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John Romero is a game designer, programmer, artist and sequential artist whose work spans over 130 games, 107 of which have been published commercially, including the iconic works Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake. His contributions and philanthropy within the commercial game industry have led to a myriad of inspired games and the founding of 10 companies.

Romero’s design innovations include intuitive and immersive 3D-level design, game balance and overall progression for both single-player and multi-player. He pioneered the first-person shooter genre and his works remain the seminal texts for those practicing game-level design. He was also instrumental in the promoting of cybersports from LAN parties to DWANGO to the Cyberathlete Professional League.

One of the earliest “indie” developers, Romero began working in the game space in 1979 on mainframes before moving to the Apple II in 1981. He is a completely self-taught programmer, designer and artist, having drawn his inspirations from early Apple II programmers, including the likes of Nasir Gebelli, Richard Garriott, Bill Budge and Tony Suzuki.

Romero’s current areas of interest are social online games and massively multi-player online (MMO) games. He is presently a co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of Loot Drop, founded in November 2010. Romero also remains active in the artgame, game history and indie space.

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