John Romero (born October 28, 1967) is a renowned figure in the computer gaming industry. He worked for id Software from its founding in 1991 until 1996 and was involved in the creation of several milestone games including Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, DOOM and Quake, as well as serving as an executive producer on Heretic and Hexen.
Romero later co-founded Ion Storm Inc in Dallas, Texas with id co-worker Tom Hall, where he designed and produced Daikatana. The game's critical panning damaged Romero's reputation, who received popular blame for questionable development decisions worsened by his name being hyped in the game's early marketing. Romero left sometime after the release of Daikatana to co-found Monkeystone Games in July of 2001.
Between 1999 and 2003, Romero was involved with Stevie Case, a prominent female gaming industry figure who beat him in a Quake deathmatch. Until their breakup in early 2003, Case was the COO of Monkeystone Games. In mid October of 2003, Romero joined the team at Midway Games as Project Lead on the next game in the Gauntlet series.