John Romero's new studio

By Ellie Gibson Published 21 September, 2005

He's doing a new game too.

Just over two months since leaving Midway's San Diego studio, Doom co-creator John Romero has co-founded his own company and begun work on a new game.

In a post on his website's forum, Romero wrote: "For the record, I'm co-founder of a new game company in the bay area now and am much better off in many ways than I was at Midway. Much happier now.

"When news of my new game somehow gets out, I think everyone will be a bit shocked," he added.

Romero also took the opportunity to hit back at critics of Daikatana, the much-hyped first person shooter he worked on for Ion Storm that eventually flopped after countless delays.

"Daikatana took three years from concept to store shelves," Romero wrote.

"This is hardly a long dev cycle. Doom 3 took five years, Half Life 2 took seven, Duke Forever is on year nine."

Still, that's all in the past: "Hey, Daikatana's old, old news now. Like, over five years ago," continued Romero.

"And the fact that everyone remembers that particular game instead of the dozens of other games I've made just shows how negatively slanted the media is - negativity sells."

Not bitter then?

Picture of Ellie.

About Ellie Gibson

Since joining Eurogamer in the mid 2000s, Ellie has written about subjects as diverse as the fall of Gizmondo, the rise of Hollyoaks actresses in Red Alert games and the noise a bear makes under NSFW circumstances.

Read more articles from Ellie by visiting the Ellie Gibson archive page.

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Comments (29) Latest comment 6 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • pauleyc #1 6 years ago

    "When news of my new game somehow gets out, I think everyone will be a bit shocked"

    Daikatana 2?

  • Thamuhacha #2 6 years ago

    It only took 3 years. But that was a long time then.

    Oh! And it was rubbish.

    Nice to see his stratgey of "noise over content" continues unabated. I can't wait to be "shocked".

  • Lothar Hex #3 6 years ago

    "Daikatana took three years from concept to store shelves"

    Yeah, but it was still shit. And most of the other games he's made since weren't exactly brilliant either.
    Edited by 1 at 21/09/05 @ 10:55

  • myrmican #4 6 years ago

    Actually, it's a well deserved backlash.

    "John Romero's going to make you his bitch" - full page ad, gaming magazines.

    Does he really expect to publicly insult his audience and not get remembered for being a whiny untalented poseur?

  • drumbaby #5 6 years ago

    Daikatari Damana?

  • mouse Verified Graphic designer, Eurogamer Network #6 6 years ago

    He conveniently forgets that both id and Valve set about writing graphics engines from the ground up to support their games. Whereas Daikatana used... what, the Quake 2 engine? Please.
    Edited by 1 at 21/09/05 @ 10:56

  • Thamuhacha #7 6 years ago

    I always refer to the differing achievements of Carmack and Romero since they went their separate ways. But it speaks volumes.

  • octo #8 6 years ago

    Katamari Daikatana?

  • Salvia #9 6 years ago

    "Daikatana took three years from concept to store shelves"

    Which is usually a fuck of a lot longer than most devs get.

  • Senor_Sanchez #10 6 years ago

    The thing that DOOMed Diakatana was ego and naivity. Hiring a bunch of terrific comic book artists that had NO 3d experience to build a 3d game wasnt really clever. Not having access to the creator of their 3D engine (Q2 was a GREAT engine at the time) doesnt help. And having designers completely call the shots - theoretically a great idea - isnt practical as LIMITS and BUDGETS are necessary to make a game RUN. Ego forgot TEAMS of very clever and talented people are needed to build even the most average of games. He went of his tits and thought he could do the lot!

    cant knock the guy for trying though

  • djchump #11 6 years ago

    Lmao - so what other games has Romero worked on then? I fail to see why I should care about him in the slightest...

  • darkmistx #12 6 years ago

    I don't see why you're all knocking Romero as a designer. Try reading 'Masters of Doom' and you might see things in a different light. Sure he screwed up big time with Daikatana, but at the end of the day, he made one bad game. I don't see why he should he should be crucified for that.

  • Tyronne #13 6 years ago

    dozens of other games?..aside from the bit he did for doom and some pizza delivery thing if memory serves me right,let alone daikatana which I did buy for 2 quid and wished I had not..I cannot think where dozens comes into play.

  • BremXJones #14 6 years ago

    "I always refer to the differing achievements of Carmack and Romero since they went their separate ways. But it speaks volumes."

    Carmack made some 3D engines with sub-normal games attached. Woo.

    KG

  • mastertigurius #15 6 years ago

    "When news of my new game somehow gets out, I think everyone will be a bit shocked"

    I can't wait.... o_O

  • Thamuhacha #16 6 years ago

    >Carmack made some 3D engines with sub-normal games attached. Woo.

    I see your point Kieron. But the games were alright. The engines were more than that.

    More importantly he licensed the tech out to a great number of developers who made very good games with it. Games that might not have been good (or even made) without it.

    Also, Carmack doesn't pitch up at every major game event demanding respect for his work. Well, not really.

  • Eraser #17 6 years ago

    "dozens of other games?..aside from the bit he did for doom and some pizza delivery thing if memory serves me right,let alone daikatana which I did buy for 2 quid and wished I had not..I cannot think where dozens comes into play."

    Probably stuff from before you got into gaming with your XBox.

  • Tyronne #18 6 years ago

    "dozens of other games?..aside from the bit he did for doom and some pizza delivery thing if memory serves me right,let alone daikatana which I did buy for 2 quid and wished I had not..I cannot think where dozens comes into play."

    Probably stuff from before you got into gaming with your XBox.

    oh please I have been playing games for over 22 years now across various platforms and the sad act mines better than yours thing is pathetic...however what that has to do with not knowing the `dozens` of games he has made is beyond me.

  • ses #19 6 years ago

    Here's the games he's been credited on (Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, etc).

  • Tyronne #20 6 years ago

    ahhh I liked the commander keen stuff,but then for some reason I also liked jill of the jungle.

  • bootsy_NL_30 #21 6 years ago

    this guy is classic..Carmacks study of light and the physics/maths behind it were put to amazingly good use in Doom3, Valves attatching socio-political and ideological issues to Half Life 2 gave it a totally new dimension ........and this guy? ...........hmmmm well to quote www.somethingawful.com review of his awsome game Daikatana

    "After reading a particularly poorly written introduction that said something about me hiding in caskets and falling out of a truck, I found myself trapped on "Doctor Goofy's Wacky Bug Island". Hoards of ferocious, man eating mosquitoes and frogs seemed to gravitate in my general direction with the sole intent to annoy me to death. The evil cyber frogs, which not only had the benefit of disappearing underneath the cover of fog, also seemed to be able to multiply off screen until it got to the point where every time I turned a corner, 500 more frogs had spawned and were doing a pseudo-"Zergling rush" on me. This added a real exciting element to the game, as I had to hurry up and remember what the quick key was for "quit game" before I was mauled by the 154th Killer Frog Platoon. After seeing the cool, serene Windows default background, I was reminded that I had to start the game again and keep playing so I could review it. Sometimes I hate this job."
    Edited by 1 at 21/09/05 @ 12:25

  • djchump #22 6 years ago

    Ses - Thanks for the link!

    hmm... apart from Commader Keen (which I kinda liked back in the day), there's the Doom stuff, Deus Ex (which I loved, but seems more like it was Warren Spector's game than a "John Romero Production";), Anachronox (never tried), Red Faction (boring pap IMHO) and Area 51 (not tried, but from the reviews it seemed entertaining enough in a fairly unspectacular way).

    Sooo... my conclusion is that I still don't care about John Romero. Fair play he may have been an integral part of the Doom dev team, but since then it seems he's done nothing of note except a whole lot of personal branding.

    Now, fair play to the devs like Peter Molyneux, Will Wright etc. that have managed to brand themselves, but IMHO that's because they have been fairly consistent at what they do and there is a common theme to their games. But IMHO John Romero is completely undeserving of the column inches he gets whenever he does anything (like leaving Midway, etc.) - seems more of a joke figure nowadays.

  • kangarootoo #23 6 years ago

    Awwww. There's no box art available for Bongo's Bash. That sucks.

  • Mho7276501 #24 6 years ago

    The thing that DOOMed Diakatana was that it was unplayable trash.

  • ses #25 6 years ago

    He didn't have much to do with Area 51, apart from helping out with some of the multiplayer levels. He also didn't work on the "real" Red Faction, only a mobile port. AFAIK he also didn't do any real work on Deus Ex (he's mentioned in the credits under "thanks to";).

    To be honest, he hasn't worked on something worthwhile since Quake.

  • Salvia #26 6 years ago

    "Deus Ex...was Warren Spector's game"

    Harvey Smith was the Designer not Warren Spector. Spector was essentially just the Producer.

  • kangarootoo #27 6 years ago

    I think Warren was pretty heavily involved though. When you get to his level you can't just to be known as lead designer, partly because you are probably working on several projects at once.

    I think his title was project director, which (depending on the company) can mean "overall guider of the vision" or similar. I think that is what Mr Spector was doing on DE1.

    As I understand it he had less direct influence over DE2. Maybe that is why some really bonkers decisions were made. The thinking behind splitting the grenades and mines into seperate objects when the combined ones worked so well in DE1 is still a mystery to me. I felt Thief 3 was a rather better sequel to T1/2 (I always count them as one thing really) than DE2 was to DE1. So props to Randy Smith then.

    Of course, a lot of this is hearsay and supposition.

  • Xerx3s #28 6 years ago

    "For the record, I'm co-founder of a new game company in the bay area now and am much better off in many ways than I was at Midway. Much happier now." - Then i pitty the other founder(s). Their efford was doomed the moment he joined. Anyway, hands up for all that are in favor of banning all news related to this fella.

  • jlaakso #29 6 years ago

    Well, I for one am interested in what's up to now.

    Daikatana may not have been in development for a particularly long time, but they shouldn't have made all the news about it in such an early stage. And if you make big plays in marketing, you've got to back it up with the end product. Sitll, I think he's getting thrashed way more than he deserves to.