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John Romero Tells Bangkok Keynote Why He Keeps Making Games
John Romero gave the opening keynote at gamescom asia x Thailand Game Show 2026 in Bangkok on October 29, 2026, titled "Why We Still Make Games."
Reporting from 1 source: 4Gamer.net.
Why it matters
Romero frames his career as a chain of learned constraints, each new machine capability prompting the next game, which is the argument he brought to a regional trade show's opening slot.
Key Facts
- John Romero gave the opening keynote at gamescom asia x Thailand Game Show 2026 in Bangkok on October 29, 2026.
- The keynote was titled "Why We Still Make Games."
- Romero co-founded id Software and now leads Ireland-based Romero Games.
- By the end of 1989, Romero had made 69 games and 19 tools.
- Romero ported "Might and Magic II" to the Commodore 64 at his second company, Inside Out.
The id Software co-founder walked through his own catalog in order, from a game built to learn BASIC through his 6502 assembly work on the Apple II and his early companies Inside Out and Ideas from the Deep, before founding id Software.
Romero's account of his early years is a list of problems rather than titles. He learned BASIC by writing a game, then kept finding new things the language could do and turning each into play. Text adventures taught him that a world can be built from words, and that every player action forces the programmer to decide the response by hand.
Assembly for the 6502 CPU in the Apple II let him write closer to the machine, and fast routines meant more could happen on screen. By the end of 1989 he had made 69 games and 19 tools, across maze games, platformers, side-scrolling shooters, and dungeon exploration. He said the count matters less than the number of different problems.
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