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Portrait of a Pioneer
We like to tell ourselves that were a young industry, but were not so young anymore. This summer weve been confronted by our own mortality with the sudden death of Paul Steed, a pioneer of real-time 3D graphics who was an icon of the brash early days of the game business. He died on August 11, at the age of 48 (details have not been made public).
Unlike most of us, Steed didnt labor in obscurity. If you were involved in games during the 90swhether as a professional or as a fanit was hard not to pay attention to Paul Steed. He worked on some of the seminal titles of the decade, notably the Wing Commander series and the Quake series. He produced the first demo for Xbox 360, presented a Career Seminar keynote at the Game Developers Conference, and was a leading exponent of art outsourcingproving that he could remain topical for nearly two decades. Always outspoken and always controversial, he was not a typical game artistbut he was the most public exemplar of what we do for people both inside and outside the business.
Steeds start
Steed joined Origin Systems in 1991 as a self-taught concept artist, fresh out of the Air Force. Wing Commander producer Chris Roberts recalled that he was hired as a design assistantessentially, an internbecause the studio didnt have the budget for an established artist but liked his hustle. However, Steed found his calling as the studio transitioned to real-time 3D on Strike Commander. The project was supposed to use sprite-based aircraft with a simple 3D backdrop, and Steed was tasked with creating simple props and buildings to test the infant 3D system. Instead, with his characteristic self-assurance, he modeled and textured complete flyable planes, which convinced the studio that the game could be fully 3D.
Looking at the visuals 20 years later, its difficult to appreciate the implications of his humble triangular planes. 3D was hardly a noveltythis was, after all, a decade after the debut of TRON in 1982. CGintensive movies like The Abyss and Terminator 2 were everywhere in pop culture. For game developers though, 3D was an esoteric specialty dominated by a handful of academics, scientists, and engineers. The ticket to...