John Romero might not be a name that youngsters recognize, but he was a legend of the early days of the first-person shooter genre, co-founding id Software and making videogames like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Hexen, and Quake, to name a few.
Nowadays, he makes smaller titles at Romero Games. The studio's most recent title was the Mafia-themed turn-based strategy game Empire of Sin, launched in late 2020 to a mixed reception. More recently, John Romero and his fellow developers signed a deal with Microsoft for their next project, but that deal went awry along with the latest Xbox layoffs. The development studio was not shut down, though, and Romero himself has provided an update to Gamereactor in an interview conducted at San Diego Comic Con Malaga. The game was halfway done, and many publishers are interested in helping with funding.
We're still figuring out what we're going to do with our big game. We own the intellectual property, we own the code, we own everything about the game. So, we have a lot of companies that are interested and still working with us on it, because when you develop a game for years and you put in, say, $50 million into a game, if you move and start working with somebody else, they get $50 million for free. So lots of people want to continue working on something, and even if that doesn't happen, you have $50 million worth of assets that you can use to make another thing. So no matter what, you are shortcutting the end of your game, right? To be able to get your game done faster, you already have a lot there already. We were about midway through our game.
Here's hoping that John Romero can find a solid publisher to bring the game through the finish line. We've already had more than enough game cancellations for this year, at least as far as I'm concerned.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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