Blog Outline
Introduction
John Romero is best known as the lead designer of one of the most famous and influential videogames of all time Doom. Although Romero’s influence is not just restricted to the Doom franchise, he also developed the Quake series of games which lead to an explosion of online shooters. He also developed the lesser known but equally important Commander Keen and Wolfenstien series of games, though the Wolfenstien series as again with new games and the birth of retro gaming. Romero is considered one of the founders of the first person shooter genre of video games and many of his games are of this genre. He is also known for having more adult oriented visuals and music, especially in his Doom years when the video game industry was still producing games mainly aimed at children.
Biography
John Romero was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado in 1967(wikipedia.org, John Romero). He began working in the video game industry on the Apple II, porting over Macintosh games and developing simple games for the Apple II. In 1991 Romero and several other game designers, including friend John Carmack, created Id games (wikipedia.org, John Romero). It was there that Romero created Wolfenstien 3D, a revolutionary first person shooter for its time. With the success of Wolfenstien 3D Romero then went on to create another first person shooter, Doom in 1993. Doom became one of the best selling games of all time and solidified the first person shooter as a genre. Doom also was critically acclaimed for its use of 3D graphics and multiplayer abilities. It also became infamous for its heavy use of graphical violence. After the huge success of Doom and its sequel Doom II, in which Romero made the unusual design choice of having himself be the final boss of the game, he made another Id first person shooter, with his friend John Carmack, Quake. Quake became another huge hit due to the relatively new feature of internet multiplayer (wikipedia.org, John Romero).
After his successful Id games Romero co founded Ion Storm with fellow Id employee Tom Hall, in 1996 (Doom wiki, John Romero). Around this time (1998 ) Romero’s wealth was worth about $10 million (Time Digital). After founding Ion Storm Romero began work on another first person shooter Daikatana. After a much hyped release the game failed to live up to expectations. Though the game was not a financial failure the over promotion of the game coupled with features that current technology hadn’t been fully developed for caused many to see the game as a failure. The games promotion had heavily touted Romero’s involvement with the project and so when the game underperformed Romero took much heat from the gaming press (wikipedia.org, John Romero).
After Daikatana’s poor performance both Romero and Hall then went on to cofound Monkeystone Games in the summer of 2001. The new company mainly focused on making mobile games for cell phones (wikipedia.org, John Romero). In 2003 Romero decided to dip his feet back into the larger corporate gaming industry by joining Midway games, while still working with Monkeystone Games. At Midway Romero worked on the latest installment of the Gaunlet series, Gaulent: Seven Sorrows. Unfortunately Romero left Midway in 2005, right before the release of Gauntlet: Seven Sorrow, and therefore did not get much credit for the game. A few months prior Monkeystone Games also had closed down (Doom wiki, Jhon Romero).After leaving Midway Romero founded yet another company, Slipgate Ironworks, which is currently developing a new massive multiplayer online game. As of yet no other details of this new game have yet been announced(wikipedia.org, John Romero).
Disscusion
One of the main things one imediately notices about a John Romero game is the gory violence. This excludes many of his earlier such as Commander Keen, which I have played, but just about all of his games since Wolfenstien 3D have had violence as a major feature. Romero himself expressed his enjoyment of violence in games saying, “I still haven’t played a game that blows your enemies apart like you can in Quake deathmatch, with gibs flying everywhere and bouncing off the walls. And nothing has equaled the double-barreled shotgun in DOOM II for sheer power in your enemy’s face” (esreality.com). Personally I feel that this high level of violence lead to videogames gaining a more adult audience. However, this graphic violence did come back to haunt Doom especially when the perpetrators of the infamous Columbine Massacre were reportedly avid Doom fans (wikipedia.org, Doom). Another key aspect of many Romero games is “deathmatch” style multiplayer. Romero has expressed his own love of the death match multiplayer in interviews and he even met one of his long term girlfriends and business partner while playing a Quake deathmatch (esreality.com). Although today the deathmatch is considered the most standard of online multiplayer features, this is a testament to Romero’s design. Quake was among the first games to really take advantage of the new online play and its deathmatch style of play made it unique and extremely popular (Wikipedia.org, Quake) but the beginnings of the death match style used in quake was first started in Doom (Wikipedia.org, Doom). Ultimately I feel the gory violence Romero used was more influential in the gaming world in brining videogames to a more mature market.
The Public
When it comes to the reviewers many if not all hold games like Doom and Quake as some of the best games ever made, the multiplayer gaming site named two of Romero’s games in their top 50 games of all time with Quake coming in at #5 and Doom coming in at #1 as the best game of all time (Gamespy.com). This is not to say that things have always been rosy between Romero and the press. Romero’s game Daikatana was lambasted in the media and given many poor reviews (gamespot.com). However, Romero seems to still have maintained his general good relations with the press and the gaming public as well. As chronicled in this blog Romero still does lots of interviews and many are excited about his up coming MMORPG, so there certainly is still a good press association. Sum up
It is hard to pin John Romero down, while he is not your typical corporate man he has founded and worked for many gaming companies he can hardly be said to be an anti-big corporation guy, however his games are certainly not intended to be for the mass audience, yet despite this they become so. Romero’s influence is vast, Doom transformed first person shooters into their own genre and one can not help but look at modern games like Halo, Call of Duty, and Half Life and not see Romero’s influence. Online gaming is huge with the Playstation Network and Xbox Live allowing for millions of people to play in online match ups, the popularity of this started with the success of Quake. Today one may look at Romero’s games and say that they’re not all the unique, but that’s why John Romero is so important, he created what we know consider to be standard. For it’s time Doom, Wolfenstien, and Quake were among the most mature games one could get for their PC and their success opened up the way for the huge explosion in gaming today that mainly focuses on adults as their primary audience.
Bibliography
Cyber Elite, Time Digital, 1998, 29 Febuary 2008. http://www.time.com/time/digital/cyberelite/36.html
Doom (video game), Wikipedia.com, 11 March 2008, 13 March 2008. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom_%28video_game%29
Gamespy’s Top 50 Games of All Time, Gamespy.com, July 2001, 13 March 2008. http://archive.gamespy.com/articles/july01/top501aspe/index4.shtm
Interview:: John Romero, esreality.com, 23 February 2003, 13 March 15, 2008. http://www.esreality.com/?a=longpost&id=333504&page=1
John Romero, Doom wiki, 2 February 2008, 2 February 2008. http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/John_Romero
John Romero, Wikipedia.com, 2 February 2008, 2 February 2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Romero
Quake, Wikipedia.org, 10 March 2008, 13 March 2008. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake
Satterfield, Shane, Daikatana, Gamespot.com, 7 August 2000, 29 February 2008. < http://www.gamespot.com/n64/action/daikatana/review.html>