John Romero, the Man Behind the Hype

rockstarenvy writes "In a recent interview with the Escapist, Russ Pitts reveals a lot about who John Romero really is. As Romero puts it: 'After 10-plus years of reading about yourself, all the good and bad, it all just becomes irrelevant after awhile. I know what I'm capable of doing and the people I work with are united in our mission, and they treat me just like they treat each other. The whole fame thing doesn't come into play when we're in development, because we're all a team. I know some of my guys read a lot of forums and sometimes they'll see some remark that someone clueless made and show it to me, chuckling because they know the truth of who I am and how I work. The media personification of John Romero is not who John Romero is.'"

Re:Who the hell....

[Sv-Manowar]

Co-Founder of id Software and lead designer on Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake. He left and then made Daikatana and didn't do that much until he joined Midway in 2003, left again in 2005 and is currently making his own MMOG. He's pretty legendary for having the domain name rome.ro along with having a Ferrari that you could tune via USB while driving.

Re:Who the hell....

[basscomm]

No, that wasn't him. You're thinking about Caesar Romero [imdb.com].

John Romero [wikipedia.org] is a video game designer/producer/programmer who gained a degree of infamy [penny-arcade.com] by designing and producing Daikatana [wikipedia.org].

Re:Forget him... Killcreek

[DarkHelmet]

Only on slashdot would gawking at a woman's breasts be considered "informative".

Besides, it kind of takes away from her being a level designer, game designer, and overall nice person.

But since Slashdot revolves around Self Indulging (tm), I might as well Karma whore and get noticed:

http://steviekillcreekcase.tripod.com/ [tripod.com]

Look everybody! I can be "informative" too!

Educational MMO

[Anonymous Coward]

In a recent forum post [http://www.rome.ro] John Romero revealed the premise of his 'top secret massive multiplayer online game' admist much heckling on the part of the forumers, many of whom bringing up dissatisfaction Daikantana with harsh invectives citing 'Masters of Doom'. In response, Romero 'angrily' composed a reply which revealed the overall direction of his massively multiplayer video game. However, quickly realizing his error his forum post was deleted approximately 10 minutes after it was posted.

In short, John Romero intends to build an educational Massive Multiplayer Environment. Taking the baton from the economic complexities of Eve Online and the creative emergences in Second Life, Romero boldly asserts that there lies a vast landscape untouched by the industry involving human to human adaptability in a loosely scripted goal oriented scheme. Romero continues and suggests that this adaptability has been either exploited, again citing recent self-replicatining scripts [second life] and Eve Online's Great Heist, both of which are perfectly legitmate under the games rules not as cheap exploits but as fundamental inevitabilities in a human to human environment. Romero also contends that certain companies have gone out their the way to stifle such occurances as to deter unfair gameplay. Romero further cites Blizzards Efforts to 'balance' World of Warcraft by further nerfing weaponry and attacks, that are testaments to human enginuity: 'Has Star Trek taught you guys anything?!".

Romero believes that the solution to the inevitablity of human innovation is to allow it to unravel itself onto the short comings [of math and science] in the American educational system. In oddly worded rant, Romero outlines the general storyline and the goals of the game:

1. The story takes place in a distant future where a human mothership carrying thousands has crash landed onto a desert planet [think Dune], The ship has broken into separate self-sustaining pieces, in these pieces reside a part of the AI [think Outpost/Alpha Centauri]
2. the inhabitants surrounding these ships ascribe to certain futuristic disciplines revolving around [Chemistry, Mathematics, Physics, Biology]
3. a fifth discipline (Computer Science) wanders between these settlements as neutrals with the goal of reuniting the AI
4. Separate AI's 'nurture' the individual player, awarding players with modules that can only be unlocked by answering questions regarding modern day sciences and mathematics.

   

Re:A lot of bashing

[Jett]

If that is true it didn't happen until later. When I visited Ion Storm Romero introduced me to every single person who worked there, he knew each of them by name and knew exactly what they were working on. This was before the big remodel was done so they were still on the temp floor, perhaps things changed when they moved. I spent severl hours there hanging out with Romero and he seemed like a genuinely nice guy, not at all like the egomaniac he is portrayed as. What I saw of Daikatana looked badass, but remember this was before Quake2 was even out - they were still using the the 256 color palette Q1 was originally limited to, each section of the game had it's own palette (3 or 4 total). I don't remember who the programmer I met was but as I recall he had just hacked 16-bit color into the engine the day before I got there. The good old days! After Ion Storm I got the id tour courtesy of American McGee - I still have the q1 expansion pack he gave me from their goodie room, I wish I had the forsight to one of their classics and get them to all sign it :(

Re:His reputation precedes him.

[Paralizer]

In the book "Masters of Doom" [amazon.com], it was said that Romero really did not want to do the ad. Mike Wilson created the ad told him it would go over well, but Romero was uneasy about printing it.

From the book (page 239)

Earlier in the year, on the suggestion of Mike Wilson, Romero had agreed to an ad that would emulate the cheeky bravado of deathmatch smack-talk -- the very language Romero had helped define. But when he saw the words in print, he felt a tinge of hesitation. "Are you sure about this?" he asked Mike.
"Yeah," Mike said, "don't be a pussy."
Romero agreed. The ad ran in all the major gaming publications in April with simply these words written in black against a red background: "John Romero's About to Make You His Bitch." Underneath was the tag line "Suck It Down!" -- a phrase Mike had recently trademarked.

Apparently this Mike fellow was a bit of a jerk, seems he even borrowed Ion company money to buy himself a BMW before getting himself fired. I say give Mike some of the blame for the ad.. sure it says Romero but Mike designed the thing.