Daily Inspiration Quote by John Romero

Romero’s boast lands because it’s both a mission statement and a quiet flex: the best games aren’t born from waiting, they’re born from appetite. “The kind of games that I like right now” frames design as immediate and personal, not market-researched or committee-approved. It’s a statement of authorship in an industry that routinely treats creators like technicians servicing hardware cycles. Romero makes it sound simple: taste is the engine, not the spec sheet.

The second line is the sharper blade. “Not being held back by technology” rejects the common alibi of the era (and honestly, every era): that creative ambition must politely queue behind processing power. In the early 90s, when Romero was helping define the fast, kinetic grammar of FPS games, that posture mattered. Doom and its peers weren’t “possible” because computers suddenly became magical; they were possible because teams engineered around constraints, cheated elegantly, and prioritized feel over fidelity. The subtext is a rebuke to passive futurism: if you’re waiting for better tech to make your dream game, you might not actually be designing - you’re stalling.

There’s also a cultural argument embedded here. Romero’s “right now” is punk timing, insisting games are a living medium with real-time desires, not museum pieces gated by the next chipset. It’s why the quote still reads contemporary in an age of ray tracing and AI: tools change, but the temptation to outsource imagination to hardware never dies. Romero is staking out the opposite: the point is to ship the thrill you can already picture.