John Romero, the man behind the DOOM franchise, gave birth to the first-person shooter genre while at id Software. Romero, who quickly became one of the first American rock stars of the gaming world, has settled down with Midway Games. The game creator has long since chopped his long hair and left Ion Storm and Daikatana behind. He's now doing what he does best--making games. Romero took some time out of his hectic schedule to talk about games.

GameDAILY: Can you talk a bit about how far the game industry has come since your early days with the DOOM game?

JR: My early days in the industry happened over 12 years before DOOM. So, you can imagine that the game industry has come incredibly far in the past 25 years I've been making games. The games I made back then were text games, adventures. Then we had games with low-resolution graphics, and so on. Now we have incredibly fast video cards that look so amazing that you can't even view screenshots of a game properly on your computer because they're taken from one type of custom hardware that looks completely different (and worse) when displayed on a normal VGA screen or a magazine page.

GD: What are some of the biggest changes? Any surprises?

JR: One of the biggest changes has been the solidification of genres. Back in the early 80's, games were designed without regard to genre - they were just designed to be fun in any way the designer came up with. Thanks to big business, the industry's creativity has been narrowly channeled into specific areas that are proven to generate income. And the surprises that come out of this situation are when a developer invents a new genre and everyone plays follow-the-leader all over again.

GD: Can you talk about what role you play today at Midway Games?

JR: My title is Creative Director of Internal Studio, San Diego. I'm part of studio management so I know a lot of what's happening on the corporate level, but my main tasks involve Gauntlet. When I started here, I became the Team Lead and Lead Designer on Gauntlet until I could fill the design role with Josh Sawyer. I've been very busy with hiring for the past year and we've built an amazing dev team here in San Diego. I was also doing some design work on one of the locations in Gauntlet and now I'm involved in programming. It's great to be able to do a lot of things here and this company is becoming more powerful than you can ever imagine.

GD: What can you tell us about the multiplayer aspects of Area 51, especially anything that you oversaw or added for a more intense multiplayer experience?

JR: My previous company, Monkeystone Games, was chiefly responsible for the multiplayer maps and balance for Area 51. We got Monkeystone involved when Midway needed a team focused on pumping up their multiplayer component and I briefly spent some time in Austin critiquing the maps and aspects of deathmatch for the game. So you know that Midway made sure that multiplayer was a priority and had a team totally dedicated to it. That's as much as I'd like to say about the deathmatch part of the game - you've got to play it to see how great it is!

GD: Can you talk about what challenges there are in bringing back, or reinventing, classic games like Gauntlet and Area 51 for both a new generation of players as well as a group of nostalgic gamers?

JR: The main hurdle is re-envisioning the intellectual property for today and into the future. We're not planning on bringing these games back for just one more run - these are valuable properties that we want to bring back to life and make better than anyone could ever expect, much like Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings triumph. Actually, the main challenge is in creating the perfect team to develop these games; a team that truly believes in the game and is excited on a daily basis in creating the best game they've made. We have that team here in San Diego on Gauntlet. I can't wait for the gamers to find out what we're doing with Gauntlet and how it goes beyond anything they could have expected based on what's come before.

GD: Having invented the first-person shooter, and seeing games like Halo 2 bring that experience to the console, what do you think the next big step is in this genre?

JR: That's difficult to answer having seen how the genre has split over the past several years. First, it's translated over to the consoles with Halo and has pushed the design further with streaming worlds. It's spawned a sub-genre with the tactical FPS (which has a few forking design styles in Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six, etc.). It's come back around to the genre's beginnings with games like Serious Sam and Painkiller (which is currently being used as the official tournament game for the Cyberathlete Professional League). And I'd have to say that the 3rd-person shooter is directly related to the FPS - the design of these games are very similar with the only difference being the viewpoint is behind an on-screen model instead of with no model. So with that inclusion, you could say FPS's have been covering a whole lot of styles from sci-fi (DOOM series), world war II (Wolfenstein, Medal of Honor, etc.), western (Outlaws, Red Dead Revolver, Deathwatch), horror (Resident Evil 4), crazy surreal (FAKK2, Psycho Circus), etc.

GD: Can you talk a bit about mobile cell phone games, something you've also been involved with, and how you see mobile games evolving with the constantly updated handsets that enter the market on a regular basis?

JR: Well, the benchmarks in mobile gaming are moving up fast. Handset hardware is getting more advanced by the month with the latest handsets sporting 3D chips in them! The infrastructure for ordering games over-the-air is getting better and more widespread across the various carriers with BREW being the clear winner at the moment. Nokia made a bold move into this space with the introduction of the N-Gage, which is continually evolving to incorporate gamers' needs and expectations. Expect a lot more competition in the mobile arena - this is the fastest growing segment in the game industry.

GD: What do you think of the wave of videogame-based movies? Midway has several in development and studios are investing $100 million-plus budgets on these big screen forays.

JR: Well, I actually look forward to most of them now after the successes of Lord of the Rings and Spiderman. I loved The Hulk and Daredevil as well, although they weren't triple-A quality, they were great.

GD: Lastly, what are some of the changes that gamers will see over the next couple of years with the launches of new consoles from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo?

JR: Expect a ton of graphics of high quality. I don't see any revolutions in game design on the XBOX2 and PS3, but we'll see something interesting on the Nintendo Revolution and the Nintendo DS is already doing some cool stuff with the dual screens. I truly respect Nintendo's forward thinking.

GD: Do you think this next generation leap will bring to fruition the convergence of Hollywood and gaming that has always been talked about, but never fully realized?

JR: I think the convergence has already begun being realized with the crossover of game movies that are good (Mortal Kombat) and movie games that rock (Chronicles of Riddick). We'll see more.