Doom (2016 video game)

Doom (stylized as DooM, and later DOOM) is a video game series and media franchise created by John Carmack, John Romero, Adrian Carmack, Kevin Cloud, and Tom Hall. The series focuses on the exploits of an unnamed space marine operating under the auspices of the Union Aerospace Corporation (UAC), who fights hordes of demons and the undead in order to save Earth from an apocalyptic invasion.

The original 1993 Doom is considered one of the pioneering first-person shooter games, introducing to IBM-compatible computers features such as 3D graphics, third-dimension spatiality, networked multiplayer gameplay, and support for player-created modifications with the Doom WAD format. Over 10 million copies of games in the Doom series have been sold; the series has spawned numerous sequels, novels, comic books, board games, and film adaptations.

Doom is a 2016 first-person shooter game developed by id Software and published by Bethesda Softworks. It is the first major installment in the Doom series since 2004's Doom 3. Players take the role of an unnamed space marine, known as the "Doom Slayer", as he battles demonic forces from Hell that have been unleashed by the Union Aerospace Corporation within their energy-mining facility on Mars. The gameplay returns to a faster pace with more open-ended levels, closer to the first two games than the slower survival horror approach of Doom 3. It also features environment traversal, character upgrades, and the ability to perform executions known as "glory kills".

Doom was announced as Doom 4 in 2008, and that version underwent an extensive development cycle with different builds and designs before the game was restarted in 2011 and revealed as simply Doom in 2014. It was tested by customers who pre-ordered the 2014 Bethesda game Wolfenstein: The New Order and also by the general public. Mick Gordon composed the music for the game, with additional music contributed by Ben F. Carney, Chris Hite, and Chad Mossholder. The game also supports an online multiplayer component and a level editor known as "SnapMap", co-developed with Certain Affinity and Escalation Studios respectively. It was released worldwide on Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One in May 2016. A port for Nintendo Switch was co-developed with Panic Button and released in November 2017, and a version for Google Stadia was released in August 2020.

Doom was well-received by critics and players. The single-player campaign, graphics, soundtrack, and gameplay received considerable praise, with reviewers crediting the game for recapturing the spirit of the classic Doom games and first-person shooters of the 1990s, whereas the multiplayer mode drew the most significant criticism. It was the second best-selling video game in North America and the UK a few weeks after its release and sold over 500,000 copies for PCs within the same time period. A sequel titled Doom Eternal was released in March 2020.