Deathmatch

From MonsterLANWiki

Deathmatch (abbreviated DM) is a widely-used gameplay mode integrated into first-person shooter computer games. The goal of a deathmatch game is to kill (or "frag", from the word fragmentation) as many other players as possible until a certain condition or limit is reached, commonly being a frag limit or time limit. Once one of these conditions is met, the match is over, and the winner is whoever has accumulated the most frags. It is based around the idea of player spawns, and weapon/item/pickup spawns in one play session.

The term "Deathmatch" was coined by game designer John Romero while he and lead programmer John Carmack were developing the LAN multiplayer mode for the computer game Doom. Games that had such gameplay features beforehand did not use the term, but later it gained mainstream popularity with the Quake and Unreal Tournament series of games.

Some games give a different name to these types of matches. For example, deathmatch in Halo is called "slayer" and in the game Perfect Dark it's called "combat simulator", but the underlying concepts are identical.

Variants

Team Deathmatch

As simplistic a variant as you get, in TDM (the acronym for Team Deathmatch) players are split into two or more teams which are usually color coded (blue, red, green, yellow, etc). The fundamental goal of laying waste to all who oppose you remains the same, however killing/damaging teammates usually negatively affects a players score.

In a tournament situation TDM should ALWAYS be played with Friendly Fire enabled to ensure that some modicum of skill is retained in the game. Without it there is nothing stopping teams from simply roving in packs with area affect weapons and spamming areas of the map without regard. Which is rarely how a game is intended to be played.