Doom defines the first-person shooter and modding culture
Four programmers moonlighting on PC games invent an engine and give it away
Quick facts
- Studio
- id Software
- Key creators
- John Carmack, John Romero, Adrian Carmack, Tom Hall, Kevin Cloud
- Release
- 10 December 1993
- Innovation
- Networked deathmatch multiplayer and moddable game data
What happened
Programmers John Carmack and John Romero, artists Adrian Carmack and Kevin Cloud, and designer Tom Hall had been moonlighting on their own games while working together at a small Louisiana software publisher before forming id Software. Building on techniques John Carmack developed for faster PC graphics rendering, id released Doom on 10 December 1993, putting players in fast, dark, three-dimensional corridors fighting demons with an arsenal of weapons. The game supported networked multiplayer 'deathmatch' over local networks and modems, and id deliberately separated the game's data files from its executable code, making it straightforward for players to build and share their own levels and modifications.
Why it matters
Doom made the first-person shooter the dominant genre it remains today, and by opening the game to modification it created the PC modding culture that would later spawn entire genres, including the team-based shooter and the battle royale.
How we know
Journalist David Kushner, author of the id Software history 'Masters of Doom,' documented the team's origins and Carmack's rendering techniques for IEEE Spectrum, drawing on his own reporting and interviews with the founders; The Strong National Museum of Play's own Hall of Fame entry corroborates the game's release date and genre-defining status.
Sources
- IEEE Spectrum (David Kushner). The Video Game Software Wizardry of Id · Peer-reviewedspectrum.ieee.org · The domain "spectrum.ieee.org" is on our Peer-reviewed registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- The Strong National Museum of Play. Doom · Reputable sourcemuseumofplay.org · The domain "museumofplay.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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