John Romero - Sympathy for the devil?

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

I read threads from time to time about good/bad games and Mr. Romero's name comes up a lot due to the Daikatana fiasco. It makes me wonder, since people are still talking about it, does John Romero read forums and realize he's the Ed Wood of gaming?

Do we even care he was co-founder of iD?

The man must have a strong ego or else humble as hell to take the beating we gamers who remember Daikatana STILL give him all these years later.

 

[TheGreatAndPowerfulZOG]

He was involved with one project that flopped, I hardly think that makes him Ed Wood. He also, as you mentioned, founded iD and helped create one of the more influential games in history. If anything I think John Carmacks's success has overshadowed Romero into obscurity.

 

[NeutralDrow]

He apologized for Daikatana. That automatically disqualifies him from "Ed Wood" status.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

He was involved with one project that flopped, I hardly think that makes him Ed Wood. He also, as you mentioned, founded iD and helped create one of the more influential games in history. If anything I think John Carmacks's success has overshadowed Romero into obscurity.

He's actually had a history since Daikatana of promising and failing to deliver. Yes I recognize his work on iD prior to Daikatana, but thats not the case I'm making. What I'm saying is there is a LOT of hate on Romero STILL after all these years.

He apologized for Daikatana. That automatically disqualifies him from "Ed Wood" status.

He apologized for the advertisement claiming "John Romero is about to make you his *****" not the game itself. And even that was in 2010, 13 years after the advert was released. Still, I feel bad for the guy (which is my whole post's purpose if I wasn't clear). And I'm not saying he's the Ed Wood of gaming, I'm saying he's treated as if he were.

 

[NickCaligo42]

I read threads from time to time about good/bad games and Mr. Romero's name comes up a lot due to the Daikatana fiasco. It makes me wonder, since people are still talking about it, does John Romero read forums and realize he's the Ed Wood of gaming?

Do we even care he was co-founder of iD?

The man must have a strong ego or else humble as hell to take the beating we gamers who remember Daikatana STILL give him all these years later.

EDIT: Check out Amaranth_dru's reply to my post down below--he knows a bit more about Romero's role in these games than I do.

ORIGINAL POST
He's still pretty well full of himself, and no, we don't care he was the co-founder of id Software, because he is in fact the co-founder who did the least tangible work.

While people give him a lot of credit for ye olde id, the truth is that he was more the loudest member of the team than the MVP. John Carmack was more responsible for programming their hit games, Adrian Carmack was more responsible for the aesthetics, and many, many other designers were more responsible for the actual design. This includes the original Doom and Doom II, most of whose levels were not credited to John Romero, but to Sandy Petersen and American McGee. Romero's levels mostly consist of Doom 1's first episode, "Knee Deep in the Dead," after which his contribution as a level designer is minimal and it's difficult to keep track of what actual work he did.

My understanding is that Romero is a one-man walking party and thus served mainly as id Software's head cheerleader and as a producer. If he was in the building (key word: "if") then everybody was clustered right around him, and he would frequently chip in suggestions and direction. And he was very, very good at it, and still is--but one thing he tremendously lacked was a sense of discipline or focus, hence our getting the clusterfuck that was Daikatana the first time he was turned loose without the rest of the id Software team to keep him grounded. He's arguably a man of fun ideas much more than one of mechanical aptitude, as evidenced by Daikatana's inclusion of some of the most absurd and enjoyable weapons in the world of shooters; like the rapid-fire, belt-fed, semi-automatic shotgun known as the Shot Cycler, and a fist with a lawnmower motor attached to it. The trouble is, fun ideas without focus... well, lead to Daikatana.

He's that nutball friend of yours who always has lots of energy and just bounces off the damn walls with craziness, and somehow he lucked his way into making video games in the industry's infancy. If it weren't for that fact we would not recognize his name as being anything particularly important, because when you come down to it he's hardly contributed as much as history seems to let on. Is he still important? Yeah, but mainly for pioneering the horrible 90's comic book "frag count" jive-talking culture that's pervaded much of the shooter scene up into the present time. Gears of War 3? Yeah, a lot of that game's humor can be directly attributed to Romero's influence. Daikatana did that shit first. Superfly Johnson and Cole Train are practically the same guy. Chew on that for a while.

 

[LarenzoAOG]

I never played Daikatana, was it really that bad?

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

**snip**

While people give him a lot of credit for ye olde id, the truth is that he was more the loudest member of the team than the MVP. John Carmack was more responsible for programming their hit games, Adrian Carmack was more responsible for the aesthetics, and many, many other designers were more responsible for the actual design. This includes the original Doom and Doom II, most of whose levels were not credited to John Romero, but to Sandy Petersen and American McGee. Romero's levels mostly consist of Doom 1's first episode, "Knee Deep in the Dead," after which his contribution as a level designer is minimal and it's difficult to keep track of what actual work he did.

My understanding is that he was responsible for a lot of the back-end programming on DWANGO, the installers for most of the iD games up to Quake and at least half the levels of Doom, Quake, Wolfenstein and others. That is a LOT of credit there. Also he did create the level editing tool, TED5, for the Commander Keen and Wolf3d series.
Overall the guy had a sizeable hand in making iD what it is today and was part of the group who made 3D games more than just sprites. All in all I think he deserves more credit than being the party guy and the guy who flubbed Daikatana, which again is what I've been saying.
However, yes he's done little since leaving iD and failing massively to deliver a good game with Daikatana, moving on to CPL and promising but not delivering Severity which he then reported as cancelled, subsequently after he left CPL stated he was simply cut out of the loop. Later though the game was scrapped anyway.
Basically the guy deserves credit for being a significant part of the revolution that brought us Quake (which I give Quake major credit for the modern 3d game, even HL1 was based off the Quake engine).
Again though, he doesn't deserve the hate he gets for releasing one badly hyped game... he just doesn't have a sense of due diligence I guess.

 

[Hiphophippo]

I never played Daikatana, was it really that bad?

Not...not really, no. It just had the misfortune of being advertised the way it was. A game would have had to be spectacular to follow through on that promise. It wasn't a BAD game, it just wasn't all that good either.

If you follow me.

 

[LarenzoAOG]

I'm picking up you what you're putting down.

 

[Smeggs]

Daikatana lololol

Oh, what a broken, ugly monstrosity it is.

 

[NickCaligo42]

I never played Daikatana, was it really that bad?

Yes, it's horrible. If you want to see how horrible it is firsthand, check out [a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/Kikoskia#p/c/27D4F63D02B362A1"]Kikoskia's Let's Play[/a] of the game.

A list of grievances against Daikatana:

[ul]
[li]Barely Runs
This game is famously bugged out and crashes frequently.[/li]
[li]Save Gems
An awkward saving system where you couldn't outright save your game in a menu like in every other shooter; you had to find one-use items called Save Gems hidden in secret areas. They're often only found by chance, which makes it an incredible pain in the ass to make any progress. This isn't like a save point or checkpoint system, where the game hands the player the ability to save at a carefully paced out segment of the game straight out in the open, this game actively limits your ability to save because it doesn't think you're hardcore enough, and goes to great length to make it difficult to leave the game.[/li]
[li]Horrible Enemy Design
The first several hours of Daikatana are spent fighting robotic insects and rocket-equipped rats. That isn't even a metaphor. This game just will not stop throwing tiny shit at you that's super-annoying, actually lethal, and worst of all, not satisfying to kill--in endless waves. When it isn't doing that, it hits the player over the head with unstoppable juggernauts armed with rockets who will instantly *****-slap you into oblivion on sight.[/li]
[li]Overwrought Story
Step back, kids, this is the ORIGINAL overwritten under-thought piece of crap tacked-on convoluted plot for a first-person shooter. The premise of this thing is so unbelievably overblown that it takes the game more than 20 minutes of cutscene to explain what's going on, who you are, and why you're doing anything. It's not character development, either, I mean 20 straight minutes of an old man straight-up TELLING YOU the backstory in exposition and flashback form. The whole while, the player character literally goes, "so I've got to do this, then?" to which the old codger says, "No. That was only the beginning. The REAL problem is..." and then he goes off again.[/li]
[li]Lame Partner Mechanic
This game saddles you with a pair of inept partner characters that can barely navigate the space, let alone offer helpful backup. If they die, you get a game over--thus doubling your risk of losing. Even if their AI were good, they would be more of a hindrance than a help.[/li]
[li]Irritating Characters
Two words: Superfly Johnson.[/li]
[/ul]

That's all just sort of the tip of the iceburg. Daikatana isn't just bad, it's like the developers took a laundry list of all the things not to do in a game, much less a shooter, and decided to do all of it and see what happened, all wrapped up in some serious BS self-indulgence.

 

[NickCaligo42]

Yep. Daikatana is the "The Room" of gaming. Easily one of the worst games I have ever had the misfortune of playing.

See, the thing about "The Room" is that it can be pretty damn entertaining if you're in the right mood to watch it. It's like an alien came to Earth and decided to make a romance knowing nothing about how humans act or think. And put himself in the starring role. With Daikatana, it's more like Gerry--it's outright trying to antagonize and irritate the player at every turn.

 

[ResonanceGames]

Romero is kind of an asshole and his contributions to id were blown way out of proportion -- often by him. The truth is, he's an OK designer with a massive ego who just happened to be in the right place at the right time when a new genre was being forged.

In my opinion, the level design on Quake is much better than it was in Doom and that's partially because people like Willits, American McGee and Sandy Petersen were doing the majority of the work by that time. Romero still refuses to accept that Daikatana was a misfire, instead he thinks it was a failure because he made it too hard for us peons. No, it was bad because the enemies, weapons, and levels were all ill-conceived messes.

Even his "apology" for the "Make You His *****" campaign was incredibly asinine. He said that someone else had talked him into it, and that he would never say such a thing because "that is gay."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQMtVbz_JuE&t=8m25s

He doesn't deserve the constant hate, but he is kind of a shitty guy.