Romero Games is a multi-award-winning AAA game studio based in Galway, Ireland. We create AAA games and craft genres. Our team brings decades of experience to the table with significant leadership roles on games like DOOM, Quake, Fortnite, Far Cry, Dungeons & Dragons, Star Wars: The Old Republic and Magic: The Gathering. Our team has shipped over 200 titles individually and won as many awards, including multiple game of the year awards and even a BAFTA Special Award. We are exceptionally passionate about games. We want to work with you and add your expertise to the team.
We are committed to diversity in all we do. Our founders, Brenda Romero and John Romero, are passionate advocates for diversity. We've worked carefully to build a great team, and thought you'd be interested in knowing who we are.
Corporate
Brenda Romero, CEO
Brenda Romero is a BAFTA award-winning game director, entrepreneur, artist and Fulbright award recipient and is presently game director and creator of the Empire of Sin franchise. As a game director, she has worked on 50 games and contributed to many seminal titles, including the Wizardry and Jagged Alliance series and titles in the Ghost Recon, Dungeons & Dragons and Def Jam franchises. Away from the machine, her analog series of six games, The Mechanic is the Message, has drawn national and international acclaim, particularly Train and Siochán Leat, a game about her family’s history, which is presently housed in the National Museum of Play. In addition to a BAFTA and a Fulbright, Romero is the recipient of multiple lifetime achievement awards, a Grace Hopper Award, a GDC Ambassador Award, and many of the games she has contributed to have won numerous awards. Romero is CEO and co-founder of Romero Games based in Galway, Ireland.
Brenda’s pronouns are she/her.
KEY CREDITS: Wizardry series, Jagged Alliance series, Ghost Recon Commander, Ravenwood Fair, D&D Heroes, Def Jam: ICON.
FAVORITE GAMES: Civilization series, Hearthstone, What Remains of Edith Finch, Container (the board game), Family Business, D&D
INTERESTING FACT: My dream car is a 1966 GTO with a 389 tri-power. One of these days.
John Romero, COO
John Romero has won over 100 awards as a game designer, level designer, audio designer, and programmer. His work spans over 130 games, 107 of which have been published commercially, including the iconic works Wolfenstein 3D, DOOM, DOOM II, Heretic, Hexen and Quake. Romero has worked in the mobile, hardcore, mid-core, casual and MMO space. Romero has co-founded eight successful game companies including the likes of id Software, Ion Storm, Gazillion Entertainment, Loot Drop, and most recently Romero Games.
John’s pronouns are he/him.
KEY CREDITS: Commander Keen series, Wolfenstein 3D, DOOM, DOOM 2, Quake, Heretic, Hexen, Ravenwood Fair (25M monthly players)
FAVORITE GAMES: Hitman, Ghost Recon Breakpoint, World of Warcraft, Minecraft, Hearthstone, D&D, Quake, Doom
INTERESTING FACT: I also cook....a lot. Mainly Mexican food, or "food" as I call it.
Keith O'Conor, Chief Technical Officer
Keith O'Conor is Technical Director and an engine/graphics coder. Prior to moving home to Ireland he lived and worked in Canada, most recently as a Technical Lead at Ubisoft Montreal where he worked on Watch_Dogs and multiple Far Cry titles. He started in the industry at Radical Entertainment in Vancouver as a graphics programmer on the Prototype series, and holds a PhD in Computer Science from Trinity College Dublin. Keith can be found online at http://fragmentbuffer.com and https://twitter.com/@keithoconor.
Keith’s pronouns are he/him
KEY CREDITS: Far Cry 4, Far Cry Primal, Far Cry 5, Watch_Dogs, Prototype, Prototype 2
FAVOURITE GAMES: X-Wing, Doom, Dungeon Master, Wing Commander
INTERESTING FACT: Keith is allergic to dogs and has an awesome dog called Oscar
Brendan Dillon, Chief Operational Officer
Production
Les Ellis, Senior Producer
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Programming
Ronan Pearce, Lead Programmer
Ronan Pearce has over 16 years of professional experience including Senior Director of Engineering for Playfirst where he managed distributed engineering teams that developed chart-topping games. In 2013, Ronan co-developed Swrve's iOS and Android mobile client APIs, a marketing and A/B testing platform used by top mobile games publishers, including Activision and Epic Games. In 2010, Ronan worked with Kore (acquired by Havok) on the realtime Lua Virtual Machine toolkit used by many AAA developers, including Bungie, LionHead, Relic, Microsoft and Gas Powered Games. Between 2002 and 2009, Ronan was Co-founder and Technical Director of Instinct Technologies, working on C++ 3D game middleware - used by AMD and Havok to showcase their technology demos.
Ronan’s pronouns are he/him.
KEY CREDITS: HAVOK, Dogfighter, Diner Dash core technology
FAVOURITE GAMES: Quake1, World of Warcraft, Devil May Cry, Resident Evil 4, StreetFighter 4, Diablo 3
INTERESTING FACT: My signature is on a broken keyboard in a museum
Chris Gregan, Chief Architect
Chris Gregan has worked in the games industry for 15 years and is Chief Architect at Romero Games. He previously founded the Irish office for San Francisco based PlayFirst Inc. As Chief Architect he drove PlayFirst's global games technology strategy. He has lead developer credits on chart topping mobile games including the smash hit Diner Dash and Cooking Dash franchises. He has a B.A. Mod (Gold Medal) in Computer Science from Trinity College Dublin. Chris previously founded indie games company Snozbot, and is the author of Fungus (http://fungusgames.com), a popular and award winning open source tool for creating storytelling games in Unity.
Chris’s pronouns are he/him.
KEY CREDITS: Diner Dash core technology, Fungus
FAVOURITE GAMES: The Last Guardian, Firewatch, The Darkside Detective, Dungeons & Dragons
INTERESTING FACT: I like making funny little indie games: https://snozbot.itch.io
John O’Kane, Console Programmer
John has worked in the games industry for over fifteen years as a programmer (Instinct Technology, Snowglobe Games, Fungus Games, and Haunted Planet) and holds an MSc in computing from Trinity College Dublin. John helped to setup Imirt, Ireland's game maker association and they maintain a strong interest in sustainable independent games development. John also creates small free and paid games (at snozbot.itch.io) and can often be found at game developer events around Europe.
John’s pronouns are he/they.
INTERESTING FACT: There are no interesting facts, secrets, or mysterious circumstances to be found about John. None, none at all.
FAVOURITE GAMES: Exile, Rez, Zelda: Wind Waker, The Darkside Detective, What Remains of Edith Finch.
Ian Dunbar, Programmer
Ian Dunbar is an independent game designer in addition to his role at Romero Games. A graduate of the Master’s degree in Games and Playable Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Dunbar has released four games: Gunman Taco Truck, a featured App Store game, WARPCOP III, Barf Royale, and Grom Skate alongside numerous game jams and month-long projects. He likes to experiment with new tools to play games and has made a number of games using the Microsoft Kinect as well as Google’s Project Tango tablet. Ian also helps organize Galway's 1GAM, a monthly meetup of local developers.
Ian’s pronouns are he/him.
FAVORITE GAMES: Stellaris, Minecraft, and Knights of the Old Republic
INTERESTING FACT: Ian has set foot on the Antarctic continent
Dave Ryley, Programmer
Dave Ryley is a self-taught artist and game programming student from the University of Limerick. Dave first worked at Romero Games as an intern during the development of Gunman Taco Truck, where his art skills came in handy creating additional content for the game. He was part of the winning team for Robocode 2016, and won College Champions and Best in Animation for Games Fleadh 2017. Dave is interested in and experimenting with new techniques for approaching dialog in games during his spare time.
Dave’s pronouns are he/him.
FAVOURITE GAMES: Knights of the Old Republic, Age of Empires 2, Rome: Total War, Stellaris, Heroes of the Storm.
INTERESTING FACT: Dave is an excellent artist as well – very handy during a game jam!
Miguel Campiao, Programmer
Miguel is a long-time programmer and gamer. It all started with Commander Keen in 5th grade because his school did not have enough students to justify hiring a German teacher. So he chose Computers as an elective instead. His life was never the same again.
Miguel’s pronouns are he/him.
FAVOURITE GAMES: Mass Effect (only finished it 5 times); Witcher III (only finished it 3 times); Skyrim(never finished it even though he has more than 500 hours on it) and Destiny (over 1111 hours on Destiny 1 and over 808 hours on Destiny 2). Magic the Gathering (playing it since 1998).
INTERESTING FACT: If Miguel wasn't a programmer he would probably be a professional guitar player. People have mistaken him for Dave Grohl twice so far.
Joe Greaney, Programmer
Joe is a Gameplay Programmer at Romero Games. A graduate of Computer Games Development at the University of Limerick, Joe cut his teeth on game jams, and silly projects before entering the industry. He loves wrangling complex systems into simple code and creating interesting gameplay decisions. Joe is slowly moving his way up the west coast of Ireland being born in Kerry, living in Limerick and now working in Galway. C++ is his favourite and least favourite programming language.
Joe’s pronouns are he/him.
FAVOURITE GAMES: X-Com, Civilization, Factorio, Final Fantasy 9, FTL, Legend of Zelda, Cities Skylines, Pokémon
INTERESTING FACT: Joe is fluent in Irish and would love to make more games as Gaeilge.
Shane O’Malley, Programmer
Shane has been been programming as a hobby ever since he was 15. Inspired by the success story of Minecraft, he started programming in Java. He enjoys playing fighting games competitively, and has travelled around Ireland entering competitions for Street Fighter V. He love movies, some of his favourites being: Goodfellas, Snatch, Trainspotting and pretty much any Tarantino movie.
Shane’s pronouns are he/him.
FAVOURITE GAMES: Street Fighter V, Final fantasy (especially VI and X), the Persona series, FTL.
INTERESTING FACT: I like to cook and bake, And I've got a pretty sweet brownie recipe.
Sarah Healy, Programmer
Sarah is a graduate of Maynooth University and DIT for her bachelors and masters respectively. While in DIT she worked on a puzzle platformer that taught children programming in both Irish and English. After that she spent some time inside Virtual and Augmented Reality, mainly explaining the difference between the two to people. She has always been interested in understanding how technologies can be used to modify the users’ perception and experiences and has previously conducted experiments with redirected walking in virtual spaces and predicting body movement in VR.
Sarah’s pronouns are she/her.
FAVOURITE GAMES: Tomb Raider, Breath Of The Wild, Resident Evil 1, CTR, FFX and Werewolf
INTERESTING FACT: Used to be one half of the infamous(in their own, very small, circles) radio duo Gobnait and Nábla
Art
Hayo Koekkoek, Senior Environmental Artist
Hayo is an Environment Artist at Romero Games. He moved to the UK at the ripe age of 18 to pursue a career in video games. 20 years later, he is still 18. During that time, he managed to work at places like Jagex, Codemasters, Crytek, Playground, Cloud Imperium Games and Rocksteady until landing a position here at Romero Games.
Hayo’s pronouns are he/him.
KEY CREDITS: Runescape, Bodycount, Ryse: Son of Rome, Forza Horizon 2 and 3, Star Citizen.
FAVORITE GAMES: Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, Redneck Rampage, Guild Wars, Guild Wars 2, the Resident Evil franchise + remakes, the Assassin's Creed franchise, Chess, Magic: The Gathering (pre-internet).
INTERESTING FACT: Does not like Star Wars like most people but loves to say the word EGG, as a large amount of people he has worked with can attest to.
Design
Katie Gardner, Content Designer
Katie, originally from Worcester, Massachusetts, moved to Galway in the summer of 2015. After several years of working in various insurance/marketing roles, she decided to obtain an MA in Film at NUIG. She started working for Smyths Toys’ head office in the video games purchasing department before moving to a mobile game development company called 9th Impact. There she held a role that combined QA, marketing, and writing, and helped the team release their first game on Nintendo Switch. In her spare time, she makes poor attempts at teaching herself to code and writes for video game review sites.
Katie’s pronouns are she/her.
FAVORITE GAMES: Fallout: New Vegas, Fallout 3, The Witcher 3, Mega Man X, Hollow Knight, Super Mario 3, Zelda: Ocarina of Time
INTERESTING FACT: Katie can recite the alphabet backwards.
Ian O’Neill, Game Designer
Ian O'Neill is an associate game designer at Romero Games. A former student of Dublin Institue of Technologies' Game Design program, Ian joined Romero Games as part of a work experience program in 2016. While at Romero Games, Ian held multiple positions including QA tester for Gunman Taco Truck, and Typewriter Restoration Specialist for Black Box. After proving too difficult to remove from the premises, Ian was offered a full-time position as an Associate Game Designer (which he attempts to retain) on an up and coming project. Ian was the resident HR designee, until he passed the torch on to Joe.
Ian’s pronouns are he/him.
FAVOURITE GAMES: Videogames: World of Warcraft, Warframe, XCOM, Final Fantasy, Divinity Original Sin, Twisted Metal. Boardgames / Cardgames: Magic the Gathering, Skull, D&D, Pandemic.
INTERESTING FACT: Ian is the stand-in HR officer for Romero Games. There have been no complaints.
Jack Lawton, Content Designer
Jack Lawton is a writer and Narrative Designer from Waterford, Ireland. He is a graduate of the Masters in Writing programme at the National University of Ireland Galway. In addition to games, Jack writes fiction, creative non-fiction, and reviews. His work has appeared in Mycelia, Fallow Media, and the Inniu, Inné, Amarach collection. He lives, writes, and mostly just plays MMO's in Galway.
Jack’s pronouns are he/him.
INTERESTING FACT: Jack once gave himself a black eye with a toy lightsaber.
FAVOURITE GAMES: Night in the Woods, Fallout New Vegas, Zelda Series, Mass Effect 2, WoW, Hollow Knight.
Maezza Romero, Content Designer and QA
Maezza Brathwaite Romero is an up-and-coming game designer, having already released her first title, ‘Cyber Squad’ at the age of 17. She is currently a part of the Romero Games design team, making playable content out of the craziest ideas.
Maezza’s pronouns are she/her.
KEY CREDITS: Cyber Squad for HPE & Girl Scouts of America
FAVORITE GAMES: Detroit, Become Human, The Silent Hill Series, Crooked Man, Fallout New Vegas, Witcher 3 and WOW!
INTERESTING FACT: When she was 6 years old, she placed 4th in a professional Super Smash Bros competition. Needless to say, the adults participating weren’t very happy about it.
Quality Assurance
Joe Neary, Senior QA Tester
Joseph Neary has previously worked in QA for hardware and software companies. When not testing games, Joe is usually trying to sell his paintings to people.
Joe’s pronouns are he/him.
FAVOURITE GAMES: Street Fighter IV, Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War, Fallout: New Vegas, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Teleglitch, FTL, Time Splitters 2, Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath, Dungeon of the Endless
INTERESTING FACT: Joe hosts a multiple award-winning radio show called "Famous Last Words". It goes out Tuesdays on FlirtFM 101.3.
James Shields, Senior QA Tester
James Shields is a graduate from NUIG, where he was auditor of the college's Boardgaming society. When not testing games, James is usually either playing games or playing his bass.
James pronouns are he/him.
FAVOURITE GAMES: The Resident Evil Series, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, The Dark Souls Series, Stellaris, The Witcher 3, Monster Hunter: World, Magic: The Gathering
INTERESTING FACT: James once won a gold medal in a gymnastics competition by default.
