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Nicknamed 'Locki', Paul is Lead Game Designer and Managing Editor (and let's face it, owner and founder) of Splash Damage.
Here's what Paul told us about himself in our May 2007 interview:
I started out with an interest in id Software games in the early 1990s, running a bulletin board system in London called Cybernet BBS and I used to get hold of the Doom and Wolfenstein shareware files and distribute them, non-commercially, to friends and stuff. I loved playing those early id titles. So when Quake 1 came out, I was working as a server and network analyst. So I knew quite a bit about the internet back in those early days around 1997 and I started playing Quake online, joining a clan called Clan Earth-Quakers who were the oldest Quake clan in the world. A good bunch of guys. And I became completely obsessed. I played Quake 1 Team Fortress for two… two and a half years constantly entering tournaments and leagues. And we won a lot of them and we did really well. I became the clan leader within a few months and I was writing for the UK Fortress Newsdesk website and I had a column on Barry’s World website for Team Fortress.
So I was obsessed. I carried on working in IT, but just spent pretty much all night every night playing Quake. So then, in early 2000 I started a mod team as project leader – the Q3F mod for Quake 3 Arena. Also, around that time I took a job at Barry’s World as their Infrastructure Manager. And although I was supposed to be ‘an IT guy’ at Barry’s World, I soon found myself presenting a computer games TV show that was going out to Asia Quake Republic and Lock and Load broadcast on Network of the World].
So, for the years 2000 and 2001 – other than the TV job, which was kind of like a Saturday job really - I pretty much spent all my time in the week working with the mod team getting Q3F off the ground. In August 2000 we were all flown out to QuakeCon at id Software’s expense for us to show out mod to the attendees. We just loved it. We were completely in awe of game development. We felt that id were rock stars. We’d brought this high concept for a game with us, that sucked. We showed it to id. They said, “Dude, that sucks”, and that was our first introduction to the reality of game development! [laughs]
Then about a year later in 2001, the TV stuff was winding down and I’d started and properly incorporated Splash Damage. We’d been doing some technology work on the Quake 3 engine for this TV company we were working with. And we were making maps for BT Openworld and a few people like that. But what we really wanted to do was to work on id Software stuff – engines and/or intellectual property – with Activision. So at the end of 2001 we showed id Software what we’d done with our mods again – and by now we’d remodelled everything: the user interface, the character models, the maps, all the textures, the sound effects… the entire game was completely redone for Q3F.
Software Highlights from Credited Titles
Paul Wedgwood's first video game work that SPOnG is aware of is the 2007 title, "Enemy Territory: Quake Wars" (PC) as Director. Of the titles listing Paul within the credits , "Enemy Territory: Quake Wars" (PC) has been a best selling title.
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