A high-minded goal like “expand the boundaries of the medium” doesn’t always mean forging ahead in crazy new unknown directions. Sometimes it means examining lost evolutionary lines in game design – picking up ideas that were abandoned long ago and seeing if there’s any new life in them. The game I keep coming back to in this regard is Doom. Not the 2004 reboot, but “Classic Doom”: Doom 1 and 2, Final Doom, the Master Levels – and its vast universe of user-made content. What can it teach us today?
For all you nerds who spent hours playing Doom
Jean-Paul LeBreton, a level designer for BioShock 2, analyzes the original Doom.