John Romero

And now once we get them out there, we can kind of see which franchises kind of get heat and, you know, see how players react to each one.

do find it remarkable that this sort of scene generally because i i do dip into it from you know from time to time i got the um shadow man remaster they did a little while ago night dive did and they put in the levels that were cut from the game and you know when you see the bethesda and night dive actually do with the doom and the quake and they sort of include like john romero's um expansions that he did as a sort of basically as a mod that's now been clearly officially recognized and it's sort of it's really wonderful when you see that sort of community because ultimately it does come from the community um that this thing is and i know that you can just put these things out but a lot of people can access these stuff in maybe illicit ways and so if you want to get people to actually engage in this and buy these things you sort of need to give them something extra i guess and it's just anyway i am

yeah i mean one of our goals there was to make it just kind of you can just play it it just works you know you just install it i mean a game like wing commander one will take you like 30 seconds to download And, you know, and then you just hit the play button.

And the other fun thing about it is that we've included all these different launch options.

Hello and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network.

I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm very pleased today to be speaking with Dr. John Tillman about a book just out in 2026 from Temple University Press titled Jim Crow from the Harbor, Black Freedom Struggle in Downtown Baltimore, 1945-1980. which, as the title suggests, takes us to Baltimore to ask questions like, how do Black communities coexist when we're looking at a downtown that is trying to do, you know, quote unquote, urban renewal or revitalization, these sorts of buzzwords? What does that actually mean for Black communities? To what extent can they organize in ways that makes those spaces accessible? available to Black communities, not places necessarily to get pushed out of.

And obviously, with the time period, we've got quite a few decades to cover.

So there's all sorts of ups and downs and economics and politics, lots for us really to talk about.

So John, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.

Thank you so much for having me.

Pleasure to be here.

It has to begin in neighborhoods surrounding the downtown area.

And despite the fact Battlefront 3 hadn't even begun development, it was seen as a safer bet.

There's way more to this story, and you can read the full piece from Wesley Yen Pull right now at IGN.com. John Romero, the legendary game designer who co-founded id Software, has had a career spanning five decades.

During that time, he's enjoyed the highest of highs, such as his seminal work on Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake, and The Lowest of Lows, most recently when his current studio, Romero Games, had its funding pulled by Microsoft amid the ongoing cuts across the Xbox business that began last year.

Speaking with IGN during Gamescom Asia x Thailand Game Show 2026, where he delivered an opening keynote address titled, Why We Still Make Games, Romero seemed upbeat about the direction of his latest project, despite 2025's devastating setback.