‘Doom’ designer John Romero is releasing a memoir next year

Legendary game designer and the godfather of the first-person shooter, John Romero, has announced that he will be releasing a memoir next year.

The announcement came via his Twitter, where Romero states; “to sum it up, it’s a positive story of gratitude for a life in games. Code and games changed the trajectory of my life. I cover everything in detail, including lessons learned.”

John Romero has a huge body of work dating all the way back to the Atari 2600 title Dodge ‘Em, but it wasn’t until the likes of Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake that he became one of the industry’s most recognisable developers. Throughout recent years he’s worked on lower-profile games, with 2020’s strategy role-playing Empire of Sin being his most recent involvement.

The 288-page book, titled Doom Guy: Life in First Person, has an Amazon pre-order page and description that reads; “told in remarkable detail, a byproduct of his hyperthymesia, Romero recounts his storied career—from his early days submitting Apple II code to computer magazines and sneaking computers out of the back door of his day job to do programming projects at night in his garage to a high-profile falling out with his id Software cofounder John Carmack, as well as his continued role in the gaming industry today as the managing director of Romero Games Ltd.”

The description also notes that Romero will be openly discussing his troubled upbringing: “His story is truly one of a self-made man, founding multiple companies after a childhood filled with violence and abuse drove him to video game design, where he could create new worlds and places to escape to.”

Doom Guy: Life in First Person is set to release January 10 2023.

In other news, 3D Realms co-founders recently had an online Twitter dispute about what caused the downfall of the studio.