Doom Loses Its Edge

Photo: id Software

Once upon a time, Doom was the biggest villain in video games. Released in installments over the early internet beginning in 1993, the game about shooting tons of demons on Mars was a sensation like no other, popularizing the now-common first-person-shooter genre and marking a tectonic shift in the rapidly growing medium. This also made it a target: After reports that the perpetrators of the Columbine massacre were avid fans of the game, the moral panic over whether...