Logo
John Romero Headshot
Report a problem with this profile
[email protected]

John Romero        

Video Game Designer, Developer & Programmer

John Romero is an award-winning programmer and game designer whose work spans over 130 games. Romero is considered to be the "father of first-person shooters" having led the design and contributed to the programming and audio design of the iconic and genre-defining games Wolfenstein 3D, DOOM, and Quake.

Romero was also one of the earliest supporters of eSports and a professional-level DOOM and Quake player. To date, Romero has co-founded eight successful game companies including the likes of id Software, Gazillion Entertainment and most recently Romero Games in Galway, Ireland. He is considered to be among the world’s top game designers, and his products have won well over 100 awards. He is a completely self-taught programmer, designer, and artist. His memoir "DOOM Guy" was released in July 2023.

Speech Topics

Wolfenstein 3D Post-Mortem: Achtung!

John Romero will take the audience through the short timeline of creating this "watershed moment in gaming history," showing just how much happened during the game's development rollercoaster ride. Wolfenstein 3D showed the world that the PC could play a new kind of game that no other machine could replicate, a legacy that continues to this day.

Quake Post-Mortem: The End of the Original id

With the release of DOOM and DOOM II, id software were masters of mayhem, riding high and unstoppable. They would soon begin work on Quake, an ambitious truly 3D FPS that would seek, once again, to redefine the state of the art. Released in 1996, Quake introduced the world to 3D mouse look, 60fps 3D texture-mapped rendering with lighting, and internet multiplayer with a client/server architecture. With its release came the birth of eSports as clans and competitions sprung up worldwide. Over twenty years later, it is still acknowledged as one of gaming’s masterworks. In this talk, id co-founder and Quake designer John Romero takes the audience through the rollercoaster that was Quake’s creation and reveals why it brought about the end of the Original id.

A Lifetime in Games: The Past, Present and Future of the Game Industry

As a young child in Tucson, Arizona, young John Romero discovers the magic of arcades. Whenever he can, he drops his quarters into the machines and, to make the experience last as long as possible, he concentrates on being good, really good. By the time the family moves to Rocklin, California, his initials, “AJR”, are on the top of every machine’s leaderboard all over town. That love of games leads to a love for programming, and by the age of 11, Romero is making his first game. Nearly four decades later, he is still making them. From arcade to college mainframe, from the Apple II to the Apple iPhone, from Dangerous Dave to DOOM, Romero’s career has both followed and forged the industry as we know it. In this talk, Romero explores the industry through the lens of his career, past and present, and speculates on the its future.

The Early Days of Id Software

Programming Principles: As co-founders of id Software, John Romero and John Carmack created the code behind the company's seminal titles. The principles they defined through experience in id’s earliest days built upon one an

The Making of DOOM: A year of ripping and tearing!

“Does it run DOOM?” is the oft-heard phrase as it is the canonical first-port for any system, be it a toaster, touch bar or printer. Programmer, game designer, level designer and DOOM II final boss John Romero delivers a postmortem on the game showing rarely seen material, memorializing its immersive but nerve-wracking 3D environments, networked multiplayer deathmatches, demonic imagery and themes, Barney WADs, exploding barrels, and BFG 9000.

Related Speakers View all

More like John