When Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails emerged with The Downward Spiral in 1994, the record was seen as an exercise in studio and computer wizardry. Much of the technical virtuosity demonstrated on that record can be chalked up to video games.
As Trent was working on the album, he’d decompress at the end of the day by playing lots and lots of video games. He was particularly infatuated by a game called Doom, which is probably the most influential first-person shooter game of all time. Everyone got so deep into the game, its images, and its characters that some of it seeped into the songs on the album.
Later, when Trent’s obsession with Doom became known, he was asked to write the soundtrack for the game Quake.
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