John Romero, Co-Creator of DOOM
Today, my guest is John Romero, an award-winning game designer, level designer and programmer whose work spans over 130 games, 107 of which have been published commercially, including the iconic works Wolfenstein 3D, DOOM and Quake. John has worked in the mobile, hardcore, mid-core, casual and MMO space.
John has co-founded eight successful game companies including the likes of id Software, Gazillion Entertainment and, most recently, Romero Games which celebrated its 7th anniversary in 2022. John is considered to be among the world’s top game designers, and his games have won well over 100 awards. One of the earliest indie developers, John began working in the game space in 1979 on mainframes before moving to the Apple II in 1982. He is a completely self-taught programmer, designer and artist, having drawn his inspirations from early Apple II programmers. John co-owns Romero Games and is the author of Doom Guy: Life in First Person.
In this candid conversation, John shared the real stories behind his legendary career as a video game programmer, his accidental discovery of coding, and the motivation behind writing his autobiography, DOOM Guy.
1. Bypassing the Arcade. John revealed that his programming journey was actually an accident born out of his intense addiction to expensive 25-cent arcade games in the late 1970s. After his friends discovered a local college computer lab where they could secretly play turn-based mainframe games for free, 11-year-old John became fascinated by the older students typing code on the terminals. He eagerly asked them to share their programming commands, eventually getting an HP Basic book and teaching himself how to build his own games.
2. The “Ace Programmer”. As a teenager, John used a directory called Programmers Market to systematically “shotgun” mail his game disks and pitch letters to publishers all over the country, boldly signing them as “John Romero, Ace Programmer”. This relentless self-promotion eventually paid off when an Apple II magazine published his game Scout Search in 1984, paying him $750.
3. Reclaiming the Narrative. Discussing his new autobiography DOOM Guy, John explained that he wanted to tell his complete life story from his own perspective, noting that previous books like Masters of Doom were written by an outside author and only covered a narrow fraction of his early career. He emphasized that his book is not a malicious “tell-all” or revenge story, but rather a highly positive reflection filled with deep gratitude for his incredible journey in the industry.
4. Archiving a Legacy. Unlike many developers who casually throw away their early work, John admitted he is a massive collector who has meticulously saved every single piece of paper, design note, and line of source code he has written since 1982. Despite his legendary status and extensive history, he genuinely still loves programming every single day, and is currently expanding a massive development team to build a brand new game for a major publisher.
