Alfonso John Romero (born October 28, 1967) is an American director,
designer,
programmer, and
developer in the
video game industry. He is best known as a co-founder of
id Software and designer for many of their games, including
Wolfenstein 3D,
Dangerous Dave,
Hexen,
Doom and
Quake. His game designs and
development tools, along with new programming techniques created and implemented by id Software's lead programmer
John D. Carmack, led to a mass popularization of the
first person shooter, or FPS, in the 1990s. He is credited with coining the FPS multiplayer term "
deathmatch".