So I was super interested in our conversation last week about the role of the user and the ability to use either cheat codes or command line arguments while playing the game to give the user god-like capabilities within the game’s universe. Mainly, we talked about the question “why would the developer include this?” . I’m going to try to answer this in my post today! (with some commentary from different presentations of DOOM touring Tuesday)
– “Why would the developer include cheat codes/command line arguments?”
For this one, I think we can largely take into account the aesthetic and tone of DOOM and its intended audience. As we talked about in Ben’s presentation about the aesthetics, the game was made for shock value and controversy (with some irony too which might be lost on its target audience).
so… yeah. With the heavy metal/satanic/gory atmosphere we have going here, the developers seem to be playing right into what their target audience would get addicted to. Another way the developers seem to play right into their target audience is with… well… the killing. The constant need to survive and kill your way through levels almost might play out like the teenage boy power fantasy, which i’m sure we’ll get into later in the class when we talk about the game and masculinity. But yeah this is where the cheat codes really amplify what the developers are trying to sell to their target audience: being a god, with complete control over the game. Even when killing your enemies, the game can make it a power fantasy OF a power fantasy by allowing you to type in some letters and instantly not be affected by enemies/have all the weapons you need. The obnoxiousness of the masculinity here is bumped up to 11, allowing players to feel like they could do whatever they wanted. But! In order for this “meta” power fantasy to work, the developers couldn’t just feed the information to its users, they had to find it out for themselves, and really feel like they unlocked some power or potential, which is (one of the reasons) why they made the cheat codes exist in this “word of mouth” culture. I think this can largely be said for other popular games with cheat codes “built in” – first person shooters and sandbox games like GTA.