ZDoom

Which one do you like more?
honestly i really like both of them. both are legends in their own way. romero created wolfenstein 3d, doom, quake etc. while gaben created steam and half life, left 4 dead etc. he had a very big success with valve. if i have to pick one, im gonna choose gabe newell.

Romero wins on glamour, that's certain. But Gaben wins on acumen. I mean, Gaben is the one that understood that the proper way to avoid software piracy was to make things better for the legit buyers, not worse. You'd think that should be an obvious thing, but people are still in 2024 releasing games that are crippled by invasive DRM, so apparently a lot of developers still think they need to make sure that cracked copies from warez sites are what offers the superior experience to the player.

Thats easy....Todd Howard.

They are both people who are utterly remote from me, who I will likely never meet and all I know about them is what I read and their products. So, I have no real opinion on either.
My impression is that Romero would be more fun and more interesting to hang with.
As a bonus, Romero was not involved in the development of Steam.
So, I guess, of this somewhat contrived "choice" I'd go for Romero.

Ron Llewen

Both deserves appreciation yess.

Without Romero (& also Carmack), we won't get fun FPS & Three Dimensional games we see today, and everything would be just bleep bloop left & right or worse. All the actions, speed, responsiveness, competitiveness, makes Computer a compelling gadget of all time. It has inspired every next gen devs all the time to improve upon this all idea, and even create brand new sub-genres, all thanks to these legends at id Software.

Without Gaben, I'd still live sparsdating games & softwares because getting legit here in my nation is extremely haaaaaaaaaaaaard!, not to mention, Physical Distribution is very inefficient & can be constrained by customs & regulations! It was only thanks to Gaben, that I can finally dare to put my card into internet so I can own it all legit the first time ever. Today, I don't even think about it. If there is a game I'm interested, not to mention on sale, grab it before price goes back.

John Romero, 'nuff said !!

The longer explanation is that John Romero actually made several levels for Doom (and one for Doom 2), notably in "Knee Deep in the Dead" while Gabe Newell, the guy with the money, only hired people to create content. I don't believe that Gabe even *can* make a level for one of 'his' games.

Now if the question was "John Romero or <Name a name of a level designer here>, then there would be an interesting question . . .

Gabe hands down. This would be a lot harder if we were talking about Gabe New Newell and John Carmack, who I think are more comparable in terms of accomplishments, but Romero has gone on to make a name for himself in a completely different way, more like a Guts and Griffith comparison.