Doom is a FPS released in 1993 and which experienced a huge success ever since. The game revolutionized a number of area of video gaming, such as multiplayer mode or the community aspect allowing to design your own part of the game. This phenomenon explains why gamers used to call any FPS a “Doom-like”.

Doom's main character, whose name is unknown is playable from a 1st person point of view (typical to FPS game type). This game is widely recognized for pioneering immersive 3D graphics. Its interactive violence has also made Doom the subject of much controversy reaching outside the gaming world.

With a third of the game (9 levels) distributed as shareware, Doom was played by an estimated 10 million people within two years of its release, popularizing the mode of gameplay and spawning a gaming subculture; as a sign of its effect on the industry, games from the mid-1990s boom of first-person shooters are often known simply as "Doom clones". According to GameSpy, Doom was voted by industry insiders to be the greatest game of all time in 2004.

Doom has a simple scenario, mixed with science fiction and horror. The backdrop of the game is only described in the manual, and history-game boils down to a few short messages displayed between two levels.

The player takes the role of a Space Marine without a name, who was deported on Mars after having assaulted a superior officer who had ordered his soldiers to slaughter innocent civilians. He is then forced to work for the Union Aerospace Corporation (UAC), a interplanetary military-industrial complex dealing with radioactive waste.

After Doom, id Software released Quake another game which was also an immediate success.