I’ve set this as my bio page, but it’s worth posting here as well.
I knew, with absolute certainty, that I was a gamer during the week of November 13th, 2000.
In one week, Shenmue and Skies of Arcadia hit the Dreamcast, and I was in heaven. I understood the true meaning of the fall rush for the first time, and I liked it. It was like a drug rush. More games than I could possibly play were coming out, and for the first time I had money to buy them. It was awesome.
Yeah, I’d played lots of games before Skies and Shenmue. And they certainly weren’t the best ones I’ve ever played, either. Games like Shining Force and Final Fantasy VI had captured my attention long before and extracted many hours of my life through my fingertips.
Metal Gear Solid was one of the first games that gave me that “Wish I could see it for the first time again” feeling. Silent Hill taught me the true meaning of survival horror in a video game.
I’d even faithfully read NextGen magazine for some time before that, something I kept doing right up until the last, sad issue.
I knew I was a gamer before that week, but here’s what I figured out: Gamer is the word I would tell people to use to describe me. I am a gamer. It’s a lifestyle, where the first thing I pay for after utilities and necessities is games. Even as early as my NES, the focus of my waking life has been games. I’ve always been renting new games, saving up for new game systems, and reading magazines and later on, sites.
Books like NextGen and even IGN’s Dreamcast site are ultimately what led me to major in Journalism at the U of M (and my interest in animation and Japanese culture brought me to my Asian Languages and Literatures major, obviously). During my time at the U, I had a few personal blogs, but it never occurred to me to start a video-game specific blog before then. I just kind of dreamt starry-eyed about writing about video games someday, wondering how I would ever get that far.
After finishing college, I got a job fixing DSL and figuring out how the Internet works. I’m still doing that today, and I’m damn good at it. During the past few years, I’ve brought my resume to Game Informer—the locally based and internationally read gaming magazine that’s been around almost as long as EGM before its bucket was suddenly, forcibly kicked. Once, I even got to talk to none other than Andy McNamara. It was kind of like an interview, but more like a fan tour. I was… well, really immature then. If I had a chance to go in today, our conversation would be very different. But then, I don’t know that without that conversation, I would be who I am.
That conversation, and the regrets that came from it, fueled me over time to actively work on writing. First, my good friend and writing mentor Serdar Yegulalp introduced me to anime.advancedmn.com. I began writing anime and manga reviews for the site, something I still do. I also started my own blog on my webspace. I’ve had this blog for just over a year and while I don’t post on it every day, I do post regularly. I’ve also started writing at gaming site Kombo.com, a higher-traffic site under the same corporate umbrella as the anime site.
To fuel the fires and oil the gears in my head, I increased my intake of gaming commentary tenfold. It started sort of a renewed fire for games and writing as I read more and more sites, started listening to podcasts like ListenUP and RebelFM, and started interacting with more successful writers via Twitter and through Kombo.
So that’s me. I’m a gamer. More than anything, I like to play, think about, write about, and talk about games. When I get home tonight, I’ll play games. When I wake up this weekend, I’ll play games. I could’ve said that ten years ago, and I’ll be able to say it 10 years from now.
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