Word: virtual
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Before Doom most games took place in flatland: they were two-dimensional, like Donkey Kong or Pac-Man. But Carmack figured out a way for the cheapo, underpowered personal computers of the day to create depth, to render three-dimensional spacea miniature theater, a virtual dreamworld in which the player could move around at will. "You could have fun with those old games, but it was more of a detached, abstract sort of fun," Carmack says. "But when you take the exact same game play, put it in the first-person perspective, and you go around a corner, open...
...generation is defining itself through virtual combat, without the casualties or consequences of World War II and the Vietnam War. And who knows? Maybe one day we'll figure out less destructive ways to have fun in Carmack's dreamworld. After all, it would be a shame if, having invented cinema, we made only war movies. Carmack might even be the one to broker that virtual peace. He has a life outside Doomhobbies, charities, not to mention a wife who's eight months pregnant. He doesn't spend much time gaming anymore. But he isn't giving...
...about it, but five years after Columbine, it is no longer possible to deny that Americans passionately enjoy pretending to shoot one another with guns, and fears that such a pastime would give rise to a generation of spree killers have not borne fruit. Ignoring the mass appeal of virtual violence seems as pointless as wagging a finger at those darn long-haired rock 'n' rollers...
...first glance at a computer screen running Doom 3 is confusing to the eye: the illusion the game creates is so realistic. The secret? Light. Carmack has spent the past four years painstakingly studying optics, and he has figured out how to make photons bounce around in a virtual space in much the same way that they do in the real world. Suddenly, pebbly surfaces cast pebbly shadows. Air ripples from the heat of a broken steam pipe. There is a crispness to details, a weight and solidity to objects and figures, a lifelike sheen to surfaces in Doom...
...virtual worlds go, Doom 3 is big. To play through it just once, never mind multiplayer matches and replay time, takes upwards of 30 hours. (Take that, Peter Jackson!) Despite its size, it is meticulously detailed. The monsters of the original Doom were barely animated blobs of pixels; this time the game is populated by a gallery of fascinating grotesques and gargoyles created by Kenneth Scott, id's soft-spoken lead artist, whose work references Francis Bacon and cheesy fantasy artist Frank Frazetta with equal reverence. The ghouls are excruciatingly detailed. As you're being devoured by a swarm...