put themselves in the best light. Much like fans of Dungeons and Dragons liked to bring up the "D&D is satanic" media hype to show how stupid the other side is and in contrast how level-headed and justified they themselves are (and by extension D&D itself and their playing of it).

The result of all of this is as one would expect - a dearth of actual analysis of games in any kind of serious manner but a plethora of "debate" between all-too-clever non-serious gamers (who dominate gamer culture) and delusional, poorly articulated, or attention-seeking media monsters, who would have been shut down far easier if gamers themselves hadn't encouraged them.

And because gamers themselves sought to avoid any serious analysis of games (perhaps out of insecurity of what that might uncover), the door is always open for attacks on games, from the blame-game following school shootings to Jack Thompson, to the modern confusion and fear about Anita Sarkeesian and her "attacks?" on games and gamers. Gamers never are willing to own up to the role that they themselves play in allowing this to happen.

The gamer mantra has long been "shut up and game", or "just play", as if games are some kind of miraculous form of innocent goodness that seeps into people and causes them to emit rainbows of joy. Like any fundamentalist religion, the result is blindness.

 

[Sylveria]

The purpose of "Doom is controversial" for gamers is to make the other side appear to be lunatics. Zero serious human beings in my experience have been concerned with Doom over it's violence. There's been much more concern over loss of work productivity back when Doom was popular.

Gamers themselves fuel the "controversy" surrounding Doom out of a longstanding desire to not want to analyze games - rather exploit the most ludicrous attacks on games to put themselves in the best light. Much like fans of Dungeons and Dragons liked to bring up the "D&D is satanic" media hype to show how stupid the other side is and in contrast how level-headed and justified they themselves are (and by extension D&D itself and their playing of it).

The result of all of this is as one would expect - a dearth of actual analysis of games in any kind of serious manner but a plethora of "debate" between all-too-clever non-serious gamers (who dominate gamer culture) and delusional, poorly articulated, or attention-seeking media monsters, who would have been shut down far easier if gamers themselves hadn't encouraged them.

And because gamers themselves sought to avoid any serious analysis of games (perhaps out of insecurity of what that might uncover), the door is always open for attacks on games, from the blame-game following school shootings to Jack Thompson, to the modern confusion and fear about Anita Sarkeesian and her "attacks?" on games and gamers. Gamers never are willing to own up to the role that they themselves play in allowing this to happen.

The gamer mantra has long been "shut up and game", or "just play", as if games are some kind of miraculous form of innocent goodness that seeps into people and causes them to emit rainbows of joy. Like any fundamentalist religion, the result is blindness.

There's so much irony and ignorance in this statement it's hard to pick a place to start.

Has controversy, especially by games like DOOM, been exploited for marketing gain? Of course, this is not a secret, unless you're some all-too-clever non-serious gamer. Have people had actual concerns about DOOM's violent content... Yes? Your personal, anecdotal evidence is as valid as my own, who went to a school where, post Columbine, even talking about video games got you a meeting with the guidance counselor just to make sure you had no ideation of shooting up the place. So, either you are too young to have experienced the fear and fervor of stuff like DOOM caused in the average person during the media fear campaign, or you're too old and were isolated from it. And even if you are/were, you're not to old or young to have not seen things like New Town calling for a public burning of violent games and people claiming GTA5 needed to be taken off shelves cause it encouraged violence against sex workers. Tell me, how is stuff like that fueled by gamers who don't want to analyze games? What benefit is that to those supposed people? None, your claim is demonstrably wrong.

Second, There's tons of analysis of gaming from within and without the culture, both technically, thematically, and philosophically. That analysis spans the breadth and width from one extreme to the next from "How GTA can teach you how to be a more moral person" to "OMG GTA IS MAKING OUR KIDS KILL ALL THE WOMEN EVERYWHERE RIGHT NOW!" There's been public discussion, scientific analysis, cultural examination. Its been done to fricken death. Have you just been ignoring it all to maintain your decades old view that gamers and games are just kids and kids toys? The fact you'd even allude to that certainly brings your "gamer cred" in to question. Additionally, trying to imply that people like Anita are not attacking the medium is also willfully ignorant or a huge issue of confirmation bias. She is, that's something else that's been examined to death. It's not "gamers" encouraging her and her kind, its "academics" and SJWs who think that everything is racist and sexist and trasphobic and whatever the heck other buzzword, that have taken control of the media and will blow everything, real or imagined, in to a huge story and push that narrative. Why do you think "gamers" had to "die" last august? Because they're trying to lay the ground work to make gaming their social justice propaganda tool and you can't do that if the people making the games know that "gamers" are still the vast majority of their audience, and when that utterly failed, they went with social media terrorism by using public shaming and threats of doxxing and possibly physical, financial, or professional harm to keep people in the industry from speaking up.

The "Just play vidya games!" mantra is not a cry to not analyze the more robust aspects of video games, which, again your utter and willful ignorance, which is painfully ironic from someone talking about fundamental religion and blindness, is showing. No, it's request for people to develop, buy, and play games how and why they want and appreciate/criticize gaming for what it is and what it means, both good and bad. It's a direct condemnation of the 20year old viewpoints and psuedointellectual attitudes like what you've demonstrated here that choose to only look at the negative, or, even worse, look at imagined slights carefully constructed by using miscontext and lies like individuals such as Sarkeesian are doing.

 

[kimiyoribaka]

Am I the only one who read this article feeling like it was about a different game?

I always saw Doom's main achievement being in the atmosphere and the addition of the third dimension. Remember that Doom was the one where they added height to each section of the floor and allowed the lighting to change both in response to triggers and in response to guns. As a result, it also had better ways of forming challenge beyond just putting guards around corners and behind doors (looking at you wolf3d). I would say Doom actually was a step away from twitch gameplay and more toward difference in kind.

Also, I don't understand the mention of "agency". Doom was a bunch of key-based scavenger hunts scattered along a straight line.