John Romero on what makes a good modern FPS, why blockchain isn’t ready for gaming yet, and… cookbooks?

by Arthur · July 20, 2022

John Romero is a big name in the video game industry, and for good reason. Co-founder of Id Software and one of the minds responsible for primordial giants of the FPS genre such as Doom, Wolfenstein 3D and Hexen. Today, he and the team at Romero Games call Galway their home, tinkering with modern titles like Empire of Sin for today’s audiences.

I was lucky enough to meet John Romero last week, not in Hell, but in an equally warm Brighton during Develop 2022. There we had a brief chat about what they are looking for in modern FPS games, their thoughts on a number of trends and the development in the genre lately, how things are going at Romero Games, and a cookbook. If you’re interested in what the best painted nails in the business have to say, read more below.

If you’re a fan of John Romero, why not try Empire of Sin!

VG247: What do you look for in a modern FPS?

Romero: I like all experiments in FPS. The feeling of it is also very important, you know?

Like that’s what keeps people excited. Having a really good core loop, but then outside of that core loop, what do you do that’s different? The core of an FPS is killing shit. So what is the structure around it?

I like all kinds! One of my most beloved is Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal. The action is super fast, love the crazy speed. And then what I play the most is actually Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, it’s tactical and it’s much slower. But it’s just, the design on it is so good. You know, it’s an open world, which is massive and it feels really good. It has nowhere near the speed of doom. It’s a completely different type of FPS. But it has loadouts and it has like weapon mounts and upgrades and all kinds of things that make it interesting.

Sniping. I love stealth, I love enemies – enemies I can only listen to. FEAR was awesome, like the enemies in FEAR were like some of the best enemies, right? And so Breakpoint has enemies very similar to that. They talk to each other, they say stupid things all the time. You can just fly drones and just listen to them complain about the crap job they have, you know, and then you can just kill them!

What are your thoughts on “musical FPS”? Games like BPM and Metal Hellsinger?

I’m not a fan. It’s almost like programming. If you program in Python, python makes you indent with a tab to do a new type of function, or a loop, or something else. You have to do that. I don’t want to play an FPS where I have to shoot on beat, right? I don’t play any such game and I really don’t want to hear lyrics when I play a shooter! I like music but I don’t want to hear lyrics because to me the song is not the point of the game.

But that’s experimentation! I think it’s fine. Many people think Metal Hellsinger is bad and the music is superb. I just like a different vibe when I play shooters.

As for other modern innovations and trends, have other developers branched out into blockchain lately? What do you think about it and would you ever make a game with Blockchain at its core?

It’s definitely an interesting direction because the whole goal of blockchain for the endgame player is to own their items – even outside of the game. It’s great for them to be able to sell their stuff when they’re done with the game. Like I poured money into this game. I have all these items. I don’t want to play it anymore. I’m going to sell them to someone and I haven’t lost anything. Yeah, I think it’s really, really cool. But I like it when the design of the game doesn’t feel like that’s the only reason it exists – to sell items.

To me, it should be a feature, and it’s almost like a feature you shouldn’t even talk about, you know. Why wouldn’t I own all my stuff outside of a game?

Why do I need to think about NFTs and blockchain? I don’t want to know all that. I just want to go. “Oh, that’s cool. I can actually sell those things outside of the game in a store.” You know, a lot of times it’s a platform that has an online store, so why can’t I just sell back to the store and then they can sell it to someone else?

What are your thoughts on the waves of negative backlash Blockchain games are receiving? Many people are very much against the premise.

Well, it’s a setback because there’s a lot of low quality stuff being used. That (laughs). People feel cheated! They look at a game and ask “why does this thing exist? Oh, just to make money.” I mean, sure, games exist to make money, but usually games make money because they’re really well designed.

The first use of NFTs was just art – just GIFs. People invested in them and resold them to someone else. So, whoever is at the end of the chain is the person holding the bag (laughs). But you know, it’s an economy and it had to happen for it to be normalized. For it to be explored and for people to find out what is the best way to do it.

I think it’s great that people are exploring that space. I don’t want to, I don’t want to go into it because I’m just not there yet. And I don’t want to spend my time going there because I want to spend my time making good games.

Being a feature sometime in the future is cool, but not right now. Now it just might fill your game! You can just have people say I hate you because you like NFTs or because you put NFTs in your game or you have a blockchain game or whatever and it’s like why did we say the?

I’ve been advised that you can’t talk about current projects, but as we just came out of the COVID lockdowns relatively recently and things are starting to pick up again in the industry. How are things going at Romero Games right now?

Yes, we are hiring. We’re going back to the office. We are getting a new office. It will be our third office we have had! Everyone is very excited to get started on the next thing. So everyone is very, very happy right now.

Any update on Black Room? The last we heard was in 2019, when you were obviously all hard at work on Empire of Sin, then COVID happened. It’s been under the radar for a little while!

Yes. I can’t talk about the Black Room. (laughs).

Have you thought more about writing a cookbook in the future?

Yes, we talked about doing it. I have tons of recipes, you know. The cookbook is something that will happen at some point.