How Doom changed the world. In 1991 I worked on the game Command HQ with Dan Bunten, who later became Danielle Berry. ANYWAY, Command HQ is of historical importance, because as near as I can tell, it was the first real-time strategy game. Dan thought that since 65% of gamers had modems it would mostly be played head-to-head. It bombed. I think it had about 40,000 sales. Later I went to id Software and got to work on Doom. We all agreed at id that it was unlikely anyone would ever play Deathmatch, except in very small numbers. After all zero games had a robust head-to-head experience, and my personal time with Command HQ just hammered home the point. However, everyone at id loved Deathmatch, so we kept it in the game. We figured, even if no one else played it, WE could keep doing it. We were entirely wrong. I don't know if Doom's Deathmatch exploded because there were more networks to play on, or if Doom was so compelling everyone had to try it, or if a critical mass of modems had finally been reached. Maybe it was because Doom was a hit with the college kids, all of whom had ready access to networks. Anyway, Deathmatch skyrocketed and that's what made Doom famous really. We were by no means the first first-person shooter. But we were the first game to make the player-vs-player model universal. Today, a game that DOESN'T have a PvP has to explain why. I am extremely proud of that, even if it wasn't entirely our doing.