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At the radical age of 3, my parents purchased for me my very own Nintendo Entertainment System. As the legend goes, I was apparently playing arcade games and a family member's NES from the moment I developed basic motor skills; or so say my parents, but that would account for early fleeting memories of Donkey Kong, Rampage, Smash TV, and various other titles that I can only vaguely recall the graphics for. Throughout that first decade of life, I was passively exposed to other hobbies and sports, but either due to lack of interest or talent, I never had any desire or motivation to continue doing any other thing besides gaming. So, for the most part I was raised by Nintendo (and Sega to a lesser extent), early 90's Nickelodeon, and the remnants of 80's culture that my older cousins had instilled in me. And in those years of being an only-child, locked away in my bedroom for long afternoons, I somehow developed a thing called imagination. Maybe it was all those simple pixel-sprites, or maybe it was all the ridiculous action figures and cartoons that were iconic for the time, but whatever it was, it established a recurring theme of bizarre creativity that would follow me for the rest of my life. I truly believe that if I hadn't led the childhood that I did, I might never have discovered a love for storytelling that has existed in me for as long as I can remember.

Growing up, I began to nurture the idea that when I became an adult, my career would center around video games and writing. Which I'm sure that's true for most young gamers, I mean, haven't we all wanted to come up with the ideas for our own games? Once I got a little bit older, I began reading gaming magazines; Electronic Gaming Monthly, Nintendo Power, and Expert Gamer to be particular. I would read those magazines front to cover, and they really helped to establish a critical reviewer mentality, which again, I think is typical for young gamers of our generation. So really, at a very young age I was confident in my future profession. If I never had the opportunity to develop games, then I could always pursue writing about games instead. These were ideas that I clung to for years to come, and obviously, I still have delusions of the latter.

Then came my teenage years... Like many the young angster, I became easily distracted by the bullshit that is high school socializing. In middle school and before, it was easy to just be another nerd, but from early on in my teenage years, I discovered that I could tweak my identity into something else, and thus I realized (sooner than most, I would say) that being creative and nerdy didn't mean I had to succumb to stereotypes. So while I wasted many of my best years trying to discover myself (nyuck), I simultaneously began discovering other things. What had been missing in my younger days?

Simple: movies, music and literature.

My love for imagination quickly became transfixed upon these classic and omnipresent mediums that I mostly ignored from the early ages, which I think, is the best time to introduce young children to the classics. As a kid, the only movies I enjoyed were The Nightmare Before Christmas, Star Wars, Jurassic Park, and whatever heavily commercialized crap was being pushed on family households. My taste in music was by far narrower, in that I primarily enjoyed 8-bit chiptunes (as well as later 16-bit tunes), "Hey Sandy" by Polaris, and little else. But that childhood love and fascination for creativity was yearning to discover more of what the world had to offer by the time I was a preteen.

I believe I can cite a viewing of A Clockwork Orange at the age of 14 or 15 to be the earliest catalyst for a rapidly growing obsession with cult films. This easily translated itself into an interest in obscure music as well. All throughout that time of discovery and the excesses of expanded nerdom, I never stopped gaming. However, I was maturing. My tastes and interests were growing, and no longer was I content to spend my imagination points fantasizing about cool game plots. Now, I was writing comics in my spare time, outlining novels and screenplays for short films and the like. Games still took up a lot of my time, but being a part of gaming community and culture took a backseat.

Over that period, games were making their arduous climb into a larger mainstream appreciation. It seemed like everyone was a gamer now, and I thought that was all well and fine. But the snob inside me realized that as games became more and more commercial, the more games would adhere to mainstream tastes and predictability. I'm gonna be honest here, I know games have always been heavily commercialized. From the Atari bust, to the NES gaming resurrection, all the way through the mascot-saturated 90's. But as a youngster, I wasn't aware of it then as much as I would become aware of it as a teen. So, it seemed in the early-mid 2000's, mainstream gaming and I were growing apart. Games like Halo and Call of Duty were beginning to dominate sells (much as they are now), and while I enjoyed them, I was never particularly fond of FPS'ers as a genre. At this point, it was easier to renounce myself as a gamer, stick to a handful of games a year, and ignore the wide-scope of the gaming community. Throughout this time, I pretty much stuck with horror themed games, various RPG's, and any big title game that had a damn good story or some kind of nostalgia factor.

And that's where I was until a few months ago...

To know one's self is important if one desires a life of creativity, and to forget the impact that video games have had on me would be a fallacy. That said, I know video games and I have more in common than I've been letting myself realize, and so I aim to not just rekindle that relationship, but instead probe the complexities and semantics of gaming and how it relates to my love for various forms of art.


So anyway, I thought it was important to give a brief summary of my relationship to games throughout my life; I mean, if we're going to be discussing games, it just makes sense. And maybe because if it ever seems like I'm asking too much from games, it's good to look back and see where it all started. If my opinions ever seem to deviate from standard gamer fare, know that I began as a gamer and will always be one at heart. For the most part, I've avoided mentioning any particular games that I especially care about because I didn't want to establish any bias too soon (in fact, I hope this blog will provide a personal exercise in looking past bias); and when the time comes to mention my favorites, you can beat I will, as well as any other important gaming milestones that have established my particular version of a gamer's mindset. As I mentioned before, horror (not just survival horror), RPG's, and retro games have been some of my preferred genres, but ultimately what I seek most in games (as in other media) are interesting and revolutionary ideas. So here's to a bright future for art in the gaming industry... well maybe sans the industry... I couldn't be happier to be a gamer in a time when so much potential is at our hands and our thumbs.