Muzman on 12/8/2012 at 06:45
Weird. The article talks about him like no one's heard of him. He was one of the earliest loud mouthed 'bro' types in the industry (publicly on the net at least) that I can recall. Story was that Adrian Carmack got rid of him because of it (his quiet nerdiness being a subject of a few Paul Steed quotes).
I guess you could say he was ahead of his time. An inspiration to a million Halo frat boys.
(he did say he was pretty sorry about all that and just having a laugh with all this bravado, from memory)
Anyway, wow. He me must have been, what?, 45-ish?
june gloom on 12/8/2012 at 09:10
You're thinking of John Carmack, not Adrian.
And John Romero was very much a bro himself.
Muzman on 12/8/2012 at 09:30
Nah it was definitely Adrian. It was like a trade for Doom 3 being the next game they made, which he didn't want to do. "If I have to do this, I ain't working with him" kind of thing.
From memory anyway.
And yeah Romero liked to stoke the bro flames a bit (a bit?!). Steed was a regular guy in the media back in the day though, writing columns and such. The caustic bro was pretty much his defining persona one way or another.
Didn't hear much about him after the id days.
EvaUnit02 on 12/8/2012 at 19:03
Sad to see him go, but Muz is correct, he was one of the original "bro" types.
He was Id's Itagaki to a degree. He was all about the rendered T&A. He modelled crackwhore for Q2 and Mynx for Q3.
I do recall that he was quite douchey in his Voodooextreme column, which is a hallmark of today's industry alpha bros like CliffyB.
Renault on 13/8/2012 at 14:08
I remember being entertained by all his obnoxious .plan file (remember those?) updates in the 90s. You had to respect the fact that he never gave a shit about what people thought about him. Hard to believe he's passed on, he had to be reasonably young still.
I always think of (
http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/finger.pl?id=1&time=20000601040557) this plan file update from that era, it's actually from John Carmack but it provides some very public details on the inner workings of id and covers why Steed was fired from there.
lost_soul on 13/8/2012 at 16:24
If I understand correctly, the poor guy was fired for helping the other members band together to force management to remake Doom. Seems like a dumb thing to do (fire him), because wasn't Doom 3 their best-selling game?
If Doom 3 had been a flop and he had convinced them to make it, then sure fire him. I have very blurry memories of the "crackhoe skin" for Quake 2. I saw it while playing online, but I always figured it was just made by some random guy in the community.
Renault on 13/8/2012 at 17:02
Steed's firing at id seemed unfair, but even Carmack admitted that he had done several things in the past that were "grounds for dismissal" so it was probably only a matter of time anyway.
Couldn't find any info on the net regarding his age, but he's famous for saying he "didn't touch a mouse until he was 27" and given that Privateer was released in 93, that probably put him right around...50?
june gloom on 13/8/2012 at 19:22
Paul's firing was entirely retaliatory; while Carmack admits he'd done a couple things worth firing him over, the fact that they'd kept Paul on spoke volumes as to his skill and value to the company.
id's very much a dysfunction junction -- I suggest reading "Masters of Doom" to get an idea of just how dysfunctional. It's a good book and gives a lot of insight on both Carmack and Romero. Given his predilection for living in the past, lost_soul might get a kick out of it if I thought he'd actually read anything that wasn't an underground anti-corporate zine.
heywood on 14/8/2012 at 01:02
Quote Posted by Brethren
I remember being entertained by all his obnoxious .plan file (remember those?) updates in the 90s. You had to respect the fact that he never gave a shit about what people thought about him.
I thought the opposite. While at id, he always struck me as a publicity whore.
