It really was all about the Shock Value. Generate some fluffy discussions and there you go.
It was also playing into the hands of two very troll heavy topics: Games as Art - how far can and should games go, as well as the violent games discussion. If that game had seen the light of day and some game-repressive countries media found out about it, it would have just been another nail to the coffin. Think Australia or Germany where politics are very eager to banhammer games.
Concerning the support of games, I've tried to do so in the past. I went on advertising rampages for some Roguelikes, I tried to be as active as possible in the respective forums, intentionally bumped release threads on other sites with sometimes really stupid questions, just to get it back up at the top for folks to see the game release/update. But alas, a single person can't generate enough "feedback points" to keep projects alive. And lately I've lost all my drive as well: Why bother with feedback in a community where the status quo seems paramount?
As a player, roguelike projects often look dead to me. There's a release, some short aftermath if you're lucky and the project then goes silent for several years. You don't hear anything, not even rumors. It's kinda like the Developer(s) fell off the earth. I never know whether its finished, abandoned or simply takes its healthy time for progress. On the flipside, too much progress in too short a time puts me off trying a rl because it gives me the feeling that by the time I'm done downloading, it's already outdated. But luckily that's just me. I don't know how others feel about this.
About DoomRL:
Oh dear. There it goes again.
