Myst and DOOM both came out in 1993.
Scroll to learn more about the fight between these two very different games, and their ongoing influence on the gaming industry.
Myst is an adventure puzzle game that was originally developed for Macintosh computers. Players have to solve puzzles to advance and slowly reveal the story. They are also given a choice in who to help as they progress.
Myst has consistently sold well since its release, and represented a shift in the perception of video games. It helped show games as an art form, and introduced a different sort of relaxed and idle gameplay.
DOOM is a first-person shooter game released for DOS, which was used on IBM PC products and is often associated with Microsoft computers. Players are a space marine who fights his way through a variety of undead and demonic enemies.
DOOM not only vastly improved the 3D model engine used for video games, but also made networked multiplayer games possible. It was the first game that allowed many people to play together from different locations, which revolutionized gameplay.
Both games used a first-person point of view, which had not been seen much in 1993. Both were also developed with an adult audience in mind, which was not new, but was not mainstream at the time. However, the feeling of playing the games is wildly different.
Players who loved Myst and wanted more games like it loved the “photo-realistic” nature of the graphics, the complexity of the puzzles, and the atmosphere created by this form of virtual reality. They felt that the future of gaming was in creating immersive worlds without the pressure of a linear story.
The argument against Myst accused it of being too static, with not enough action. Some went so far as to accuse the game of killing the entire adventure game genre.
Interestingly, the “fight” between Myst and DOOM seems to have come well after the fact. Both games were praised upon release, and spurred many copy-cats.
So which game won the cultural battle? It is hard to say.
At first glance, many would say that DOOM provided a model for video games moving forward. Games like Call of Duty and Borderlands certainly point that direction. This is probably the first thing that most self-identified gamers would think of as indicating a winner.
However, idle games and puzzle games are some of the most-played games in the world. Candy Crush Saga with its relaxing and addictive puzzle atmosphere is arguably a descendent of Myst. Most people who only play mobile games do not identify as “gamers” though.
Ultimately, the battle between Myst and DOOM highlights what Americans consider the canon of video games. A literary canon has been examined in-depth for many years. Video games, as a newer medium, have not had the same sort of interrogation. It is worth thinking about what we define as a video game, why that is, and who the primary players and developers of those games are.