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....

[GeorgeFitch3]

On the last level of Doom II, John Romero says (backwards to sound demon-like) "To win the game, you must kill me, John Romero". If you use the noclipping cheat, you can pass through the demon face wall that spits out soul cubes and see John's severed head on a spike. To win the game, you actually have to kill him by shooting through a small opening in the wall with well-timed rocket attacks. Groovy!

While a Lot of You Claim...

[eno2001]

...that you think John Romero isn't that much of a big deal, you'll still come here and post voluminous tomes about how worthless he is. I guess he really DID make you all his "bitches". Gimme some o that Killcreek lovin'... ;P

OfficeSecrets

[eebra82]

" 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 was thinking the exact same thing before I quit my old job. You know, a lot of people do tell lies and if often turns out that powerful people are getting bullshitted all the time. I thought my staff enjoyed what I was doing and I kept hearing good things about my efforts until it was settled at a party and a few people got too drunk.

I'm not saying your team is doing this on you, John. Maybe you're really a great guy. Truth is, I don't know you and I actually even enjoyed Daikatana more than most other people did. It's just that I don't buy it, because you can't trust anyone until you know what he's thinking - which you probably never will.

Want to REALLY understand John Romero?

[Jack Action]

Read this book: Masters of Doom [wikipedia.org].

One of the best tech industry books ever written (and if you've read some of the bad prose written on tech history out there, you know what I'm talking about).

I got it from the library, and read it in one weekend -- couldn't put it down.

Re:Who the hell....

[Fei_Id]

You mean he got FIRED and went to make Daikatana. From what I've heard, read, and been told (by people in the business) that early on (mainly Quake days) that he goofed off and played games all the time and didn't really want to work. I've seen numerous groups of game programmers that state how they don't like working with him Who cares about his tuning via USB while driving, I never knew of him to be famous for something like that... it was just a Motec ECU setup (John Carmack had one too on his 900hp Ferrari Testerossa and twinturbo F50). You can buy standalones these days that work with MANY cars for under $2000. A Motec setup generally runs quite a bit more than that; but its for race teams mainly (individual O2 and EGT sensors for each cylinder) and it was most likely all that was available back in the late 90s. Though I think Haltech had a few systems out at that point... though with the kind of money Romero and Carmack were throwing around (Carmack traded his Mazda Miata in on a Ferrari 348) I'm sure it was a Motec.

Re:Bob Dole

[Anonymous Coward]

In any organization there is always one guy who likes to take credit and glory without actually doing anything. I have a feeling that this guy is one of those guys. $10M and years to develop a game that sells 200,000 copies? Two other games that just tanked? What kind of company is that? A company run by a guy who is more interested in doing magazine interviews than running a company or doing any actual work IMHO.

No wonder id wanted to get rid of him.