John Romero Starts Up DevGamm Lisbon 2024

With a keynote by developer legend John Romero, the second DevGamm in Lisbon started today. With attendees from more countries than any DevGamm before and the prestigious keynote speaker, CEO Maria Chyrvona expects a strong event during the next two days.

The second edition of DevGamm Lisbon from 14 to 15 November is bigger and more diverse than any DevGamm so far. In the opening remarks of the event this morning, Maria Chyrvona presented the preliminary numbers from the event. DevGamm Lisbon 2024 received 537 submissions for games and welcomed 740 attendees so far, with more coming in over the course of the two days. Attendees come from 43 countries, making it the most international DevGamm up to date. 34 per cent of attendants are female. Additionally, the event adds workshops to the Lisbon program for the first time.

The main goal of the event in the Oitavos Resort in Cascais near Lissabon is building connections. Everything at the event, from the breakfast setup to the networking party, is aligned with this. For example, the event features an additional Q&A area where speakers go after talks, to catch them for questions and meetings.

Following Chyrvona’s introduction, Jeferson Valadares, President of APVP, took the stage for a few minutes, talking about the recently strongly developed game industry in Portugal, the recent crisis and hope for developers joining the industry now.

The highlight of the morning was without doubt the keynote by developer legend John Romero, Creative Director at his own company Romero Games. He talked about the creation of Doom, his 90. Game overall. "You are going to make a lot of games before you make a really good one", Romero lead in.

Romero spoke about the history of id Software from 1991, when the company bought the technology that would later be used to make Doom, until the release of the game in 1993. He lead through id Software’s first 3D game Catacomb 3D, one of the earliest 3D games of the industry, to Wolfenstein 3-D’s development over five months in 1992.

Going into the details of Doom, Romero described building the level editor, modeling the monsters from Clay and with the help of a Hollywood monster puppet maker and making weapons from filmed footage of toy guns and real chainsaws. He ran through the timeline of Doom’s development and problems in the business from unfulfilled contracts to members leaving the team during the time. He also showed different iterations of the game in motions, from a one month to a three month development Alpha, a five month pre-Beta and so on, from the game pivoting from a live based arcade system to what would become Doom’s level system and more.

The talk concluded with the legacy of the first Doom game, from the rise of the FPS genre in the next decades and pivotal titles that developed from mods and fan projects of Doom.

Romero proceeded to do an almost day-long meet and greet session during the course of the first DevGamm day, signing his autobiography and answering questions.