Steve Dee - A Requiem

 He wasn't a close friend, he was an acquaintance I knew who shared a passion for game design. He was someone I shared meals and drinks with, and who I talked gaming and game design with...

...and now he's gone.

Steve's last public work was a blog post with a link to an unfinished game. Curiously, there's a bit of overlap with my last post with topics of Dunning-Kruger in it, and it generally touches on a lot of the ideas that arose in discussions I had with him. There's lots of mediocre stuff out there and mediocre people who have only managed to get public attention because they've got confidence more than refined skill or natural talent. The catch is that you need to actually do things, and not be discouraged by the mediocre crap that's getting more attention. Like Steve, this has been a long term struggle for me, and I know plenty of other talented designers who feel a similar way. 

Steve was generally a friendly and genial person (at least that's what he presented to the world), but I know he shared that blend of intelligence, autistic traits, and depression that I've been subject to over the years. He knew the system, and he knew that he'd have to spruik his wares like a carnival hawker if people were going to look at the things he was doing. He also had some strong and outspoken opinions about the things he saw. This isn't just going to be a positive review of someone's life, to fully reflect on a person's impact in the world, we need to examine the positives and the negatives. I saw a lot of Steve's work as hollow and a facade of recycled cliches and mirrored systems from other designers, but at least he had the common decency not to churn out D&D compatible slop. Some of his stuff was certainly interesting, but a lot of it was showmanship. I'm not going to say that this is because he didn't know better, instead he seemed to produce and demonstrate his works in this way because he knew that's the way the world works. 

I'm seeing an overwhelming outpouring of grief from various sectors of the game design community, people who knew Steve personally, those who had a passing acquaintanceship with him from meet ups at conventions (like myself), and those who had only interacted with him online. It would be nice to think that I might have some kind of similar legacy when I leave this world... but I'm not sure. Steve was bigger into self-promotion than I am...

Highlighting the positive and negative responses to someone's passing, I saw this response to my post...and had to respond in kind.

 

 

 

I alluded to bits of that back when it was happening (here and here... including the bit where I put my own game about Angels on hold so that I wouldn't confuse the market with his game). So yeah, I'm not going to sugar coat the life and legacy of Steve, however he did give a lot of support to young and upcoming game designers. He did seem to have the best interests of the game design community at heart, but in order to be known for this a certain amount of self-promotion is still needed. I've been designing stuff for over 30 years now, and writing this blog for almost 18 of them. We need folks like Steve in the game design community, enthusiastic drivers for promotion, but we need more artists, more scholars, more diversity in the community. Steve saw this, he made comments to it, he knew his weaknesses regarding it. It's a shame he is no longer with us, I'd like to have seen him get more traction overseas, but things like that are hard from this side of the world.

 

He also loved dogs, so that's a positive too.