first successful game «Wolfenstein 3D»—do you think they called the prosecuting attorney? No, they did not. In fact, as a feature in the next releases, they provided users with the possibility of creating their own ‹user-edited versions› of the game! David Kushner describes the consequences in his book Masters of «Doom,» a biography of sorts of id Software. The protagonists on the scene are John Carmack and John Romero, the founders of id Software and a kind of Lennon/McCartney of computer games: «Hey,» Romero told Carmack one day at the office, «Here is something you have to see.» He booted up «Doom»—or at least what was supposed to be «Doom»—on his computer. Instead, the trumpeting theme of the Star Wars movie began to play. The screen was filled, not with «Doom»’s familiar opening chamber, but instead a small, steelcoloured room. Romero hit the space bar, and a door slid open. «Stop that ship!» a voice commended from within the game. Carmack watched as Romero jolted down the hall past bleeping droids, white storm troopers, laser guns, the deep bellows of Darth Vader. Some hacker had completely altered «Doom» into a version of Star Wars. «Wow,» Carmack thought. «This is gonna be great. We did the Right Thing after all.»[3]

If a defining scene were sought for artists that deal with computer games, then this might be it. And if a defining scene were sought for the considerably larger community of gamers who, day after day, spend their free time modifying their favourite games according to their own taste and generating their own versions—then this is also probably the one. «Doing the right thing»—in this connection, meant not taking his own creation «Doom» too seriously, but instead offering other hackers the opportunity to modify the game as they see fit; or rather paradoxically, taking his own cultural product «Doom» just seriously enough so that hackers were offered an opportunity to modify the game as they pleased. With «Doom,» a medium developed out of a game, an opportunity to create one's own worlds. With «Doom,» id Software put a potent piece of software for creating three-dimensional spaces into the hands of its customers. Of course, in 1994, there might have been methods by which better 3D simulations could be generated on PCs than «Doom.» But as easily as this? This was a Shooter game, which, because of its violence, immediately found a place of honour on a German government list