How I fell in love with gaming.

From an early age, I've been obsessed with playing video games. At the start it was an outlet to connect with my brothers and friends, a common activity that unknowingly would build into my passion. When I was young every night, I would look forward to sitting on the floor to play my brother's old PS2 while they moved on to the Xbox 360. Games like Jak and Daxter, Spider-Man 2, Ratchet and Clank, Sly Cooper, etc. would be beaten by me time and time again until I memorized each detail of their design. Then I would sneak into my brother's room while they were out with friends and play the games I wasn't supposed to, games like Assassins Creed, Gear of War, Halo, Call of Duty, Skyrim, Fallout 3, and so many more. My mind was blown by seemly endless worlds all held bending to my whims. I didn't realize it at the time but that was when my brain subconsciously decided that video games would be at the center of my life for all time. 

Eventually, I would get my own Xbox to play whatever games called to me. I was able to experience life-changing moments that would further foster my love for video games as an art form. The very first time I actively understood how much games have meant to me over the years was with Halo 4. A 10-year-old me was sitting in his grandmother's sewing room playing the end of Halo 4 on a tiny screen that certainly did not favor resolution. When that game's ending played out (no spoilers) I just began to cry uncontrollably, realizing whether I knew it or not these characters were a part of my childhood. All the nights spent playing Halo 2, 3, and Reach's campaign with my brothers I was also with Chief and Cortana, and saying goodbye to them was incredibly hard. There are countless other examples of games impacting me afterward, but this was the first moment in which I understood my love for games and their potential for telling impactful stories.

I was still not overly adventurous with games, mainly playing your typical shooters or mainstream open-world games that felt safe. I made a lot of friends and fell into amazing communities like Call of Duty zombies which would be my obsession for most of my early teenage years. That all changed when I played The Witcher 3 which was unavoidable at the time, that game showed me how insanely complex and beautiful other genres besides triple-A shooters could be. At that point (and to this day) I just spiraled into a haze of playing every type of game possible and being as knowledgeable as I could be when it comes to games. There is not a single genre or generation of game that I won't play, my unachievable goal has been to play everything. From 150-hour JRPGS to 3-hour-long indie experiences, I just want to give them all the chance and time they deserve. If there's a game out there, chances are that I've either beaten it or at least know some information about its history

How my Game Development journey got started 

It's a weird and meandering journey but in 2019, right after the release of Death Stranding something in my brain clicked and I started thinking more critically about the games I was playing. As mentioned before, I've already been playing a ton of games and my passion was there, but I was just playing them and moving on. When finishing Death Stranding, I simply pulled out my phone, opened the notes app, and started writing down all my thoughts. It helped me process how I felt and break down everything in the game such as story, gameplay, graphics, music, structure, UI, and pretty much everything else. Once I did that a whole new world was opened up to me, I started looking into the creation of games, the people behind their development, the communities surrounding them, and just the industry in general. It was an endless rabbit hole of information that just kept going and going which led to more games and more perspectives on those games. Then in 2020 it just so happened that a pandemic hit, I graduated high school, and I had a whole lot of free time with very little direction in life.

So, like any reasonable person, I decided to revisit a lot of my favorite games from my youth and replay them while documenting my thoughts. It was a super intriguing experience to replay franchises (to name a few) like all the Assassins creeds, Halo, Witcher, Uncharted, Mass Effect, Last of Us, and Bioshock. I was able to look back at my taste in games, break them down, and get a far more analytical or thoughtful perspective on the games I loved so much. It was a huge time sink to replay all these games and to name everything I went back to play during this time would be impossible but not much was happening with new releases in 2020 so I took advantage of that. I was lucky enough to have had the time and dedication to replay a lot and keep playing new games. Doing this trained me to play game games in a much deeper and more complete way so I can properly document my thoughts.

Eventually, I had to start College for a degree I didn't care about and begin working which meant less time for games, but it opened me up to podcasts. Listening to game-centric podcast was when I started to get into the industry side of things with shows about gaming news, discussion, development, reviews, controversy, and all the rest. It was and still is a bit of an addiction for me, I have about 25-30 shows I listen to weekly just because I can't get enough of that gaming discussion. Listening to podcasts while working or doing schoolwork and then playing them every second I could meant it pretty much occupied every part of my brain. I was exploring genres like JRPGS or isometric games which I never even thought of playing, I was intently listening to someone talk about how they made the grass in their game, and I was shaking with excitement when hearing about all the new Xbox, and PlayStation, Nintendo, and third-party releases. Still somehow, I just never thought the game industry was something I could be a part of.

I would eventually drop out of college since I had no interest in a business degree and just started working full time, in 2021 I landed a job at a Nursing Staffing Agency which felt like a huge win for a 19-year-old. It was there that I would keep doing what I've been doing with playing games and listening to podcasts every second I could. I was entirely successful in that Job while still being able to grow my understanding and skills when it came to games, so much so that I got promoted and was looking at a bright future for my current career path at the time. There was one issue though, I just wasn't happy. I realized that no matter how much money I made or what promotion I got, if I wasn't working in the game industry then I would never be fulfilled in life and that's when it clicked.

In April of 2023, I quit my job and went back to college for a degree in Video Game Design and Animation which started that summer. I bought a laptop that would allow me to work in Unreal Engine and other game creation tools such as Blender so I could dive headfirst into learning and making games. Then from there, every single step I took in life has been to push me closer to my goals of working within the video game industry. It was a huge, scary, and slightly crazy risk but if I didn't shift my path to something that would be more creatively fulfilling I knew I wouldn't be happy.

My ever-growing list of favorite games/series