Doom Musings: The Mockaward and jokewads in general

So my last Doom Musings post has to do with the Worst Wad Cacoward, which naturally has been discontinued due to, well, you probably can guess why. Should I pay attention to the Mockaward category? The wads that are made as crummy jokes and in general were just things that the writers of the Cacowards found funny at the time? Jokewads are incredibly fickle, because apart from the joke the substance you find in the jokewads is fairly minimal. The Mockaward, like many others, has been discontinued due to the lack of actual funny jokewad material (and possibly those Terrywads that the creators of those things try to put off as jokes themselves, since they try hard to be funny but are completely unfunny).

2004's Mockaward was given to Doomworld Forums 3, made by some anonymous creator who basically made something with basic ZDoom scripting. It deals primarily with Newdoom but is fairly standard overall in terms of quality.

2005 actually made a legitimate wad the Mockaward, perhaps because of the complete lack of actual jokewads. Kama Sutra made it based off of that last level alone, although the name of the wad is another thing to take into consideration.

2006 tells us that maybe jokewads really are dying out? Seeing as how one doesn't make the cut for straddling the line between joke and worst wad, while another has an unfunny premise, they awarded How Not To Be Seen as the winner. Or so you'd think? As Xaser ended up hijacking things with TurboCharged ARCADE! One of the few gems of the ZDoom scripting era with weird mini-scenarios, sped-up monsters and weapons, and killing the player upon succeeding. Such strangeness.

2007 gave us It Only Gets Worse, by the same author as How Not To Be Seen. Several weird ass levels all made in some weird fun. This was accompanied by the unfunny stuff that seemed to have been released during the same year (after all, this was the year Glassyman got the worst wad cacoward).

2008 gave us the legendary Community is Falling 3, a fantastic megawad with lots of appeal, decent in-jokes throughout Doom community, PO'ed weapons and monsters, extremely tanky bosses, and an overall interesting game system. Through all the jokes this manages to be one of the most competent games ever created and probably the truest winner of the Mockaward ever given.

Sadly this of course means that no other wad can outmatch CIF3 in Mockaward status, as it seems that jokes are dying out. Killing Adventure was the winner of 2009's mockaward, almost entirely on the premise of being "so bad its good". It was an interesting exercise in dumb concepts and as dumb as the creator was in making it it proved to be a cult classic for a game that is pretty much in cult classic status.

2010 was when they attempted to retire the Mockaward, but this was saved at the last minute by a last-day release of the TurboCharged ARCADE sequel. Still funny, still turbocharged.

2011 was a temporary retirement of the award, but 2012 renewed things with Call of Dooty. It plays homage to the modern FPS, as well as action movies, honestly this thing has revived the Mockaward for what it held in comedy and gameplay.

2013 went with an actual gameplay mod called Extreme Weapon Pack, an excellent dose of complete sarcasm. Weapons that blow you across the room, trying to get that shotgun to stop being rusty, cleaning a pistol or a nail, and a goddamn toothbrush weapon. It actually has to be seen to be believed.

It's kind of strange that the Mockaward still manages to survive almost entirely because of how perception of jokewads have been. Earlier jokewads were "make a level but make it stupid fun with a few scripting", then they come up with stranger jokes and a weird-ass weapon pack. 2014 gave way to Brutalist Doom, something that takes art in the form of a joke. Just imagine a bastardized Doom in every aspect and you got it. Hell, they even had runner-ups for the damn award in WOOO 2 (just a megawad of silliness) and Laundry 2 (something of an attempt to spook or something). Yeah.

2015 had Instadoom taking the whole damn world by storm. I'm not kidding, it really did. Something so basic as to having social media incorporated into the game, with "filters" that change the way your game looks as well as the infamous selfie stick mod. Made entirely for fun.

Ludicrium, I believe, is the last of the Mockaward winners, made in 2016. It's oddly enough, a jab at critics of slaughterfests by making it all about slaugtherfest gameplay. Many other wads actually tried to compete with this one (100,000 Revenants for instance), but this was made especially for the purpose of jabbing. Jab away.

Finally 2017 shows the real obituary for the entire thing, as not only has the ethos, pathos, and logos all changed each year on what truly constitutes a Mockaward winner, which explains why it would be discontinued. Sure enough, some of these sure got the mainstream attention despite being one-off jokes, but perhaps there needed to be more room for all the good stuff to be shown. That being said, the Mockaward is now rebranded as Machaward, for stuff that is unusually creative. It's a cool segue, going from joke-y stuff to more interesting and unordinary creations.

Oh well, might as well talk about my opinion on jokewads that I remember. Some of the earliest jokewads from before Doomworld Forums 3 are stuff still in my mind. I can remember when Paul Corfiatis made New Adventure, a strange and notable journey that amounted to just defeating a creator's head. Yep. There's Big Crappy Shit Megawad (yes that's the name), another "intentionally bad" megawad but without anything of basic interest. Some would say DOOM JR. is a jokewad, filled with lots of newbish quality. The one that comes to my mind first actually is 1337.wad. It pretty much predates Killing Adventure especially given the rather odd humor you can find in the textfile, as well as the levels that seem stupidly impossible because the creators saw fit to throw cyberdemons all around levels. Not to mention 4 Ball of Hell levels that are the exact same. Many of these jokewads have lost their luster in the modern age, but in any case, you have to experience them to understand what and perhaps why they were even made. The age of awarding jokes is over though.