Oh, and I definitely think ID has been trying to cater to them - the writing in the Doom Infinite trailer especially with its comparing of corporate sensitivity to the alien invasion of Earth. Really, the only FPS studio that goes out of their way not to be pandering to that crowd in some way is Machine Games, and they've got their own problems.
There's also that "calling them demons is an offensive term, call them mortally challenged" joke that borders on the transphobic jokes you see on 4chan and the like. I love Doom and on occassion make maps for the originals and did some modding for 3 way back in the day, but watching that gameplay footage was pretty sus and I'm not surprised alt-righters started harping on it -
here's what the neo-nazi sympathiser who develops Brutal Doom had to say about it. It's a masterstroke if you want Doom to be "shocking" again since no one cares about satanic imagery anymore and America's (the core market for most games, no point in pretending otherwise) religious landscape among young people has been
dropping over the years. Want to "offend" people and appeal to your core demographics (who are already buying the game) at the same time? Sneak in some dogwhistling. The ones who are into it will love it and you have enough plausible deniability, especially with Doom being such a fucking stupid game concept-wise, that any criticism can be brushed aside as "it's just a game about shooting demons" even among progressives. Especially since the targets of the jokes (trans community, immigrants in the case of that "melting pot" dialogue in the demo) aren't still 100% accepted even by #wokes in 2019.
