Doom Is The Only Video Game Named An American Cultural Landmark

It's not often that a mainstream publication not focused on gaming or PC hardware highlights the cultural significance of Doom, but The Washington Post has done exactly that, The WP named Doom the only video game in its list of "The 25 most influential works of American culture."

The list also includes songs like The Star-Spangled Banner and novels like Moby Dick. Doom may not seem to fit with the other prestigious picks on the list, but knowledge of its cultural and commercial impact easily justifies its place.

For The Post's part, Doom is recognized for its groundbreaking 3D graphics, self-published nature, and spawning of user-generated content (UGC, or mods) "years before anyone had a name for it." The Post also highlights facts like Doom being installed on more PCs than Windows 95 for a time, and Doom II being utilized to train Marines. It also briefly mentioned how Doom was scapegoated in the aftermath of the Columbine High School shooting, but acknowledged that, like with music, these moral panics were largely undeserved.

What an incredible honor, and DOOM is the only video game on the list! Congrats to DOOM devs, players, modders, and the entire games community. This one is for all of us. Thanks @GenePark @washingtonpost! pic.twitter.com/AIu0Bphs3i

— John Romero 🤘🏽 (@romero) July 15, 2026

Doom designer John Romero was very enthused to hear the news.

The timing of this coincides with the release of Doom The Dark Ages' Revelations DLC this month, which also coincided with mass layoffs at id Software. Earlier this year, the Library of Congress added Doom's soundtrack to its catalog, which is another strong endorsement for Doom's cultural relevance in American history.

From my perspective, Doom's continues relevance also stems from its community's penchant to create unexpected ports of the game, including absurdities like keycap Doom and a Sega Genesis port. Commercial ports of the time were also fairly interesting, with the PlayStation 1 providing one of the first great Doom console ports after earlier versions were nerfed by technical limitations.

If any video games are worthy of being praised for their historical impact, Doom easily tops the list. I see why The Washington Post highlighted it. Beyond everything already mentioned above, there's also the fact that its engine served as the predecessor to id Tech 1, which was used for Quake. The lineage of id Tech is staggering for its impact across modern games, with each new iteration being more capable and advanced. But none of that happens without Doom, and gaming would undeniably be vastly different without it.