235 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 J. Carroll et al. (eds.), Evolutionary Perspectives on Imaginative Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46190-4_12 “Unbreakable, Incorruptible, Unyielding”: Doom as an Agency Simulator Jens Kjeldgaard-Christiansen And in his conquest against the blackened souls of the doomed, his prowess was shown. The seraphim bestowed upon him terrible power and speed, and with his might he crushed the obsidian pillars of the Blood Temples. He set forth without pity upon the beasts of the nine circles. Unbreakable, incorruptible, unyielding, the Doom Slayer sought to end the dominion of the dark realm. So reads Book III of the Slayer’s Testament, which recounts the Doom Slayer’s frst bloody march on the legions of Hell. This tale is the backdrop of Doom (id Software, 2016), the reboot to the classic Doom video game series, which popularized the frst-person shooter genre. Since the release of the frst Doom game (id Software, 1993), the series has been mired in controversy for its ultraviolent gameplay (Markey & Ferguson, 2017, pp. 12–14), which pits the player against demonic invaders of all shapes and sizes. The reboot once again calls on players to kill demons as the Doom Slayer, and to take the fght to Hell itself. Many have heeded that call. Doom was a million-seller within months of its initial release on the PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 platforms (Mansoor, 2016). Of course, the Doom Slayer character would not revisit Hell for the hell of it. The fate of humanity is his motivation. What could possibly be the player’s? Why would anyone want to play a game with a title like Doom, and with gameplay beft- ting that title? In this chapter, I analyze Doom’s violent story world and gameplay from an evo- lutionary perspective and argue that the game’s appeal is that of an agency simula- tor: a digitized power fantasy. The player assumes the role of the superhuman Doom J. Kjeldgaard-Christiansen (*) Department of English, Aarhus University, Aarhus C, Denmark e-mail: jkc@cc.au.dk 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26