John Romero honoured alongside the teacher who made world’s first edutainment game
John Romero, famous for his work on Doom, Quake, Wolfenstein and, ah, Daikatana, is finally getting the recognition he deserves. Not for his hair, which remains inexplicably snubbed by awards committees across the globe, but for his entire career up to this point. At the annual Game Developers Choice Awards (GDCA) in March, Romero will take home the Lifetime Achievement Award for his work on “iconic and genre defining first-person shooters” over the years. We are still making plenty of Doom clones (opens in new tab), after all.
Romero isn’t the only one being honoured. The judges will also give a posthumous “special award” to Mabel Addis, regarded as the first female game designer, who died in 2004. Addis worked as lead designer on The Sumerian Game (opens in new tab) in 1964, using her knowledge of ancient history to design something that paved the way “for game elements that wouldn’t become mainstream for decades”.
The Sumerian Game was a piece of edutainment that took the form of “photo slideshows accompanied by synchronized audio”. Lacking modern display tech, it “used a computer printer to express dialogue and prompts,” which came from an “in-game narrator/character who conveyed game information and asked questions of the player”. I don’t know about you, but The Sumerian Game sounds like a banger, and I feel comfortable retroactively declaring it PC Gamer’s 1964 Game of the Year.
“This year, the Game Developers Choice Awards will recognize two of the most impactful game development talents in history, Mabel Addis and John Romero,” said Stephenie Hawkins, a director at Informa Tech, which runs the GDCA. She continued that the GDCA is “proud to honor two artists with wildly divergent career trajectories,” but who nevertheless “shared a creative passion and ingenuity that would help define entire game genres”.
Addis worked as a grade school teacher when she wasn’t doing trailblazing game design as a side-hobby—which makes her award alongside Romero a real chalk and cheese.wad (opens in new tab) scenario—and I’m not sure anyone ever asked what she thought of Doom. I imagine she’d think it could be a little more educational than it is, though. At least we still have time to get Romero’s take on The Sumerian Game. Perhaps someone can ask him at the GDCA ceremony on March 22 this year.
