Doom ‘needs to prove itself all over again’

Bethesda is aware that players will need to be convinced that the Doom IP remains as relevant today as it was ten years ago.

The IP’s latest resurrection is expected to be detailed later this month, but with the last game in series being 2004’s Doom 3, Bethesda’s VP of marketing Pete Hines told MCV that the company can take nothing for granted.

We view that similarly to Wolfenstein, because it’s been so long since the last Doom game,” he said. We are going in as if we need to prove ourselves all over again. We have no free passes. Nobody will assume this is going to be awesome.

We are going to have to prove that this is something that’s going to be fun and different that you need to pay attention to. That has to be our default position, we can’t be: ‘It’s Doom. Of course you’re going to play it.’ But that just makes us work harder.”

Of course, Bethesda has just experienced this exact same thing with Wolfenstein – and by all accounts that was a big success.

It went really well,” Hines added of The New Order’s reception. If there is one disappointment it’s the number of people who are saying: ‘I am surprised how good it is.’ Because I tried for a very long time to tell people that this is not just another shooter. It’s good that it was better than people expected, but I’m like ‘I did tell you. I wasn’t bullshitting.’

Let’s be honest, it was a bit of a tarnished brand. And we knew that. The last couple of games were either ‘ok’ or ‘not great’. It wasn’t a franchise where people were desperate for the next one. Wolfenstein isn’t Uncharted. We knew this would take some explaining. But developer Machine Games has now untarnished the IP.”