Despite the ridicule the press heaped upon Romero, he maintains he isn’t to blame for the mess that Ion Storm became. “The biggest mistake I made,” he states, “was with the co-founders I had at the beginning, other than Tom Hall. Everything that happened past that point happened because of that. I can’t talk about it, because I had to sign a non-disparagement contract, but those people screwed up so bad. You don’t read anything about what really happened at Ion because we’re not even allowed to talk about it.” He’s past caring, but does joke, somewhat disconcertingly: “There’s even an Ion Storm survivors group online!”

While Romero was coping with post-Ion fallout, the rest of the world turned its attention back to Doom. Why? At 11:19 am, on April 20, 1999, students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold entered Columbine High School and murdered 13 students, injured 24 others, and eventually killed themselves. The event came to be known as the Columbine High School Massacre. Both Harris and Klebold were fans of Doom, and had created their own levels for the game. The media frenzy around the event led many observers to vilify Doom and its purported sociopathic message. Unsuccessful lawsuits were filed against id Software and other developers and publishers by parents of several of the victims, and the massacre itself has been arguably the lynchpin of every ‘violence in videogames’ debate since.

Romero maintains he was never riled by the blame. With regard to whether violent games can foster violent behavior, he takes the obvious stance: “They probably can, if the person who’s playing the violent game has something wrong with them. It’s like watching Rocky – if you want to come out of the movie theatre and start caving people’s faces in, are you gonna blame the film or yourself? If you can’t handle it, don’t do it.”

Despite his apparent indifference to the issue (not to mention Daikatana’s failure), Romero knew he needed a change. So he moved into the smaller field of handheld game development, forming Monkeystone Games with Tom Hall and then-girlfriend Stevie Case. This gave him the opportunity to do something he hadn’t really done since forming Ion: write code.

But when Romero split with Case – “It ended up pretty bad, and I was pretty depressed for a while” – he decided he had to get out of Dallas. Management seemed too crushing a prospect, so he ended up working for Midway on Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows in Chicago. Due to scheduling issues, however, production had to be restructured and sped up, and Romero was asked to leave. The result, unsurprisingly, wasn’t spectacular, and Romero was unfairly blamed in certain quarters for the game’s mediocrity, despite his minor involvement with the finished product.

Fortunately, he had someone to ease the burden. A casual internet acquaintance of
Romero’s since 2001, Raluca Plesca became a source of comfort after his breakup with Case. Soon, they realized they had feelings for each other, and Romero flew to Romania to see her for the first time in 2003. Shortly thereafter, in 2004, they were married.

“Normally,” Romero jokes, “when you have these internet meetings, you meet the real person, and it’s always a letdown. But when I saw her in person it blew away any pictures or anything I could have seen of her. I was amazed.”

Now in San Francisco and with newfound resolve, Romero has formed Slipgate Ironworks, the mysterious company that we’re led to believe is working on an MMO that will shatter all of our preconceptions about what an MMO can be. Perhaps to avoid comparisons to Daikatana’s hype machine, Romero has ordered a complete PR blackout, and admits he’s also wary of other companies stealing Slipgate’s ideas. His recent switch back to Apple products – he aims to cleanse himself of Windows forever – may indicate, however, that the game won’t just appear on PCs. No word on that yet, though, obviously. Still, we hear if you stop bugging him about it, he’ll gladly share a few Laminates Drops.