john romero
Latest
Hitting the Books: The programming trick that gave us DOOM multiplayer
John Romero provides an engrossing oral history of how the classic FPS game was created in his new book, DOOM Guy: Life in First Person.
John Romero releases a new 'Doom II' level to raise money for Ukraine
It will set you back $5.50, and 100 percent of the proceeds will go towards organizations supporting humanitarian efforts in Ukraine.
'Doom' re-releases now support add-ons, quick saves and 60FPS
Bethesda's re-releases of the first two Doom games are about catch up to the originals in key areas -- and in a few ways, surpass them. The id Software titles are receiving updates that, among other things, introduce support for add-ons -- yes, even on mobile. This doesn't mean you can load in any old WAD file on consoles, but it will work for Android and PC players -- and everyone will get a mix of official and unofficial add-ons. The initial selection includes the two Final Doom mods (The Plutonia Experiment and TNT: Evilution), No Rest for the Living and John Romero's Sigil. Other packs will be available on a "regular basis."
'Empire of Sin' looks like a new-school 'Mob Rule'
It's been 20 years since Mob Rule, the organized crime real-time strategy game. Despite a few efforts like Omerta - City of Gangsters, Gangsters 2: Vendetta and Gangland in the years since, there hasn't been a true successor in the Mafia-meets-strategy genre. Empire of Sin is aiming to inherit that position. It will launch in Spring 2020 on Switch, PS4, Xbox, PC and Mac with a mix of gang management simulation and turn-based tactical combat. In an E3 demo, the team from Romero Games played as Al Capone, who dons a pin-striped grey suit, chomps on a fat cigar and brandishes tommy guns in both hands. He lands in Chicago's Little Italy with its moody streets and jazz-infused speakeasies.
'Empire of Sin' is John Romero's new strategy game
The godfather of first person shooters, John Romero, is back -- with a strategy game. Empire of Sin showed up on Nintendo's E3 livestream, full of noirish rain-slicked streets, fedoras and tommy guns. In the game, players will shape an organized crime empire in Prohibiton-era 1920s Chicago as one of 14 bosses, with "randomly generated starting conditions" according to its website. Combat is turn-based as gangs take over rival territories and run speakeasies or casinos. Both Romero -- the creator of the original Wolfenstein, DOOM and Quake games who co-founded id Software -- and his wife Brenda are behind the title. The game is made by Romero Games -- founded in 2015 -- and published by Paradox Interactive. Empire of Sin is set to drop spring 2020 on Switch, PC, Mac, Xbox and Playstation.
John Romero's unofficial 'Doom' expansion is available now
If you'd like your Doom sequels more traditional than Doom Eternal, your fix is at hand. Series co-creator John Romero has released his unofficial (and significantly delayed) fifth episode for the original game, Sigil. The pack includes nine single-player and nine deathmatch maps that carry the spirit of the original game while taking advantage of Romero's 25 years of experience since the core Doom (which is required here) first reached gamers.
John Romero's 'Doom' level pack gets pushed back to April
Late last year, Doom co-creator John Romero announced plans to release a new pack of levels for the game more than 25 years after its debut. Sigil is a "spiritual successor" to the game's fourth episode containing nine multiplayer levels and nine single-player levels. While it will be released for free to everyone with a licensed copy of the original, Romero is selling two limited edition box versions, and now he confirmed that a delay in production has caused the release date to slip until April. The downloads won't be available until after people who pre-ordered can get their Beast Box packages with artwork, custom USB sticks, t-shirt and other tidbits, so everyone has to wait. Hopefully after 25 years, a few more weeks won't be too much, although given Doom's accessibility for modding and the tools available, players can always use the time to play previously-released .WADs or work on a few levels of their own like its 1993 all over again.
Celebrate Doom's 21st birthday with 'never-before-seen' development art
Iconic shooter Doom turned 21 this week, but there's one thing to do before it goes for a wild night out on Phobos. Yes, it's time for an "awwww-mommmm" gander at some baby pictures! Designer John Romero took to Twitter to reveal an album's worth of "never-before-seen" development art ... which technically makes them less baby pictures and more fetal scans. Anyway... we've bundled them all into a gallery, so gather round, everyone! D'awwwww! Now what about that next shooter, Mr. Romero? PS: For more on info on what you're looking at, have a peek through John Romero's Twitter feed. [Images: John Romero]
John Romero: 'I haven't made a shooter since 2000, so ...'
John Romero is working on a shooter for the first time in 14 years. Romero made the announcement on Monday night's recording of the Super Joystiq Podcast Gamescom Special, alongside special guests Mike Bithell and Brenda Romero. Here's how it went down:
Romero: 'PC is decimating console, F2P has killed a hundred AAA studios'
Doom co-creator John Romero gave an interesting interview to GamesIndustry.biz recently in which he compares the modern free-to-play model with the early 1990s shareware revolution driven by id's hellish sci-fi shooter. "Our entire first episode was free -- give us no money, play the whole thing. If you like it and want to play more, then you finally pay us. To me that felt like the ultimate fair [model]. I'm not nickel-and-diming you. I didn't cripple the game in any design way. That was a really fair way to market a game," Romero said. "When we put these games out on shareware, that changed the whole industry. Before shareware there were no CD-ROMs, there were no demos at all. If you wanted to buy Ultima, Secret of Monkey Island, any of those games, you had to look really hard at that box and decide to spend 50 bucks to get it." He goes on to say that F2P design will mature and at some point lose its stigma. "People are spending a lot of time trying to design this the right way," he explained. "They want people to want to give them money, not have to. If you have to give money, you're doing it wrong. For game designers, that's the holy grail." Romero also remarks on the parallels between today's industry and the fledgling game industry of 30 years ago that he says was wholly created by indies, as well as the autonomy enjoyed by modern developers as a result of the move away from retail and traditional publishing. "With PC you have free-to-play and Steam games for five bucks. The PC is decimating console, just through price," he said. "Free-to-play has killed a hundred AAA studios."
John Romero visits Square Enix to 'get a deal done'
John Romero – known for Doom, Quake, id Software and currently the social games studio Loot Drop – might have a new deal brewing with Square Enix. On Friday, February 15, Romero posted to his Facebook wall, "Now let's get a deal done. - at Square Enix." Romero didn't provide any details about a meeting or new projects.Romero probably feels pretty comfortable sharing information on Facebook, since Loot Drop's focus as a studio is on casual, Facebook-style games, such as Ghost Recon Commander. Whether Romero visited Square Enix as a representative of modern social gaming or as an industry veteran of hardcore games is still up in the air.
Game Designers Union: Brenda Brathwaite marries John Romero
Matrimonial news now, as development veterans John Romero and Brenda Brathwaite tied the knot this weekend. The Romeros, who between them can boast Doom, Wizardry, Quake, Commander Keen, Jagged Alliance, and Wolfenstein 3D on their résumés, co-founded social games studio Loot Drop in 2010. Yesterday, they founded a very different kind of union on, quite wonderfully, a steamboat in Disneyland. The couple were wed by John Romero's id Software co-founder Tom Hall.To top it all off, it's John Romero's birthday today. Not a bad way to celebrate it, we'd say.
'Old-School RPG' Kickstarter created by industry vets Brathwaite, Hall
Industry veterans Brenda Brathwaite and Tom Hall want to make an "old-school RPG," and are seeking a million dollars on Kickstarter for that to happen. The pair, who run developer Loot Drop with another industry vet, John Romero, are on a quest to make an RPG in the classic style of the genre from decades past.With respect, the pair have been around the industry for quite a long time. Brathwaite worked on the Wizardry and Dungeons and Dragons series, while Hall was a founder of id Software and worked on Commander Keen, Anachronox, Doom, Wolfenstein and much more.The stretch goals on the project are also interesting. At $1.9 million, which Obsidian's Project Eternity reached in about ten days, Brathwaite and Hall will make "two full games." One will be designed by Brathwaite, the other by Hall.Those who pledge $15 to the project will receive digitally distributed copies of the games created. If you're looking to be a big spender, with a $10,000 pledge, you'll have Brathwaite, Hall and Romero show up at your door and deliver the game in a box on a red velvet pillow. The Kickstarter and its many tiers are live now.
The Firing Line: Firefall, Defiance, John Romero, and more
Dude, there was a ton of big shooter news this week! I mean, this isn't terribly unusual, particularly since the genre is expanding at a rapid rate, but when I've got to cut interesting items out of this column for length reasons, you know it's been an eventful few days. Join me after the break for a recap on everything from Firefall to Defiance to John Romero and beyond.
Loot Drop deploying Ghost Recon Commander to Facebook, mobile devices
John Romero's social dev studio, Loot Drop, has signed a deal with Ubisoft to produce a tie-in game for Facebook and, eventually, mobile platforms. Ghost Recon Commander is set to launch on Facebook, allowing players to unlock items in Ghost Recon: Future Soldier -- which launches on May 22 -- and Ghost Recon Online, due sometime later this year.The announcement trailer, screens, and press release past the break all suggest a hardcore experience, which allows you to customize your own Ghosts and deploy them in missions to earn upgrades and gear. There will also be asynchronous co-op play, though exact details on how that will work have yet to be revealed.%Gallery-152274%
These games inspired Cliff Bleszinski, John Romero, Will Wright, and Sid Meier
Everyone in the industry has a story about their formative experiences with video games, but Jon-Paul Dyson, the director of the International Center for the History of Electronic Games, was a bit more blunt than most."Great artists don't borrow. They steal," Dyson said, borrowing a quote from Pablo Picasso as he introduced Wil Wright, Sid Meier, John Romero, and Cliff Bleszinski. Speaking in front of a packed house at GDC, the four industry luminaries shared the games that inspired them as creators, and continue to influence them today.
Five legendary indie developers walk into a room...
Over the past few years, the definition of "indie" has expanded exponentially. It now includes the five men invited to speak to an audience of developers in a cavernous room at GDC's North hall: Jordan Mechner (Prince of Persia), Tim Sweeney (Epic Games), John Romero (Doom), Adam Saltsman (Canabalt) and Markus "Notch" Persson (Minecraft)."Indie" now includes "rockstar."These five spoke at "Back to the Garage: The Return of Indie Development (From Those Who Were There and Some Who've Just Arrived)," and without specifically addressing the concrete idea behind what makes indie "indie," they helped define the term in its modern trappings. "Indie" involves listening to feedback from outside sources. "Indies" create AAA titles. "Indie" means talking to press, managing staff and marketing a game while respecting other people's time. "Indie" is about making money.Being indie doesn't sound so different than standard publisher-style game creation, mostly because it's not -- indie is now a sub-genre of game development, rather than a separate enterprise. It's in the tone with which these developers speak about the business, their independent passion and the amount of risk they're willing to take that offers a clear distinction from the sterile PR BS often found in the campaigns from large publishers.
Romero's Loot Drop launching 'Cloudforest Exploration' this summer on Facebook
It's not quite blasting demons on one of Mars' moons, but John Romero's next game does have a totally sweet name: Cloudforest Exploration. Romero's studio, Loot Drop, officially announced the project this morning -- the first of at least two social games to be released in partnership with publisher RockYou. Described simply as "an adventure and exploration Facebook game," Cloudforest is scheduled to be released on the service this summer. "Loot Drop is a natural fit with our design-driven studio culture and with our commitment to developing and publishing the best social games in the world," RockYou senior VP of games Jonathan Knight said in the announcement. The publisher will also collaborate with Loot Drop on a second social game. "[RockYou] support our creative freedom as we bring innovation to the story-driven adventure genre with Cloudforest Expedition," said Romero, who is joined by Brenda Brathwaite at Loot Drop. "Extending the relationship with a second game makes sense, and we're excited to reveal more details of our projects" -- just, not right now.
Watch the GDC 'Classic Game Postmortem' talks for free
If you want to hear about Mark Cerny's first, overambitious version of Marble Madness for yourself, try to decipher Toru Iwatani's clues about a "singing Pac-Man" game, see the history of Prince of Persia in the time it takes to play Prince of Persia (one hour), or suck John Romero's Doom postmortem down, you are welcome to do so right now. The GDC organizers have uploaded video and slides of many of this year's presentations to the GDC Vault, most of which are restricted to subscribers. However, the GDC Vault offers the Classic Game Postmortem series for free, including the aforementioned talks plus Eric Chahi on Another World, Will Wright on his first game, Raid on Bungeling Bay, Ron Gilbert looking back on Maniac Mansion, and more.
'Classic postmortems' unveiled for 25th Game Developers Conference
Beyond the plain ol' postmortems taking place annually at the Game Developers Conference, this year's event features a special 25th anniversary spin: "classic" postmortems. Famous developers will take the stage to speak about their classic games -- everyone from Pac-Man's Toru Iwatani to Doom's John Romero -- and an eager crowd will bask in the light of their classic game knowledge. 11 classics are being given the treatment, though we're putting Will Wright's Raid on Bungeling Bay talk at the very top of our priority list. Another highlight (among a list made up entirely of highlights) is Eric Chahi -- developer of currently in-progress From Dust -- speaking about the development of Out of This World. Check out the full, incredibly impressive list after the break and start planning accordingly. Or rather, clear your schedule. If you can't make it to GDC 2011, the postmortems will be filmed and made available via GDC Vault at some point after the event.
