John Romero

President at Romero Games Ltd

Award-winning programmer, Game designer

John Romero is an award-winning programmer, game designer and level designer whose work spans over 130 games, 108 of which have been published commercially. Romero is considered to be the "father of first person shooters" having led the design and contributed to the programming and audio design of the iconic and genre-defining games Wolfenstein 3D, DOOM, Quake, Heretic and Hexen.

Romero is also was also one of the earliest supporters of eSports and a professional-level DOOM and Quake player. To date, Romero has co-founded eight successful game companies including the likes of id Software and most recently Romero Games in Galway, Ireland. He is considered to be among the world’s top game designers, and his products have won well over 100 awards.

Romero most recently won the Legend Award at 2017’s Develop: Brighton and a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Fun & Serious Games Conference. 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.