Carmack squashes hopes of game dev reunion with John Romero anytime soon

Published , by TJ Denzer

If you haven’t been following John Romero, he has a new book out. It’s Doom Guy: Life in First Person, an autobiography of Romero’s life and career in video games, and the explosive popularity of Doom. What’s more, his fellow Doom creator John Carmack has a quote on the back cover of the book. The collaboration got fans excited that Carmack could be doing things with Romero again. However, Carmack has put that rumor to rest. He recently claimed that he and Romero aren’t working on a new game at this time.

John Carmack squashed rumors of a new collaboration with John Romero from his personal Twitter account. In a post celebrating the launch of John Romero’s book, Carmack congratulated his id Software alumni and wished him well. At the same time, he bookended the conversation about new collaborations early.

To preempt the inevitable question, no, we aren’t planning to make a new game together,” Carmack explained quite plainly.

John Carmack congratulated John Romero on the launch of his new book, but added that they are not doing any new games together at this time.
Source: John Carmack

It might come as a disappointment to fans that would have liked to see two of the core minds behind the legacy of the Doom franchise work together on something new. Unfortunately, Carmack and Romero have gone very separate directions since the days of Doom. Carmack would eventually join Oculus before it was acquired by Meta and stuck with the VR department at the new company up until earlier this year. Currently, Carmack has kicked off a new tech startup the form of Keen Technologies, which works on Artificial General Intelligence. Meanwhile, Romero has stayed in games, but moved on from id Software to launch Romero Games. He and Brenda Romero launched Empire of Sin in 2020 and he is now working on a new first-person shooter to be revealed at a later date.

A new partnership or collaboration between Romero and Carmack seems to be wistful thinking at the moment, but with Romero still dipping his hands into the FPS genre, we still have something to look forward to from at least one of the masterminds of Doom. Stay tuned as we continue to follow this story for further updates.