RomSteady.net
Testing The Limits
The Token Bio...
Michael Russell was born in Utah on August 16, 1974.
Michael was a large part of an 8-bit computer user group in Clearfield, Utah called EON (Eight-bit Only Network). It was there that he received the nickname "RomSteady." It means "reliable, always there, and extremely stubborn."
Michael joined the United States Army in 1992 and was stationed at Fort Jackson in South Carolina. After his discharge, Michael returned to Utah.
Most of Michael's adult life was spent working in the entertainment industry, whether it was managing an arcade or working retail selling games. When Michael had the chance to work for Access Software in Salt Lake City, he took it.
During Michael's time at Access (and at Microsoft after the acquisition in April 1999), Michael worked on over a dozen products in a wide range of genres, ranging from golf ("Microsoft Golf 2001 Edition," "Links") to snowboarding ("Amped," "Amped 2") to wakeboarding ("Mobius (cancelled)") to mech combat ("Mechwarrior 3: Pirate's Moon").
Due to a staffing shortage, Michael also became the first employee at Microsoft Game Studios to have three separate credits on a single title ("Microsoft Golf 2001 Edition").
In February 2003, Michael gave a lecture on video game testing to the Student International Game Developers Association chapter at the University of Utah.
Michael left Microsoft Game Studios on September 30, 2003, and on January 3, 2005, joined Ritual Entertainment as their Quality Assurance Manager.
In early 2006, Michael gave a lecture at the Dallas CGC at UTD on video game testing.
On December 4, 2006, Michael left Ritual Entertainment, and is now working for a North Texas educational non-profit. However, he still remains involved in the games industry as a feature columnist for magazines and as a pundit for online media.
Trivia
In over seven years of game testing, Michael has filed over 50,000 bugs against the products he has worked on.
Michael has two more toenails than toes due to a botched foot operation.