John Romero, the most famous developer behind theDoomseries, will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award during the upcoming Game Developers Choice Awards at GDC 2023. The award comes as a prize for his long-time career, as he revolutionized the gaming industry with many first-person shooters such asDoomand other id Software projects.While there’s no doubt thatDoomwas a game that really left its mark in the industry, inspiring countless clones, the truth is that Romero’s project that reallycodified the FPS genre wasWolfenstein 3D. Originally launched back in 1992 by id Software, the title saw Romero working alongside other industry experts such as Tom Hall. It was a fast-paced title that took theWolfensteinseries' original stealth gameplay and turned it into a shooter in huge, sprawling mazes full of nazis. It was an instant hit and paved the road to more successful projects such asDoomandQuake.RELATED:Doom Fan Recreates The Fortress of Doom in MinecraftAccording to the GDC’s official blog, Romero will get the Lifetime Achievement Award due to his achievements in business, technology, and the game industry as a whole due to his participation in some ofthe most influential first-person shooters of all time. The ceremony will happen on March 22, and it will also award Mabel Addis, who will also receive a posthumous homage with the Pioneer Award. She is being recognized as the first female game developer due to her work onThe Sumerian Game, a text-based strategy title that was developed in 1964.
During the course of his career, Romero participated in the development of over 100 games. It may come as a surprise, butDoomwas Romero’s 90th game. Between 1982 and 1993, he was often participating in the development of several games per year. Many years of training certainly gave him the necessary skills to makeDoomsuch an amazing game, which spawned several sequels and is played even today.
These days, John Romero has been working on Romero Games as a programmer and designer, a company that he started in 2015 with his wife Brenda. In this new enterprise, they launched a few games, including the post-apocalyptic roguelikeGunman Taco Truck, the “unofficialDoomMegawad”SIGIL, andEmpire of Sin, a strategy RPG featuring the mob. In 2022, the developer also released a newDoom 2map, which wassold to get funds to support Ukraine in the war, and was able to raise $27,000 dollars.
