John Romero Recalls 69 Games by 1989 in gamescom asia Keynote

John Romero delivered a keynote titled "Why We Still Make Games" on the first conference day of gamescom asia x Thailand Game Show 2026 in Bangkok on October 29, 2026, according to 4gamer.net. Romero co-founded id Software and now leads the Ireland-based Romero Games.

In the talk he walked through his own games to explain why he continues to make them. He said that by the end of 1989 he had made 69 games and 19 tools, and described porting Might and Magic II to the Commodore 64 at his second company, Inside Out. At his third company, Ideas from the Deep, he released four games before moving on to found id Software.

Romero recalled stretches of heavy output, including developing about two games per month at one point, running two projects in parallel in 1991 and releasing 13 games in a year. He described Hovertank One as an exploration of the feeling of moving through first-person 3D space, and Catacomb 3-D as the first fast textured-wall 3D shooter.

On id Software's landmark shooters, he said DOOM was developed on NeXTSTEP with cross-development targeting MS-DOS, and that for DOOM II the team decided not to change DOOM's design because it was perfect, only to add to it. For Quake he wrote the level editor QuakeEd, handled half the sound effects, and led game design and level design while building many levels himself.

He also discussed his time at Ion Storm, where 120 developers worked on four games simultaneously, and said he made decisions that enabled Warren Spector and the team to complete Deus Ex, keeping a promise to Spector through later difficult choices. At Monkeystone Games he was exploring mobile games five years before the iPhone appeared, including Hyperspace Delivery Boy!.