So, who are you and what do you do?

[Gladguy]

Hey gang,
Been lurking here for a while and I have been enjoying the thoughtful and insightful posts.

I'm curious as to your (obvious?) connection to the gaming industry. Are you a Developer? Publisher? Gaming Journalist? Innocent Gamer? Jaded son-of-a-bitch?

Myself, I'm a Product Manager at DreamCatcher working on some of the upcoming "non-adventure" titles like Iron Storm, Hegemonia and Harbinger.

[Anonymous]

I just sorta drift around. Did a lot of writing as the PC Editor/Senior Editor at Gaming Age until I burned out. Now I do some work for the Xbox Mag in Australia, but I don't do much.

I figured out a while back that I would rather play games than write about them.

Oh, and MechWarrior 4 is awesome, just had a great match online.

[Stroker Ace]

University of Alabama student, gamer, programmer, fanboy.

[Xaroc]

Gamer. Database Architect. Annapolis, Maryland.

Been gaming since Pong and the Atari 2600 and remember the golden era of Arcade gaming.

First "computer" was the TI99/4A.

First real computer was an IBM PC XT @ 8Mhz with 640k of RAM and a 10MB hard disk (I will never fill that up ...).

Favorite genres: FPS, RPG, Action, Sports, Driving
Least favorite genres: Sims of most kinds, most RTSs

I am married with one son who is 14 and one dog who is almost 3.

-- Xaroc

Edit: I am 34.

[Tom Chick]

Nice thread. Hope you guys keep this going.

35 year old guy who makes a living, if you can call it a living, writing about games. Started out into flight sims and wargames.

Lives in Los Angeles. Swinging bachelor lifestyle, sans swinging.

Seriously into movies.

-Tom

[Anonymous]

39 year old game fanboy.

Do some work for Gamespy on the side.

Spend most of my time doing research in the health sciences.

Live in sunny and warm Gainesville, Florida where we await the "Zook" era now that Mr. Spurrier is coaching in DC.

Married, two daughters - Daughter #1 (13 years old) is into the Xbox and arcade racers while daughter #2 (three years old) enjoys driving the PC version of F1 2002.

Chris

[Anonymous]

I wish I could edit my post and add more stuff. You guys are making me look like that guy that lived with OJ Simpson!

[AlexxKay]

I'll be 35 tomorrow. Recently (very happily!) married.

I do contract Game Design/QA/Miscellaneous in the Boston area. Currently working at Irrational Games doing gameplay design on The Lost (PS2 survival-horror). Proudest industry accomplishment was writing the bulk of the Strategy Guide for System Shock 2. Favorite gig so far was QA on the original Thief. You know a game is good when QA keeps playing it after the gold masters ship :-)

[Jason McCullough]

Microsoft contractor, no intersections with gaming journalism. Unless you count lots of post to USENET (before it went downhill), that is.

'Proudest industry accomplishment was writing the bulk of the Strategy Guide for System Shock 2.'

You luck-y bastard.

[Dave Long]

I'm a 30 year old database administrator in Reading, PA (yes, like the railroad). I work with something called Essbase and IBM's DB2 OLAP Server which you've probably never heard of and probably never will again on these boards. It's cool technology, though.

I'm also a freelance writer on the side though freelance at this point in time basically means I've written a lot of articles for Computer Games Magazine and Online. I'd like to parlay that into console game work (if anyone's got any!).

I love games of almost all genres and probably obsess over games history and the business of games. I'm probably evenly split into consoles and PC games though right now I'm definitely leaning to the console side (as I always do when consoles are new).

I've got three boys ages four, two and almost one. We will be the best family gaming team the world has ever seen. My kids will take on Jeff Green's kids anytime, anywhere! :D

As a good friend of mine noted... you're not having kids, you're cultivating life long gaming partners or competitors.

--Dave

[Jim F.]

26 years old, live in Omaha, Nebraska (it's not as bad as you think). Married for almost 8 months now, working on our first kid.

No connections to the game industry, unless you count me spending more on games in my lifetime than the GNP of Zaire.

I'm a systems programmer for First Data Corporation. They're a credit card processing company that also owns Western Union. You know those little swipe machines that they use to scan your credit cards at EB, Best Buy, etc? I write the software to process those transactions and send you a bill

[Anonymous]

Lol,I thought you were younger than that,Tom.

36 years old,live in the heartland(err,Columbus,Ohio),grew up a wargaming dweeb,and I still play 'em.The 'We the People' style of board wargames that are currently the rage are streets ahead of any of the SPI games of the 'good ol' days',as far as actual over the board gaming enjoyment goes.

I remember the heyday of the arcades too,and dropped a lot of money into Food Fight,Dig Dug,Spy Hunter,and the like,back when $20 seemed like a lot of dough.I remember scraping up quarters to play 'Pong' when I was a little kid,and I remember the hysteria when Space Invaders first appeared in the arcades.

I'm more involved in music now,and I feel guilty when I spend too much time on computer games,since it seems a waste of time that could be used productively.Not that there's anything wrong with that,but it's one of the reasons that I generally prefer simpler games nowadays.

Mike

[Martinez]

30 years old. IT Tech for Arizona Superior Courts

It's a a state job, comfy and slow.

No relation to the gaming industry except that I like computer games, and buy a lot of them. All types of computer games. I started out in Flight-sims and CRPG.

My first computer was an Apple ][+ in mid 80's. Fond memories of Ultimas, Bards Tales, etc.

EDIT: Oh, was TonyM on the old boards, as if anyone would have noticed. I think I post there five times. Mostly a lurker. *lurk mode on* 8)

[Chris Floyd]

Good idea for a thread. I'm 26 years old, married, with a 16 month old son (even more fun than computer games).

I'm currently in QA at VR1 Entertainment in Boulder, CO. In the past I was a Production Assistant and Designer on a couple of MMORPGs (that haven't really seen the light of day).

[rdarnese]

Let's see...

30 (in a few months) year old Unix Systems Admin living in Lancaster, Ohio. Also second in command at shrapnelgames.com, which I do part time.

Started out as a USENET poster (1993), moved on to doing review for gameworlds.com, then on to reviews, news editor, pr, marketing, and whipping boy at wargamer.com. Met Tim Brooks when I was working for wargamer.com and joined him to start Shrapnel Games.

[rdarnese]

Oh and in the middle I did a lot of beta testing for SSI, I-Magic, Activision, etc. Still have a semi-operational copy of Road to Moscow at home.

[Stroker Ace]

p.s. I'm 21 - I didn't realize that age was going to be one of the topics of discussion.

As for genres... I've spent more time on Counter-Strike than any 3 other games, ever. Thing is, I don't generally dig FPS games too much. Strategy, RPG, that sort of thing turns me on. Diablo2 still turns me on now and then, I'm currently enjoying NWN, Civilization (1, 2, and especially 3) is the best, but somehow none of these ever have the eternal staying power of Counter-Strike. I just get bored. I don't even love Counter-Strike all that much, it's the scene. Teamwork and chat are what bring me back. Maybe I should invest in a MMORPG.

[Doug Erickson]

28-year-old Microsoft shill. Erstwhile programmer and writer. Married for five years, kids in the far future. Wife is a Diablo 2 addict.

I've written for all the ZD console mags, notably EGM and OPM. I also did the DKC strategy guide for Pocket Games.

I prefer PC gaming, but I'm always up for a good console fighting game or round of Halo or the latest Zelda title. I've never liked Nintendo fanboys much, mostly because nostalgiacs irritate me. There's too many good games in the present to live in the past.

[DavidCPA]

I am a 32 year-old accountant living in Cabot, Arkansas. I work for a large utility company in the call center department.

No connection whatsoever to the gaming industry other than a keen interest in games and computers in general.

I have been married for 10 years to my high school sweetheart. We have a 4 year-old daughter who will start kindergarten in August (I am getting old :( ).

My favorite game is Diablo 2 LOD though I also like FPS.

-DavidCPA

[Ben Sones]

31 year old (as of last Sunday) freelance writer, currently living in a new (new to me, built in 1910) house with my wife in Rochester, NY. Formerly the reviews editor for CGM, now off on my own (although still writing for them, among other (non-game related) publications.

I like all sorts of games--in fact, I'll try nearly anything. I prefer PC games in general. All time favorites? Uhm... Fallout, Thief, and Battle Bugs.

I also like skiing, art (actually my major), board and role-playing games (the kind you play with dice and pencils), Buffy the Vampire Slayer, beer, cats, and cats that drink beer.

[James Gutierrez]

31 years old. Live in LA and write telemedicine and clinical management software.

My hobbies include gaming, dropping out of graduate schools, drinking Guinness, and looking forward to drinking Guinness.

My 2 most prized possessions are my Continental frequent flyer card and an AC/DC dollar bill I got from the video shoot for "Money Talks"

I once poured a quart of salsa down my pants for a dollar. I guess that about sums it up.

[Sean Tudor]

In my real life I am a 35 year old technical engineer working here in Sydney, AussieLand. I get to play with things like digital cameras, printers, scanners, copiers, and fax machines.

Im my other life I am a 35 year old gaming fanboy who likes to blow things up. I like to spend weekends going to the movies, watching porn, and taking my wife to craft shows. I also spent 8 years in the Australian Army as an armoured recon crew commander blowing things up for real.

I also like to spend my time hanging out at QT3 waiting for Shoot Club installments, Wumpus comments, and trying to find out if Bruce Geryk is gay.

I have owned the following computers - Commodore PET 2001, Apple ][, Commodore VIC-20, Commodore 64, Commodore 128, IBM PS/2, 286, 386, 486, Pentium I, Pentium II, Pentium III, Athlon XP.

I like to buy the biggest and baddest video cards. My current video card is a GeForce4 Ti4600. My computer system generates enough heat to power a small brothel for 30 minutes.

[James Galimo]

Hi, I'm James. I'm a gameaholic.

I'm 27, and I sell computers for a living (shoot me). I'm sure I'll get married someday, but I'm having trouble finding a woman who is into games. I suppose eventually I'll have to settle for one who isn't, and hope she can tolerate my habit.

[Anonymous]

I'm the youngest here after Stroker Ace. Born in Moscow, U.S.S.R., lived and living in the San Francisco Bay Area for most of my life. Played games pretty much that whole time and that's my story. I'm executive editor of GameSpot, where I've worked for more than six years now, starting as an intern hired on by Mr.Ron Dulin, who also posts here and fortunately still writes for us. I finished a degree in English from Berkeley while I was working here. I've always intended to actually make games, though I do really enjoy writing about them. I guess my real intentions were simply to become very involved in the gaming industry.

[Dirt]

I'm a Finance Analyst working on whatever my boss decides he wants me to do, which usually involves something that has absolutely nothing to do with Finance, at the largest mortgage lender in the U.S.A.

I have no connection whatsoever to the gaming industry except for it being one of my major hobbies.

Oh yeah, I'm 29 (today, dammit! please let this year never end).

[nife2o4]

27 year old Technical Services Engineer (fancy title for Software Tester and Customer Support) for a Louisville, CO company that makes geophysical survey design software. Married, Home owner with 3 cats and 2 dogs.

I'm just a gamer, my closest tie to the gaming industry is that I sent a resume to VR1 for a QA position like 2.5 years ago. Chris Floyd stole my industry job :wink:

I've been learning C++ programming through CU's Continuing Education program in hopes of someday becoming a programmer at my current company, and possibly a games programmer. If I ever manage to stop playing video games at night, I'm hoping to learn enough Win32 programming to do a Tetris clone sometime soon.

-Trevor

[Brandon Clements]

I'm the RMA Manager at a small computer store in Sherwood, AR. Basically, I test parts that are brought back, and return the ones that are defective to whomever the store bought them from. I'm 24, married, no kids, and due to graduate in a year with a degree in Mgmt Info Systems. I don't have any real connection to the gaming industry, other than buying their games.

BTW, do the Latin phrases below our names change with our postcount, or just randomly?

[Jason McCullough]

'I'm a 30 year old database administrator in Reading, PA (yes, like the railroad). I work with something called Essbase and IBM's DB2 OLAP Server which you've probably never heard of and probably never will again on these boards. It's cool technology, though.'

Are they rolling Informix's Redbrick into DB2 or what? God, Redbrick was sexy.

[copeknight]

I teach 7th grade here in Wichita, am 29, and wish I could turn back the clock to 1987 and the glory days of the Atari ST ;-). On the side, I am pursuing master's degrees in history and gifted education. I did a little freelance work in the past for CGM and ST Informer.

Carl

[sellthekids]

married

32 yrs old

native Houstonian (TX)

software engineer for Fortune 300 firm (we do auto dealership software)

spent 5 years as a bike messenger in mid 90s

graduated from Baylor University at 29

own two Atari 2600s, an Atari 800, a NES and an original IBM PC

played D&D until age 15; skateboarded until 16

committed to staying child-free (so is my wife!)

have been deep into music scene since age 14

stopped gaming at age 16; restarted at age 29

was addicted to Counter-Strike; now i call it Cheater-Strike and don't play

own one current console: Xbox; need to own a PS2 (it's a "need" i tell you)

own a PC i built; used mainly for surfing/gaming. i only "work" at work

enjoyed single player/multiplayer Dungeon Seige; enjoying Morrowind on the Xbox

drink like a fish, preferrably good bourbon or Guinness

avid baseball fan, esp Astros (at least until the next strike, at which point i quit)

glad Tom is updating the site with new content

:-)

[GregB]

32 year-old Coordinating Producer of Extended Play (the gaming show) on TechTV. I've got a lovely wife and 1 month old daughter at home.

Been playing games all my life. I remember jumping for joy when my Dad bought a Pong system. Got a degree in Mass Communications and it was just dumb luck I ended up doing TV about a subject I love.

[Chris]

I'm 35 and currently am an NT Admin in Dallas/Fort Worth. I've been into gaming since the days of the Odyssey and remember when the Atari 2600 first came out. I still have 2 or 3 2600s around the house, along with a Vic 20, an Atari 800XL, the 1st Nintendo system, a Sega Genesis, a Playstation and a DreamCast, along with about 5 or so computers. My closest tie to the gaming industry was when my ex-girlfriend worked at STB as an engineer. :D

My favorite games are Total Annihilation, the Wing Commander series and EQ. I like most genres though I prefer to play sports titles on the consoles.

I guess my only claim to fame is beating cancer a few years ago. Aside from gaming, I love women, reading (books, comics, magazines, the web) hard rock music and Shiner Bock beer.

[AIM]

-I'm 32 yrs old.
-I live in NorthWildwood NJ
-I live in a shore community, near the beach
-yes, we are packed in the summertime
-went back to College to pursue my degree in the Teacher of the Handicapped program
-single, I had a gf but broke up with the bitch because she was psychotic
-I will be graduating in one year!! yay!!!
-I love working with children
-I live on my own
-screw women. I will not date until I graduate college and start working
-I wish I made as much money as my dad does =(

-I'm against the death penalty (especially the mentally retarded)
-I'm a liberal commie

-fav. type of games are FPS, RTS and 3rd person action.
-I'm loving GTA 3 at the moment


btw, if anyone here ever plans on a career change might I suggest teaching handicapped children? It's a rewarding experience and if your a male, you will immediately get a job. And the pay is good $32,000-$40,000 starting salary not including benefits and signing bonus. But that depends on the district.

We need good male teachers =)

[wumpus]

btw, if anyone here ever plans on a career change might I suggest teaching handicapped children?
Doesn't replying to a met_k post count? If not, it should.

[Doug Erickson]

I have a sweet apartment and car and soon to be new computer



I'm liberal commie

A liberal commie capitalist, you mean?

[Anonymous]

46, separated, based in SF (though probably not much longer). No kids, but have a mental dog, a sickly cat and a bird that gives both of them orders.

I've been writing about games full time sine 1989--first for Amiga World and mostly recently for the NY Times.

Along the way, I've written for more places than I can remember, and spent about a year and a half as an editor for the late PC Games magazine and for GamePro's online wing (where I was Tom and Mark's editor :) ).

These days, I'm writing books about games and gaming--the most recent being The Morrowind Prophecies--and a couple more are in different stages of development.

[AIM]

I took out the sweet car and nice apartment section. I just realized it made me sound like I am ungrateful for what I have.

But.... I'm still a liberal

:D

[Doug Erickson]

How do you edit a post?

[Gordon Berg]

35 yr old IT Manager at a small non-profit organization in Louisville, KY. Orginally from Orange County, California, but came here to turn a long-distance relationship into a close one.

Love all sorts of games and still get far too competetive when I play them. :D

As for the gaming biz itself, I started out doing a column on Gamepen (Flight Sim Therapy) and eventually became a contributing editor for Computer Gaming World magazine, courtesy Denny Atkin's recommendation (so it's all his fault). On a sort of extended hiatus right now, but starting to get the itch to write again. We'll see.

Other hobbies: Softball and water sports. Grew up as a swimmer/water polo player and miss it dearly (Kentucky is one of only three states in the U.S. without any sort of water polo whatsoever). I even used to be an ocean lifeguard at Newport Beach, CA, but I don't miss that (Boring job! Baywatch it ain't.). I've recently taken up lap swimming again so as to help promote weight loss and have really been encouraged by the results.

[AIM]

How do you edit a post?

You should have a edit button next to your quote button. If you don't then you might want to email administration about this error.

[Lunch of Kong]

I'm 28. I've been in Austin, Texas since 1998. I was in England before that, attending university and earning pocket money by writing C&C strategy guides for magazines both foreign and domestic.

Today, I write C/C++ compiler and linker manuals for the Sony PS2, Gamecube, GameBoy Advance, and Palm OS handheld devices.

I owe it all to comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategy. :wink:

[Thierry Nguyen]

23-year old Itinerant Jackass Masquerading As Editing Peon.

[Aszurom]

32 - also just last Sunday. I knew Ben Sones was cool for some reason.

I live in Waynesburg Ohio, which is the armpit of Canton/Akron.

Network engineer for the USPS. (until the money runs out... which may be Sept, hehe) I'm also their helpdesk, web programmer, and asskisser of middle management.

My first computer was also a Ti-99/4a, which I got exactly 20 years ago last Sunday. Odd to realize that you've been doing something for 20 years. First game for it was Parsec, but Tunnels of Doom was my fav.

I wrote a little for CGS+, which was my first gig. Bauman was kind enough to give me a run after reading some stuff I wrote as "reader reviews" at Gamespot. Then I wrote a few columns at Gamepen, and wrote for Gamesdomain off and on for 2 years - mostly flightsims before Gordon Berg single-handedly killed the genre and put me out of work. Well, actually, after the BS that went on last year, I didn't feel too much like writing for a while so I took a hiatus that I'm about to end.

Currently I'm teaching myself enough PHP to be dangerous and resurrect my old gaming site. Purely a "for shits n' grins" sort of project.

Other than that, I'm a member of www.insomniax.net - a great bunch of fellow gamers who are usually playing whatever most recently came out and supports coop gameplay, as well as the "classics" that never seem to lose our interest. Lot of talent over there too, with several people making mods and such at any given moment.

[Sparky]

I'm 33, a game artist/writer/whatever else is needed at the moment, one half of the independent game company Octopus Motor...the other half is my husband. We live in the SF Bay area with three cats and a percula clown fish that refuses to die (despite my best efforts). I really like cheap white birthday cake with lots of icing, preferably in some horrible color rarely found in nature. I intensely dislike monkeys, Julia Roberts, shellfish, and anything made of wicker.

[Dave Long]

Are they rolling Informix's Redbrick into DB2 or what? God, Redbrick was sexy.

The Informix stuff is separate from DB2. DB2 OLAP Server is wholly based on Hyperion's Essbase database. Actually... DB2 OLAP Server is essentially Essbase unless you want to have some drill-through to regular DB2 tables. There's a lot of power in adding the drill-through (say going from styles down to SKUs, etc.) Essbase stores everything as bitmaps with index files driving the show. It's slick and much faster than anything that Oracle or any other relational based system could be which is why IBM partnered with Hyperion to get it done. I've built three cubes in the last couple weeks on DB2 OLAP Server.

Before that and still in production, I've been using straight Essbase on NT for the last three years and we're only now moving to IBM's DB2 OLAP implementation on the AIX platform. We're building a data warehouse using DB2 on OS/390 that will feed the OLAP Server setup on AIX. Boscov's, the company I work for, has been in the news at ZDNet a little bit lately. You know those commercials IBM has where the guys wonder where all the servers went and the nerdy dude says they're all "on there"? We've got one of those Z-Series mainframes and are leading development of SuSE Linux on VM on the Z-Series.

Did I confuse everyone but Jason and maybe wumpus? Good. :)

--Dave

[Mark Bussman]

I'm a 23 year old graudate student working on my Masters in aerospace engineering. My thesis is about magnetohydrodynamic inverse cycle scramjet engine performance. (Take that Dave Long! :D) *Tries to reread the previous post, gets through one sentence.* NM, you win. :)

Been reading the QT3 boards and site since Mark plugged it in one of his GameSpin columns back when it was on Gamecenter (R.I.P.). (Very glad to see you guys are back BTW.) My only connections to the computer game industry are being a consumer, and this board. :)

My main gaming interests are flight sims and space flight sims (1st PC game was Falcon 3.0), as well as RTSs. I have a small interest in FPSs and RPGs. Right now, I'm just playing lots of IL-2 Sturmovik, though I have yet to try it online except for 2 games with a pair of friends from school.

[Edit 4/8/03 - I graduated in Dec '02 and work for Boeing now.]

[DTG]

40-yr-old environmental engineering guy, working now as a manager of government affairs for a waste-to-energy company. You make garbage, we turn it into electricity. Obviously, no affiliation whatsoever with the gaming industry, except that I spend way too much on games, read about games when I should probably be managing my "portfolio", and probably help pay the bills for several of you. My actual gaming time is limited to 9pm - 12 am nowadays, however.

Started games in Grad school about '85 when a professor gave me a copy of Ultima III and the photocopied manuals after he caugt me using the lab computer to play Zork. I've been trying to recapture that feeling ever since. Play mostly RPGs, but had to stop playing on-line games due to the time suck - - I have 2 little daughters and I have to function at work by 8 a.m. I can't stomach adventures anymore, but play around w/ space sims, some strategies, and wargames. I own way more games than I'll ever have time to play.

[Anonymous]

27-year old gamer;

started playing in the late 80s with Might & Magic, Gunship, and Pirates, then started playing online on CompuServe with Island of Kesmai and British Legends at 1200 baud;

first started really posting on the internet about games in 1993 when MOO and X-COM double-whammied the strategy game market;

in 1994 I decided to start running a web page to detail some of the more interesting and unpublicized aspects of the industry, half of which I would glom off of my work at Electronics Boutique, and so StrategyNet was born on my UTD webpage (www.utdallas.edu/~dunk1888 I think it was);

a year or so, maybe two, later I guess Paul Bannister approached me about merging with his new and upcoming gaming site called Online Gaming Review (OGR), then at ogr.nrgroup.com;

left OGR, not under the best of circumstances to write news and eventually edit stuff for Gamespot in 1998;

editing stuff for GameGuides pretty much dried up in 2000 when I joined Playnet and still work there today, albeit in a totally different role than when I joined (I now live in the drearly sludge of tech support manager hell).

In and around there I've written a bunch of stuff for different folks (gaming, historical, and otherwise) including the Dallas Morning News, boot magazine, Crypt Newsletter, Computer underground Digest, Wargamer.com, Computer & Net Player magazine, Sybex, Prima, Brady, Strategy & Tactics, and a few other things.

--- Alan

[Aleck]

28 year old gamer. Live in Alexandria, VA, just across the Potomac from our Nation's Capitol. God Bless America and all that (hey, it's July 4th here, cut me some slack!)

Have loved games for almost 2 decades. First real computer was a Commodore 64 -- I still remember sitting up late at night with a blanket over my head playing Pirates! (the blanket kept stray light and sound from alerting my parents that I was still up at 3am!)

I've worked for last 7 years on various aspects of the political process, including IT policy, Internet policy, spectrum policy, education technology policy, and all kinds of fun stuff. I'm currently working for an association that represents k-12 school administrators, doing training and other work around accountability systems. Not terribly exciting. Before coming to Washington I lived in Southern California, where I went to college and worked as a sysadmin and user support person (which is where I got what little technical background I have!)

Current passion is putting together small form factor (SFF) PCs. I own a modified ThinkNIC and a SV25 that currently are my multimedia and file servers, respectively, and I'm positively slavering at the prospect of Shuttle's new SS41, which will be a small form factor box supporting Athlon processors and having an AGP slot. Yeah, I know. I'm also an evangelist for PVRs -- I don't think I'll ever watch TV without my ReplayTV (or Radeon AIW) ever again -- and am thinking seriously about getting involved head over heels in the Northern Virginia Wireless (www.novawireless.org) group, which is all about bringing wireless 802.11b access to the masses.

[Murph]

22 and (usually happily) married. No kids, yet. Two dogs, and I've been playing computer games avidly for about three years, and as time permitted for about ten years before that.

I work in the travel industry, for SABRE, the largest computer reservations system out there. (If you buy a ticket, it's probably going through our system.)

Major RPG fan, adore Neverwinter Nights, but love shooters and strategy titles (especially in multiplayer) as well.

Loose link to the industry, as I've been writing for Gamersclick for about a year now, and have a grand total of one "professional" article in the July issue of CGM. (And I really hope to increase that number!)

[Kool Moe Dee]

23 year old programmer for a game developer I won't name (mainly because I'd like to maintain some shred of privacy). Been interested in games for as long as I can remember, from the TI-99/4A and 2600 up through the latest and greatest today. Now I'm just having fun on the other side of the fence. :D

Roger: from your description I'm guessing you're at Metrowerks? Heh, if so, then my compliments on the CW PS2 manuals, they're pretty good in general...

[Sharpe]

Wow, I feel kind of out of place, being a complete non-tech type and a non-writer. I do have the gaming background, though, starting with Avalon Hill & AD&D in the 70s, moving on Steve Jackson & GURPS in the early 80s, then switching to computer gaming (actually it was the Intellivision that I got in 1982 that was the real culprit - ah Utopia forefather of all Civ & Sim games). Started gaming on a Commodore 64 in 1983, eventually moving to an early PC (some kind of Tandy in 1988) and then after a Mac hiatus from 90 to 95, back to the PC. I am big fan of strategy games, especially quality 4X, innovative turn based, and (the ever scarce) "deep" Beer N Pretzels game. I also play RPGs, and have dabbled in MMORPGs although I'm in remission on those at present.

Here at Qto3 and on UseNet I am primarily a lurker but have been known to lob in the occasional overly long & involved post.

I've been a long time member of a gaming group for older gamers "The Elders" (originally The StarCraft Elders and not to be confused with the various MMORPG guilds of the same name).

In my non-gaming life I'm a 34 year old attorney living and working in the Los Angeles area, single, no pets, and fairly boring. I guess I do a lot of writing on a daily basis but its all boring civil litigation stuff. My specialty is California Worker's Compensation law, (representing employers) which means I deal with on the job injuries. The most interesting thing about work is that I changed firms recently and about half my cases now are for the biggest payroll company in the entertainment industry, which means I handle cases against the crew folks who makes movies and TV. Grips who fall down, cameramen with carpal tunnel, that sort of thing. But I DO get the occasional bit actor or stuntperson case, which livens things up. The job I've done lately which would most excite this crowd was taking the deposition of the stuntlady who was Pamela Anderson's body double during the first season of VIP. (Actually it wasn't all that exciting).

Anyhow, thats me

Dan (Sharpe)

[Anonymous]

I was born in Santa Monica, California, and attended the University of California at Los Angeles. At UCLA I was a member of Tim Robbins' acting troupe and it was this collaboration that led to my 1992 film debut in Bob Roberts. Although I was just a background voice in my first film, my appearances in such television shows as The X Files, my breakthrough performance in High Fidelity, and my folk-rock/comedy band have created an ever growing cult following.

[Rob O'Boston]

"and have a grand total of one "professional" article in the July issue of CGM. (And I really hope to increase that number!)"

That's great Murph! Down with the day job!

[Peter Frazier]

38 year old Australian High School art teacher. I jumped from board wargaming to the 'puter with an Amiga in '91. Game obsessed since then. Makes for interesting staff room discussions when I feel compelled to stand up for those evil computer games that are destroying our youth.
Still able to hand most students butts back to them on a plate in any RTS.
Son (3) and daughter (4 months) now chewing up most of my free time, but it's way better than anything I've ever done on a screen.
BTW are any of you father types determined to limit your kids access to the computer? I reckon I'd be worried if my son spent as much time on the computer as I do..... Yeah, I'm a hypocrite.

[Anonymous]

I'm 44, with a wife and two kids. I've been in journalism for 22 years, first at newspapers, then the last two-plus years as Managing Editor at GameSpy.

Total Annihilation got me started on the web, running a TA fan site that reviewed user-made maps. I did that in my spare time, and did a bit of gaming freelance work on the side. I also covered games for a year at my last newspaper before taking my current job.

My move to gaming journalism full time necessitated moving to California, uprooting the family from South Florida. Hasn't been to easy for the wife, but I have enjoyed the job immensely.

Of course, I'm the old fart in the office. At least it gets me a little respect once in a while. :lol:

[algahar]

im 27 (will be 28 in 3 months). i went to iowa state u for 5 years, graudated as computer engineer, and lived there for another year. (i seriously like it there, all that space! :o )

i have been playing computer games since apple ii. but i never had any console gaming until playstation one (never had the money, even so my parents wouldve kicked my ass, hard). i play rpgs, actions, strategies etc mostly.

i used to work for a local pc game magazine in hong kong. in fact, a chief ed last year. but the company, which had 4 electronic gaming related magazines and a dotcom, folded completely last nov. been looking for a job since then... :cry:

making my own NWN mod now 8)

[deanco]

48 year old professional American expatriate sleazebag, living in Paris, France, with my wife and 7 year old kid. Before becoming a full time sleazebag I was a club musician for 16 years, playing bass, guitar, and singing. I've probably done 3000 club gigs, all of them crappy. I reviewed TA maps for TAMEC when it was happening. Wrote a couple articles for Alan Dunkin at Playnet. I recently finished drawing (well drawing is not the right word, more like 'hacked together') the game interface, the buttons and whatnot, for the upcoming Combat Mission sequel, Barbarossa to Berlin. Please don't ask me about it, I can't say squat. Anyway, I know Photoshop a little, mainly from modding CM. I also teach English and advertising to French kids. How I got the advertising gig, I'll never know, I knew absolutely nothing about advertising before I started. Still don't, for that matter. Favorite period in gaming history: when I got my Atari 1040 (SubLogic Flight Simulator, Civ, M1 Tank Platoon, Railroad Tycoon). Nice big boxes, nice thick manuals, I miss 'em. Now, I just play games and surf the Internet. I suppose I should get a job of some sort. Really.

DeanCo--

[mtkafka]

28 soon to be 29 yr old (out of work) support tech / contractor in the Chicago area. Single bachelor, a fool who likes gaming til my body drops to the floor (or falls asleep at the pc!). And I can thank GAMING for getting me into the wonderful tech industry (learning to get games running taught me supposedly! before that was an art snob in college!) Of course, I'm thinking of doing something else ... hopefully!

Started gaming in early 80's on an Apple 2 clone with Wizardry. Gamed with everything til family got an AT in the mid 80's and played lots of Meier and then off to college and stopped gaming almost completely for 5 years, then back to gaming with a brand spanking new pc in the mid 90's.

Its weird how gaming is a BIG part of my life when I think about it. Not that it rules my life, but I remember things from my past and say, "I was playing so and so at the time...hmmm." Weird.

BTW anybody hiring?!?! ANd Happy July 4th! Viva Lamerica!

etc

[Jason McCullough]

I was born in Santa Monica, California, and attended the University of California at Los Angeles. At UCLA I was a member of Tim Robbins' acting troupe and it was this collaboration that led to my 1992 film debut in Bob Roberts. Although I was just a background voice in my first film, my appearances in such television shows as The X Files, my breakthrough performance in High Fidelity, and my folk-rock/comedy band have created an ever growing cult following.

I really wonder about these. Jack Black: secret gamer?

[mtkafka]

I wonder if Robin Williams posts on these boards... would rock. Dont you think that would be cool? He plays Warhammer alot supposedly.... yeah.

etc

[Andy A.]

22 year old journalism student, currently writing for a Croatian pop magazine.
When I'm not enjoying fine wines and long walks in the sunset I tend to spend my time on silly platformers and juvenile kart racers. I'm also heavily into movies.
My gaming motto - 'If it doesn't use abundance of bright and garish colors, it's not worthy of my time". Up until last year I was an avid PC gamer, but recent journey of self-discovery made me come out as a full fledged Nintendo fan.
If I never see a dark and gloomy corridor again, I'll die a happy man.
Bomberman Generation currently owns my sorry ass.

[Lee Johnson]

39-year-old programmer/analyst, living in Toronto, Ontario. Married, with a three-year-old son and two twelve-year-old cats. I currently work on the DB2 SQL compiler, at the IBM Toronto Laboratory.

Computer gamer since 1977. Freelanced for Computer Games Magazine, a.k.a. Strategy Plus Magazine, from 1993 through 1999 before deciding I'd rather spend my limited free time playing games than writing about them. (I may write again in the future, but probably not soon.)

My closest brush with actual game development came in 1984 when, as a spare time project during my final year at university, I ported Star Raiders to the Commodore 64. The port was a faithful reproduction of the original and about 90% complete, lacking only the sound code. You could play a whole game through. A friend of mine with his own little corporation and an agent pitched the port to the Atarisoft arm of Warner. Talks were making progress until the fateful day that Jack Tramiel bought Atari and immediately fired a whole heap of people, including the ones we were dealing with. That was the end of that.

Short list of all-time favorite games in no particular order (not guaranteed to be complete):

System Shock Star Control II Master of Orion Sid Meier's Alpha CentauriMy other hobby is cycling--the only form of exercise that doesn't bore me to tears.

[Gordon Cameron]

I'm in "the industry," just not the gaming industry. I read scripts for a movie production company.

[Bernie_Dy]

34, programmer in Houston. I started in California and went to UC Irvine before hiring on with a major data processing firm. They started me out in San Diego, found out I enjoyed that, and promptly reassigned me.

After training in Dallas and about a year and a half in a small town in Ohio, I made it to Houston, TX and have found it to be a very survivable big city, without the big city expenses (except for auto insurance...gah!). It would be nice to see the city survive its current challenges (Continental, Compaq, and the energy industry, all hurting). I quit the data processing firm in 97 and now work on contract doing various 4GL and SQL programming work.

I've been gaming for as long as I can remember, and started writing in CGW, though very infrequently. Most of my game work was in the late Computer Player magazine. I did a little something for everybody before the tech crash: PC Gamer, Gamecenter, IGN, PC GamePro, Daily Radar - now it's pretty much GameSpy.com, Aviation History, and CombatSim.com. Wrote a bit for Computer Games Strategy Plus in the pre-Bauman days. Games compete for my free time with the wife and the kids (a 2.5 year old boy, and a new baby due in December).

Gaming interests: pretty varied. I like a little of everything. Mostly been a PC guy, but just broke down and bought a PS2.

[TimElhajj]

40 year-old tech writer in Bellevue, WA. My "industry" claim to fame is that my name appears next to a quote on the box of Red Baron 3D, a WW1 flight sim (and a good one at that). After the box came out I realized that to do much better I would have to really work hard and sacrifice greatly. Thus, I immediately stopped all industry related work and quietly faded away.

[TimElhajj]

>Microsoft contractor

I checked your credentials and you pass, Jason McCullough. ;) I work in the building across the street from you.

[Qenan]

Forty year old programmer (in gamer years, that's what, 10,000?) living in Austin, TX. Married with a 2 year old daughter. Only connection to the games industry is playing the games.

All-time favorites: Civ1, Master of Orion, Master of Magic, X-COM.

But I don't like RTS games much, so in recent years I've mostly switched to RPGs...

[Anonymous]

30-year-old former editor at PC Gamer, Next Gen, Daily Radar. Now an assistant producer/designer on Madden football for EA. Too tired right now to write more.

[Dave Weinstein]

31 years old, currently a Senior Software Engineer at Red Storm in North Carolina.

I've been married for 10 years, making games for 8 years, and we have two cats and two dogs.

--Dave

[balut]

25 years old. Recent college grad (unintentional 7-year plan). Part time consumer-electronics salesman until I get a "real job". Gaming junkie.

Game addict since the Apple IIe and TRS-80. First console was Atari 2600.

I write game reviews, but only for my friends. One of these days I should see if I could make money doing that.

I live in central New Jersey (around exit 8a for those who know Jerseyans).

I play all games, except for really hardcore flight sims. Consoles for fighting, sports, and racing games; PC for strategy and FPS games.

Looking for a real job. Anyone out there know of any openings for someone with a BA in Communications but lots of background in computers and a high interest in writing?

[Brad Grenz]

Might as well chip in my stats as well. S/W/M, 21, seeking S/F 18-25 in the mid Willamette Valley area for friendship, dating or serious romance. I enjoy console and PC games, particularly Squaresoft, Bioware and Black Isle developed titles. I also enjoy film, live local music (http://www.thewidgets.com) and college sports. I am currently occupied as a college student (floating between community and one of the smaller state universities), and as a part time manager for a mens clothing retailer. I don't have many plans for the future, currently I'm hoping I'll stumble on to financial security with little to no effort on my part. I wish I could be an artist, but I'm no good. I'd like to write, but I'm not sure I've got any talent there either. My fallbacks are something to do with computers or chef. Oregon strawberries are in season! Smokers and Freaks need not apply.

Brad Grenz

[Brian Rucker]

OOC: I work for a appellate litigation printing company in Richmond, VA which means dealing with lawyers and snooping through volumes of sealed documents (I could tell you but I'd have to kill you). I'm 38. Into alternative and roots rock music. I eat meat. Red meat.

IC: I do some writing, mainly interviews, on the side for Gamersclick but I just started that recently. As a longtime non-PC or console gamer, I got my first IBM-Windows PC in 1996, I tend to think my views are all incredibly original and useful as I haven't been around as long as ya'll and seen them all before a thousand times before. My gaming background does include Mac gaming, since the mid 80's, and roleplaying, wargaming, and boardgaming back into the late 70's. I've also been playing catchup with classic titles (and trust me, it's not all rose colored glasses with the oldtimers). Despite my tastes I don't really fit into the fannish ('bearded men') category - more of a gaming drifter myself. A background hanging out in a very competative music scene effects how I see creative, imaginative, effort or lack thereof.

[rdarnese]

Are they rolling Informix's Redbrick into DB2 or what? God, Redbrick was sexy.

Did I confuse everyone but Jason and maybe wumpus? Good. :)

--Dave

Acck :). I am just having to learn Informix as well as HP3000 for a job I am on now. Doing DBA related work is, (*long dramatic pause*) different....

Thank God it isn't my entire job though *runaway*

[Tom Ohle]

Now an assistant producer/designer on Madden football for EA

Add more management options! MORE!

Anyway, on to my shtick, I suppose.
20 years old, PR slob for BioWare. Worked on various gaming websites and fansites over the past 6 years. Spent two years at University studying everything from Greek mythology to marketing to computing science.
Been a gamer since I can remember, starting out on my cousin's old Commodore-something... the one with the actual cassette-tape drive, then graduating to the Apple II with Oregon Trail and Number Munchers. Ah, those were the days.

Pretty happy with the PR thing, but I'd like to be in a PR management role by the time I'm 23. At the latest ;)
Eventually I'd like to move on to game development--either as a producer on EA Sports titles (most notably NHL--I'd like to kick those designers some time and make them put in the stuff I want ;) or as a producer on some crazy MMORPG.

[Derek Smart [3000AD]]

39yr old consultant turned game developer (only an utter fool with no regard for his well being, would make this switch) and with quite a colourful industry history (www.3000ad.com/history/index.shtml)

fondly (?) known as that Battlecruiser guy

been making games since the late eighties, with the first commercial game being a notorious flop (screw you Take Two!) back in 1996.

probably the only truly 100% indie game dev still standing

ex- industry loudmouth voted dev-most-likely-to-leave-skid-marks by the Net's best trolls

once divorced and currently engaged and she's been threatening to marry me for the last 6+ years

young toddler (daughter) learning how to potty train

recently moved from Sunrise, FL (where I've been since moving from Miami, FL in early 1998) to Weston, FL

[Alan Au]

I'm a single, 26 year old programmer for the legal department of a biotech company near Stanford. I fall into the "moderator" personality category, which accounts for much of my ambivalent attitude towards, well, just about everything. Lately I've been trying to add a bit of convoluted wackiness to the mix just to keep things interesting.

Been gaming since the early 80's when an Atari home machine showed up in our house one day. Other current hobbies include cooking and ultimate frisbee, although computer gaming is far and away my recreational activity of choice. My industry involvement started with a volunteer gig at the GDC and a couple of written pieces for GamesPlanet. This evolved into a short stint with MGON, and eventually GameSlice. Presently, I'm doing some writing for GamersClick.

I'm officially a product of the MIT computer science department, but somehow ended up with a minor in biology after briefly toying with (and discarding) the idea of going to med. school. I have a soft spot for AI/pattern recognition research, although I'm a bit wary of going into games programming and reverting to code monkey status. In fact, I'm actively planning my escape from the world of code implementation, although I haven't decided whether to take the business path or the academic path.

In the mean time, I've been playing lots of turn-based strategy, with small supplemental doses of everything (except racing and sports games).

- Alan

[Kahlil Gibran]

Married, (almost) 2 year old son, 33 years old. Associate news editor for a large gaming site. Do a few interviews here and there for fun and profit. I've been covering the industry for over six years and i've been playing games on and off since Pong. I used to have a real job doing underground construction before this gig. :wink:

[Wholly Schmidt]

I'm a student at Clemson University, SC. I'll be in school forever at this rate; 21, third year, but graduation isn't anywhere in sight. Enjoying what I'm doing though, Graphic Communications.

Been playing video games for a long time (relative to my age I mean, it looks like many of you were gaming before I was born), but I wouldn't quite call myself a "gamer" till somewhere between the N64 and Dreamcast eras. That was when I was living the carefree life of a high school student with a low paying job, but nothing better to spend that money on than games.

[Anonymous]

Qt3 lurker with the occassional post. :wink:

Father, husband, P/T al Qaeda Bounty Hunter, UW expert, and military consultant. Educated at the University of California where I purchased two BAs and three minors. Currently, finishing up a Masters Degree in Low Intensity Conflict with emphasis in AT/CT.

Contributing Editor for Computer Gaming World magazine, and Mac gaming columinst for The GameSpy Network. I also host a Mac gaming website. :o

Been a gaming geek ever since pong and tank battle were attached to our 21" B&W Magnovox television. First computers were a Apple IIe and Mac Plus. Proud proprietor of the "Cave", as featured in Extended Play, where 12 PCs (and Macs) are networked for the ultimate LAN experience. Favorite computer gaming genres include RTS and Shooters, especially Tactical Sims. Favorite all-time computer games: Marathon and Myth. Favorite all-time game: AD&D. :)

"De Oppresso Liber"

Raphael

[Greenie]

I lurk here mostly, but I wanted to get in on this thread!

I'm 29 and single. My g/f isn't into games, but recently I got her to spend an hour playing JK2. Unfortunately, the part she liked best was making her character jump off the edges of the Bespin platforms. (Maybe she liked the screaming???)

My first computer was a Commodore Vic 20.

The first game that really got me into all of this was probably Starflight. I like RTS and RPG games a lot, and some FPS games are still fun even though recently I had to move away from my LAN party buddies. One of my all-time faves is Homeworld, and rignt now I am enjoying Kohan, NWN, and JK2.

I'm living in exile somewhere in California. I'd worked in the semiconductor industry for about 8 years but was laid off last year. Now I do technical support for a company that makes CCD cameras. Stupid customers suck!

Mike

[Kyle Wilson]

Oh, what the heck. I'm 29. I live in North Carolina. I've been a software engineer at four game companies over the last five years, ever since getting out of grad school at UNC. I spend some time playing games, but not as much as I spend developing them. I prefer shooters and RPGs, never play sports games. I watch lots of movies. I read lots of books.

Kyle
www.gamearchitect.net

[DennyA]

I'm gonna be 37 in 11 days but other than the disappearing hairline and having gotten over my habit of dating psychotic women, I haven't changed a damned bit since I was 21. There needs to be some other measurement for age besides that chronological crap, because I'm far more easygoing and funloving than some of the 20-year-old 1337 h4X0rs I've met.

Ecstatically married since 1995, with a little boy due for delivery around Sept. 19. He's already making visible kicks when I tell him about Warcraft III. I think he's mad Dad gets to play and he won't have the motor skills for at least two years. Hey, I gotta get the practice in so I can compete against the youthful reflexes.

Started in the writing biz in 1987, freelancing for Amiga magazines while working on my MS in communication. Couldn't believe I actually got a job at a computer magazine coming out of college... About the only job on the planet that could demand the hours I have to put in and still be considered fun. After the Amiga disk magazine (AMNews) I went to work for out of college folded a mere two months after I moved to California, I went to work for Compute! Magazine in NC. (Remember typing in programs on the C64 from that?) Then on to OMNI Magazine, where I got to fly in an F-15, toured the DS9 sets before the show went live (and collided with Jadzia Dax/Terry Farrel's boobs when coming around the corner into sickbay--she's TALL), and edited "Psycho" author Robert Bloch's last article. Then it was off to SF for five years at CGW, which was an utter blast.

Relocated to Vermont to take over as EIC of Computer Games Magazine for a year. Had a great time with the crew there, but grudgingly handed back the reigns to a rested-and-rejuvenated Steve after getting an offer to take over Handheld Computing Magazine, where I am now.

First computer game I played: Colossal Cave Adventure on a MECC mainframe--and multiplayer space combat on printing teletypes in 1979. First computer: A Vic-20, which fell victim to my continuing hardware/expansion obsessions by gaining three expansion slots, 40K of RAM (32K was supposed to be the limit), and a 1541 disk drive. Since then: C64, C128, Amiga 1000/2000/4000/1200, and a variety of Windows boxes. And a desk full of Palm and Pocket PC handhelds.

And my messages are too long.

[Lando]

30 year-old database administrator and generally tech flunky in Little Rock, Arkansas. Married with a 2 year-old son. Moving to Thousand Oaks, California to attend law school.

Been gaming since I was a youngster, cutting my teeth on Castle Wolfenstein and Blue Max (anyone know where to get a copy of that game???) A huge fan of FPS and RTS and grand strategy games. Civ II/III, Kohan, AoE and AoE2.

Another one of those "I had to get my computer to run the latest game and now I know how they work" types. Been in the tech world for the last seven years and tired of it.

Have a degree in History and a CPA certificate. Warned my wife I'm going to med school after law school.

[Bub, Andrew]

I'm a 31 year old Milwaukee born, Irvine California bred, 2 years in Singapore, College in San Francisco, moved back to Milwaukee former professional Stage Combat trainer turned freelance writer who spends most of his word count in the gaming field... I've worked for every market in this business except CGW and Gamespot, which is good for them because I tend to come onboard just prior to when the outlet finally dies. So Jeff Green owes me for his job, you might say. That started with OGR back in 1998 and my *only* PCXL article is in the last issue - natch. I've written two Strategy Books for Prima and ghost written parts of another three for the rest. I just sold my first work of fiction, a short story for children to Cricket magazine. It paid peanuts but somehow eclipsed five years of article writing on the old pride meter. I have more query letters out there in the hands of editors than is probably healthy (I've written 5 children's books so far and so far unsold) and I'm thinking about wall-papering my basement in rejection letters. I make a decent living from game writing and the occasional but odious small business marketing freelance gig.

But what I really want to do is direct.

My wife, Linda, doesn't like games but she suffers it well and has the cutest eye-rolling/sigh heaving response I've ever seen. She's a CNS (Clinical Nurse Specialist) currently being fought over by Milwaukee's two largest Health Care conglomerates. Prospects look good for her, which will leave me free to fritter more time away pursuing the elusive book deal.

We have a 2 year old daughter, Maggie, and another kid on the way and we live in a small brick house three blocks from one of Lake Michigan's cleaner yet still Mosquito infested beaches.

(My first computer gaming experience was Wizardry. Werdna to your Mother.)

[Tim]

I'm 34 and live in Denver. I've been married for 12 years and we have two sons, ages 9 and 5 (and a half!). The older is named after the hero in The Princess Bride, long before I realized that was a geek cult classic. His brother Inigo doesn't think it's so clever (kidding - his name is Ben).

I'm a programmer for a small software company. My brush with The Industry was a phone interview for a job at VR1 in Boulder about 5 years ago. It sounded great until they let on that it was just a short term contract to help them migrate to SQL Server. I was crushed.

My first computer game contact was at a cub scout meeting in about 1975. My Dad worked for General Electric and brought home a teletype to show off. We hooked it up before the meeting to test it out (via acoustic coupler). I remember wiping out badly in Lunar Lander, but it was actually Tic-Tac-Toe that mesmerized me. Before trying, my Dad warned me that the computer was unbeatable! I didn't believe him, but after trying my best openings as well as a couple of 'crazy' ideas that I was sure it would not recognize, the best I could manage was a draw.

I don't play as many computer games as I'd like. I also enjoy learning 'real' stuff like new programming languages and database systems, and those not only provide a more tangible payoff, but they are much more tolerated by my wife. :)

The kids have recently been smitten with the console Spiderman game, though, and are lobbying hard for an upgrade from our Atari 2600. The game does seem pretty fun.

[Jason Lutes]

It's great to read all of these posts and get some sense of where everyone's coming from.

I'm a 34-year-old, full-time freelance cartoonist/illustrator living in Seattle with my girlfriend of 6 years.

First computer game I played was "Space War" on a mainframe at the University of Montana circa 1977, tagging along behind my computer whiz of an older brother. He was always really into the technical aspect and I always loved playing/making games.

Got into every pen and paper RPG that existed between 1978 and 1986 (when I went off to art school and gave up "childish" hobbies), starting with the 1st edition of D&D -- the three little beige booklets that came in the little white box. GURPS is still the best!

My first golden age of computer gaming was on a friend's Apple ][+ through all four years of high school, when we would stay up all night playing Eamon Adventures, Computer Ambush, Odyssey, Wizardry, and that one top-down game where you zipped around with axes chopping off each other's limbs.

Second golden age is 1998 to the present, beginning when I finally got my own PC and began to re-immerse myself in this fascinating time-waster of a hobby. It's been a lot of fun digging into all of the history I missed, finding and playing old games that I had missed out on, like Darklands and Covert Action.

These days I spend all of my gaming time trying to finish my first NWN module, a process I find incredibly absorbing. Although I do still find time to kick Tom Chick's ass in Laser Squad...

-----

Bub: Congrats on the Cricket gig, that's a great accomplishment, and I hope a turn in the tide of rejection letters.

Kasavin: You didn't happen to room with John Snyder in SF at some point in your illustrious career, did you?

[Bub, Andrew]

Bub: Congrats on the Cricket gig, that's a great accomplishment, and I hope a turn in the tide of rejection letters.

Heh, thanks Jason. We'll see. When publishers say:

"We only publish 10 books a year
We typically receive 10,000 submissions a year
10% of our books come from unagented writers
5% of our books come from unpublished writers"

... you become very happy that you're getting paid to write about games and that you're writing children's books primarily for your daughter. It's a crapshoot but the upside is tremendous.

[dwinn]

I'm a 27 year old "technologist" for the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The job classification "technologist" is just a fancy way of controlling my pay increases while I do phones support for the University community.

When not on the phone, I play games, worry about buying a house and starting a family, and help make the world safe for democracy.

[Dean]

I go away for the holiday and everyone up and introduces themselves!

Humph!

I'm a 37 year old playwright who teaches drama to engineers at a small, New England college (which is primarily a technical college). I used to write some game stuff for some long defunct websites (does anyone even remember Entermedia? I didn't think so.) I was a hard core outside beta tester for Epic before Unreal, and moved onto Activision for awhile in order to play free games.

Coolest uber-geek moment: Pointing out to the designers of Mech2: Mercenaries that the "Protect the Prince" mission was screwed up because it said that you were protecting a member of the Davion royal family, and everyone who knows Battletech knows that at the time Mercs was set, the Davion royal family consisted of Katherine Steiner-Davion, Victor, and Peter. It would have to be Peter you were protecting, but the age of the "prince" would make it too young to be Peter, so which Davion royal was it?

And in the next version they changed all the text, because I had out-geeked them.

Got my first gaming machine, an Atari 2600, as a prize in the Kellogg's Stick Up for Breakfast! (tm) contest at the age of 12. It came with a Pong cartridge and I was the happiest boy on the planet.

I like movies too.

[Anonymous]

co-founder of short lived site game-guru.net

currently a 17-but-soon-to-be-18-year-old Editorial Intern at PC Gamer magazine. soon to be a freshman at UC Berkeley.

adored by 5 fans, 4 of whom reside in Cananda. happily living a gaming fanboy's dream. Hooray :p

[email protected]
aim: psychcfrnd

[asspennies]

25, Software Engineer in Pittsburgh, PA.

Have written occasional pieces for websites, among them, GameSpy and CS-Nation. Never paid, though.

I just like to play games.

[Brian3DGPU]

Hell, I'll jump in...

27year old living in Huntsville, AL. Married with four daughters; ages 9, 6, and twin 18month olds. As you can imagine, my gaming time is at a premium.

In the RealWorld, I am a computer technician working for a small business that sells to government contractors. I also handle computer and projector rentals for the same company.

I started gaming on my Atari 2600, and started PC gaming with MoM and WC3. I run a NVIDIA fansite called 3DGPU.com (http://www.3dgpu.com) and my closest industry claim to fame is being quoted on the Sacrifice box.

[Supertanker]

I was thinking I wouldn't post in this because it would be repetitive. But, with the impending doom of the old message board, and when I saw there are 170+ registered users now, I decided I should reintroduce myself.

I'll be 36 in a week. I'm a lawyer, and I work for a firm in southern California that mostly represents cities (about 25 as their City Attorneys, plus a bunch of others on specific issues/cases). I hold four Assistant or Deputy City Attorney titles right now, and also handle most of the tech-related questions for other clients. I do a lot of cable franchise work (negotiation, enforcement, etc.), and am waist-deep in the Adelphia bankruptcy stuff right now. It is hectic sometimes, but I feel lucky to love what I do.

I'm happily married to the illustrious Jen (a.k.a. Pepper), and today is the 10th anniversary of our first date (we'll hit nine years of marriage in August). We have three charming little girls, ages 6, 5, and 2. Despite warning other people away from marriage & kids, I'm very happy with it.

I've been a gamer for many years, going back to playing mainframe games on paper terminals at the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley. It is still my primary hobby, and probably always will be. Played lots of other games, too, like D&D and Squad Leader. My few contacts with the gaming industry are testing related. I was a beta tester for Star Fleet Command, and was set to be one of the 12 primary beta testers for M1 Tank Platoon 3 before Hasbro came along and borked everything up.

I'm a charter member of the Crusty old Fossil Rockers, a huge (400+) clan for older gamers. See www.cofr.net for more details.
I think there are a couple of other CoFR that hang around here. It is nice to have somewhere to play where you can stop in the middle of a game to soothe a crying baby, and everyone understands.

Supertanker is actually short for The Supertanker of Love, which was a nickname I assigned myself in college to win a bet.

[Jason Cross]

I feel like one of the younger ones... I guess I don't have to post my name since I use my real name, but...

I'm one of the editors at Computer Games Magazine. I'm the Hardware Editor by title, though as with everyone else here I have many duties. The Hardware section is my chief responsibility though, I guess.

I'm 28. VERY single: no wife, kids, girlfriend, or promising prospects.

Live in Burlington, VT.

Got a degree in Asian Studies (Japanese arts and humanaties) with minors in Computer Science and Music Composition from Florida State University. I don't do much with any of that stuff I learned, and all that knowledge/skill has atrophied as a result.

Got started in the games business many years ago - first with making Fanzines with some friends back when I was in high school (two of them are editors for Versus Books now, it turns out). There was no Internet to speak of at that time. In college, when the 'net sprung up, I started doing work for OGR, a games site that is now gone but was one of the first. I also did some freelancing for console magazines at that time (back when there was a Sendai publications. Ziff bought 'em out).

Shortly after graduating college, one of the "pro" OGR guys, Jeff James, went to work for Lego (where he's a games producer now) and I took his place as a full-time worker. OGR got bought, and now there is only CGM, where I started up the Hardware section like three years ago.

Despite my day job, I'm a pretty avid console gamer, and always have been. The last few months, though, none of the console games piqued my interest and the PC games have been great.

[Jason Cross]

Oh yeah, and I'm a Jaded Self-righteous Sonofabitch that makes PR managers cry.

[Jason Cross]

Did I confuse everyone but Jason and maybe wumpus? Good. :)

--Dave

No, but you damn near put me to sleep. There wasn't a gigapixel or vertex buffer in that WHOLE DAMN THING!

[Dave Long]

Ah...but I did manage to sneak bitmap in there. I also touched on pop culture with the IBM commercials. 8)

[Jim Hoffman]

I'm very self absorbed, so I can't resist!

Just turned 35, married almost 10 years, 4 year old son.
Grew up in Fresno, armpit of California, moved to Sacramento CA area about 8 years ago.

Played my 1st computer game on teletype in 6th grade.
Progression: TRS 80 Model III (Played my first Flight Simulator on this one), Apple IIe, Vic 20 (had to program my own games out of a book... and LIKED it!), C64, IBM XT Clone.

In Junior High I played D&D, and wrote my first programs on the Vic 20.
In High School, played Water Polo, Rolemaster, and C64.
In College, played Bass Guitar in rock band (made a crappy album in Knoxville TN) instead of going to class, and played Starflight on my 386, and met my future wife.

Finally got my BS in MIS at age 25 after 6 years of college/goofing off. Got first programming job at 26.
I'm now an Associate Vice President of Software Development (AVPs are a dime a dozen around here). But I still get to program! How cool is that?!?!

2 years ago made the leap from Client-Server to Web Apps (Cold Fusion rocks! Too bad there's no market for it).

I'm getting sick of writing financial applications for the last 8 years (who wouldn't), and am starting to get into real estate (read: slum lord).

PC Gaming is my biggest hobby, and I've got my 4-year old playing multiplayer Dungeon Siege with me. The game's perfect for him, right at his level ;)

P.S. I first noticed Mark Asher's insightful posts on Usenet about 8 or 9 years ago, which years later led me to his Gamecenter articles, which more years later led me here. After reading a couple Shoot Club's I became a Tom Chick fan.

P.P.S. Also faithfully read Bruce Geryk's Strategy Therapy on Gamepen. Gone but never forgotten :)

[Kevin Perry]

31, two kids (boy almost 4, girl 1.5).

I can safely say I've done nothing useful with my life but play and make games for more than 20 years now.

I qualify for this board in all three ways: gaming geek, ex-game journalist, and professional.

Got all three AD&D hardbacks for Christmas at 10, never looked back. PnP in a small town with no games store. Atari 2600, then Commodore 64 until college.

Discovered in college that you can do nothing at all but play games as long as going to class doesn't factor into your plans.

Had the amazing fortune to get hired right out of school as a staff editor for (the late lamented) Computer Game Review (CGR). We were the (Sendai) magazine that had three reviewers review every game and published them all side by side on the same page. Worked hard, reviewed a lot of games, met some of the very people on this board nearly 10 years ago. Jumped ship just before Ziff came in and killed it off.

Worked at a variety of places in development after that, most notably Red Storm Entertainment. Now I'm a Director at Pandemic Studios in sunny Santa Monica (LA) CA.

Lurker here nearly since it opened. Galvanized into delurking by a merciless beating of one of my games by Geryk. (Yes, it's OK to make fun of games I've worked on.)

[wumpus]

Had the amazing fortune to get hired right out of school as a staff editor for (the late lamented) Computer Game Review (CGR). We were the (Sendai) magazine that had three reviewers review every game and published them all side by side on the same page. Worked hard, reviewed a lot of games, met some of the very people on this board nearly 10 years ago. Jumped ship just before Ziff came in and killed it off.
That's a great review format. I guess nobody does it now because of the obvious labor implications?

[Jaysun]

I'm just a normal, 26 yr old QA guy for a game company called VR1 Entertainment in Boulder, Colorado. (I work with Chris Floyd). I'm heavily into various extreme and underground music (industrial, techno and metal) and run an e-zine with reviews and articles. I don't get paid for that, but I do get lots of free music, which is nice. I like riding my mountain bike, listening to music and playing miniatures war games. That's about it.

[Kevin Perry]

That's a great review format. I guess nobody does it now because of the obvious labor implications?

I thought it was amazing. Since all three of us reviewed every game in every issue, you'd see a meta-picture of both the individual reviews and the reviewers.

But yeah, the labor implications were intense. I worked on 19 issues and reviewed 387 games. And we wrote the rest of the mag too. . .

[Brad Wardell]

I mostly work at the airport shooting birds.

But sometimes I also design and help develop PC games like Entrepreneur, The Corporate Machine, and Galactic Civilizations.

I also am the Product manager of WindowBlinds.

[Dave Long]

Until recently, I had some CGR mags lying around. The one thing I still have though is the supplement you guys produced for the game 1830. It has an interview with Steve Barcia and a ton of strategy. That thing seems like gold to me as 1830 is still one of my favorite computer strategy games.

I'd love to see even a two reviewer format in one of the major mags. It should be Siskel and Ebert style. No scores, just a thumbs up or down and two opinions. Not sure how to do that best in print, but I'd definitely pay for it (and I'd love to write one half of it)!

--Dave

[Gordon Berg]

That's a great review format. I guess nobody does it now because of the obvious labor implications?

I thought it was amazing. Since all three of us reviewed every game in every issue, you'd see a meta-picture of both the individual reviews and the reviewers.

But yeah, the labor implications were intense. I worked on 19 issues and reviewed 387 games. And we wrote the rest of the mag too. . .

You were one of the big three??? Wish I'd known that at E3 two years ago, I would have bought your drinks all night! I really miss that format and the magazine. It was practically impossible for me to ignore any game that had a Golden Triad award. ;)

[Kyle Wilson]

I'm just a normal, 26 yr old QA guy for a game company called VR1 Entertainment in Boulder, Colorado.

Say hi to Mike Hines for me. I was his roommate in Spokane, before we both decided the town sucked and left Cyan.

Small world. :)

[Bernie_Dy]

Had the amazing fortune to get hired right out of school as a staff editor for (the late lamented) Computer Game Review (CGR).

I remember that magazine too. I met Rick? a few times at some CES shows, and also met Ted when he left to do PR for what used to be known as New World Computing. I'd asked him about the workload at the mag, and yeah, he said it got really crazy at times. Like others here, I liked the format, but the drawback was that you guys had only so many hours in a day, so you probably had to give up a lot of sleep to get in what you could!

[Kevin Perry]

I think you mean Steve Honeywell, Bernie. He's a strat guide author now, has been for years. Much better hours than the mag biz.

Yeah, there would be no way to resurrect the format unless time restrictions were removed.

But duelling reviews, like the Quick Takes on the main site here, are always fun.

[GMicek]

*BUMP*

So, I'm a 26 year old guy who lives in Sacramento, Ca. I like long walks on.. wait. Wrong board

Anyway, I don't work in the gaming industry in any way, shape, or form. I work at Verizon Wireless where I do customer and technical support, and help train new employees from time to time.

I used to help operate a website called RPM Games. We had some interesting stuff from time to time, but it ultimately failed. Besides, the internet really doesn't need yet another bluesnews/voodooextreme clone.

Right now i'm involved in putting up a website called DIY Games. It focuses on independent developers and the games they create, as well as general gaming issues. A indie.ign.com sort of thing.

Wakeup!

[mtkafka]

Almost missed this.... hey Kevin you used to work for CGR? Were you at the Lombard offices in IL when it was CGR and CD Rom Entertainment? I remember that because my friend used to work there! Small world ... are you from the Chitown area? Btw did you know Alex Rees? I actually played a few Champions pnp sessions with him at that time.

etc

[Case]

Let's see...

Wrote the tech column for CGW for a few years, plus a boatload
of hardware reviews. If I recall correctly, I wrote 57 columns
before going to Nvidia. But I couldn't stay away from the
writing game, so left after nine months.

Have been a systems engineer, tech marketing manager,
IT manager in Silicon Valley (HP, Sun, National Semiconductor,
Frox, Nvidia)

Currently writing/editing full time for Ziff-Davis at ExtremeTech

Just wrapped up my second book on PC hardware for gamers.
Will be published in October by Osborne/McGraw-Hill

Two daughters (8 and 11), both turning into budding gamers.
(My 8 year old and a friend are playing through the fourth
world in Diablo II -- further than I ever got :shock: )

Have anywhere from 4-8 PCs running in the basement lab.
Gotta use them for something, so some of my "testing" occurs
every Friday night...

I'm 47, with a Silicon Valley mortgage (a five-year old one, thank
god. Couldn't buy my own house today).

And I'm fortunate in having a very tolerant and good-humored
wife, Jan, who's not a gamer, but indulges my avocation.

Wondering just how long I can keep doing this, and feeling
amazed that people pay me money to do what I do.

And every time I think I get jaded, some tech company or
gaming company surprises me again.

Cheers,

Loyd Case

[voltaic]

Gladguy, Dreamcatcher games are generally a helluva lot of fun. But howcome they all crash over and over on me? Aaargh!

OK I'm done. Safecracker was a hoot by the way.

[voltaic]

27 year old single male. Senior in computational math at UC Davis with an almost-but-not-quite minor in English. Currently I am a supervisor at Fry's Electronics in Sacramento, CA although looking to go to sales soon just in time for the holiday season.

Many years spent as a web developer - MySQL/PHP on Apache. Did the backend for rpmgames.com (gaming news site) and a bunch of non-gaming news sites. Claim to fame is doing Christopher Lambert's site for about a year... he's the movie star who plays the Highlander and was Raiden in the first Mortal Kombat movie (among other roles). Somewhere I have a pic of him and me chillin' at my house...

My only involvement with the games industry is getting the occasional "you may be a match!" from jobs.ea.com. I am currently coding my first game, although it is my fourth written-down-and-truly-thought-out design doc. I also used to collect arcade games (those 25-cent stand up types) and spend alot of time reminiscing about the good ol' days in the 7-11s. Currently building a home unit to play Jamma arcade games on the TV. Big time pencil-and-paper role player, from AD&D (1st ed) to Rifts to Steve Jackson (except Gurps, which bites) to Toon to Vampire:The Masquerade.

Favorite game of all time is Thief 2 (with the patch) and my favorite "modern" console game is Jet Set Radio Future on the XBox, which has an extremely excellent soundtrack available on music CD, BTW. I enjoy some FPSs (although not into multiplayer anymore), adventure, strategy, and other games you can play for 20 minutes then go do something else. I would worship DreamCatcher if their games didn't require five versions of Quicktime to be installed at once and didn't crash every twenty minutes. I poured out a 40oz for Looking Glass Studios when they closed.

I think that the "normal" XBox controller is awful and that the smaller XBox-S controller (aka the Japanese version) approaches Godlike. I think that it's funny that the only two pics on dereksmart.com are of the "dig the p1mp" style. I love the new Cherry Coke mix and hate Vanilla Coke. I think that Del Taco is the greatest Food Product (tm) ever to come out of the cesspool of American fast food. Fight Club was a great movie. Never forget September 12th. Thank you and good night.

[Bub, Andrew]

I found out on Friday that my upcoming child will be a masculine one. This changes nothing, really, but I wanted both a son and daughter and now I have a Maggie and an upcoming Henry. I'm really far too lucky for my own good.

[Sparky]

I wanted both a son and daughter and now I have a Maggie and an upcoming Henry.

Henry -- nice name, classic. But in case you're wavering, I'll suggest the more distinctive "Euphrates", "Costco", "Bucket", and "Acidophilus". Oh, and "Apocalypse", since Denny's probably not going to use that one.

[Bub, Andrew]

My paternal grandfather was Henry "Hank" Bub, he died about a week after I was born. I think had I been born after he died I'd be Henry Bub. So, really I'm just transferring the name over. Fortunately, my wife adores the name.

And why would I go for those silly names you mention if I could choose Ebenezer, Heironymous, or Ignatius instead?

[Aszurom]

Bub,

You realize if you name the kid Turok, his college is pretty much covered?

[Anonymous]

That's a great review format. I guess nobody does it now because of the obvious labor implications?
If by "labor implications" you mean, "How could three people review 20-30 games/month that require anywhere from 10-50 hours of play," yeah. That's ridiculous. It also adds in the scenario where you get, say, my opinion on wargames, which is about as relevant as Tom Chick's on Counter-strike (zing!).

Of course you pay for it, and quickly go out of business having to pay for each article three times as you couldn't pay $50 and expect someone to play a game for 50 hours.

It basically creates a system where at least two of the people spent a few minutes with a game and are expected to write a review. If they dropped the ratings from those reviews and/or didn't average them into some final rating, it might be an interesting system.

But really, what does it add? Three people saying, "Wow, it's great!" won't mean you'll like the game. And having two of them say, "Crap!" the other, "Great!" is even more confusing since none of the three has enough room to go into detail about how they came to their conclusion.

Websites can sort of do something similar with a review followed by reader reviews a la Gamespot. Unfortunately, the text of most reader reviews is pretty useless.

If you're just looking for different opinions, you're still better off consulting multiple sources. For consistency, one publication is likely to have writers with similar tastes, so even if you had three reviews, chances are that they'd usually be slight variations on the same basic review. One guy says "5 stars-Awesome!" while the others say, "4-stars, very good!" or something like that.

[Anonymous]

Bub,

You realize if you name the kid Turok, his college is pretty much covered?

Shhh! I told him I'd give him three dollars and...some funny-looking Canadian coins left over from my 1975 trip to Toronto if he names the baby "Newtrino". In eighteen years with accumulated interest, Newtrino H. Bub will be all set for a 2-year degree at the community college of his choice. Providing it's within walking distance, that is, and he buys all his required class holograms used, and makes do with Pop's computer from the early 2000's (though the Radeon 9700 card in that old bitbucket never *did* work properly).

[Sparky]

Yeah, that's me sans login. Time for bed, I'm gettin' goofier than usual...

[JeffL]

That's a great review format. I guess nobody does it now because of the obvious labor implications?

No offense to anyone who worked on that mag, but I thought the format resulted in extremely shallow reviews. I remember one review, the one that caused me to finally stop reading the magazine, was of a good flight sim. The one reviewer spend his entire paragraph or so complaining that he couldn't get his joystick set up properly - so the sim got a very low rating. Ugh.

I like the idea of a point/counterpoint discussion format on a game, where both have obviously spent serious time with the game. But that wasn't what was delivered in this case.

[Gladguy]

voltaic:
Thanks for the compliment (I think) :wink: Can't speak for the older adventure titles (I work on the action/strategy stuff) but have you checked out Syberia yet? No QuickTime there!

Bub, Andrew:
Congrats, man. I myself am the proud father of a 3 yr. old boy and a 6-week old girl. Millionaire's family. It's the best.

And if I may throw a name out... I've always been partial to Jebidiah... :lol:

[Jack]

Cool thread -- I'm a habitual lurker on this board, so I'm surprised I didn't see this one sooner.

I'm a 34 year-old (9/29 will bring me to my 35th year) gamer who is hopelessly addicted to RPGs -- both tabletop and computer varieties. I have a BA degree in writing, so I felt obligated to work as a newspaper reporter for a few years to justify all those years in college. Fiction writing has always been a love and I recently had a novel published (book signings were a blast) and hope to have one of the others published someday. :)

I worked for about ten years as a bassist/keyboardist/vocalist in bar bands, but ran out of gas. I eventually came to the realization that I was doing nothing more than extending my teen years into my twenties. Funny, I haven't come to the same conclusion about gaming....

To pay the bills, I'm an NT/Novell admin because I've always had a passion for these infernal machines since I first did BASIC programming on a TRS-80 in high school (remember those old clunkers?). I remember when Space Invaders first invaded the US from Japan, straight into a local pizza parlor. I lost a ton of quarters in that beast and it started a life-long gaming addiction.

I have a marvelous wife who puts up with my solitary habits (gaming, writing) with nary a complaint. No kids patter in my house, but there are three cats and two fine turtles to keep us company.

The Shoot Club drew me to this website, then I discovered it had a great BB. It's hard to find a board that's not over-run with trolls or barely literate posters who still find "What's Happening to my Body?" an interesting read. I have the same opinion of MMORPGs, by the way. I gave up on finding a worthwhile MMORPG and nearly gave up on finding a worthwhile BB -- until I found this one.

PS: I usually write too much, as you can see.

[Linoleum]

I'm 26. Been working in the game industry full-time for about eight years and did some contracting before that (school kind of got in the way). Have worked for a couple different game firms in a programming and management capacity on too many titles on too many platforms over the years. I currently run a very small company and do subcontracting on engineering tasks for computer and console games. Have a huge backlog of games to get through and Battlefield 1942 isn't going to help that at all.

Nate 'Linoleum' Trost

[Troy S Goodfellow]

Troy Goodfellow, 30 years old, gamer for about fifteen. Happily married to another avid gamer for six years. I write for Gamersclick when they let me.

Recently moved to suburban Washington DC from Canada, currently unemployed. With a PhD in poli sci and a year of consulting under under my, I hope to find something soon.

Baseball purist, non-fiction reader, friend of public broadcasting.

Troy

[Anonymous]

Executive Editor, PC Gamer magazine

joyously tearing down the goalposts of gamedom

[JFeil]

36-year old level designer for LucasArts. My first computer was a TRS-80 Level 1 with 4k. Damn thing could still whip me at chess.

Married, with one child. I still prefer to play paper and pencil rpgs over the computer types. Currently trying to create the unstoppable orc build for WC3.

[wumpus]

Currently trying to create the unstoppable orc build for WC3
Good luck. You're gonna need it.

[Kevin Perry]

Almost missed this.... hey Kevin you used to work for CGR? Were you at the Lombard offices in IL when it was CGR and CD Rom Entertainment? I remember that because my friend used to work there! Small world ... are you from the Chitown area? Btw did you know Alex Rees? I actually played a few Champions pnp sessions with him at that time.

etc

Almost missed it myself, sorry.

Yep, I was in the Lombard offices from 93-95. But I'm not from Chicago-- I was just there for college (Northwestern) and stayed for a few years after.

I believe Alex Rees was an immediate predecessor. I don't think I knew him.

[Kevin Perry]

That's a great review format. I guess nobody does it now because of the obvious labor implications?
If by "labor implications" you mean, "How could three people review 20-30 games/month that require anywhere from 10-50 hours of play," yeah. That's ridiculous. It also adds in the scenario where you get, say, my opinion on wargames, which is about as relevant as Tom Chick's on Counter-strike (zing!).

Of course you pay for it, and quickly go out of business having to pay for each article three times as you couldn't pay $50 and expect someone to play a game for 50 hours.

It basically creates a system where at least two of the people spent a few minutes with a game and are expected to write a review. If they dropped the ratings from those reviews and/or didn't average them into some final rating, it might be an interesting system.

But really, what does it add? Three people saying, "Wow, it's great!" won't mean you'll like the game. And having two of them say, "Crap!" the other, "Great!" is even more confusing since none of the three has enough room to go into detail about how they came to their conclusion.

Websites can sort of do something similar with a review followed by reader reviews a la Gamespot. Unfortunately, the text of most reader reviews is pretty useless.

If you're just looking for different opinions, you're still better off consulting multiple sources. For consistency, one publication is likely to have writers with similar tastes, so even if you had three reviews, chances are that they'd usually be slight variations on the same basic review. One guy says "5 stars-Awesome!" while the others say, "4-stars, very good!" or something like that.

I'd have to agree, on many of your counts. Which is not to say that I haven't read plenty of 1500 word reviews that were just as shallow as our 150 word ones. . . but rarely in your mag. We did strive to make them relevant and as insightful as we could, with our personal prejudices always hanging out for all to see.

I would point out that since we were all on staff, not freelancers, the mag wasn't paying on a per-article basis. It wasn't economics that led to the demise of CGR. . . unless you count ZD buying Sendai out and shutting down the mag as economics.

[Matt Perkins]

You guys are all old! :D

I'm 25, a gamer, drywaller and a computer guy (you ask, I do it). Married for 8 years (almost 9), a 4 year old daughter and a bundle on the way.


I like long walks on the beach, quiet time in the sun and toes that curl... :P (half of these posts here sound like personal adds)


Been interesting to read about the people that post here... I actually learned who runs this site...now, could they update it, please? 8)

[Bub, Andrew]

Wzrd, you got married when you were 17?
25 - 8 = X

Yow!

[Matt Perkins]

I was wondering if anyone was going to catch that. But no, not when I was 17, but when I was 16 to a woman 10 years older than me. My parents were less than thrilled at the time. :P

[Murph]

Wow. And I thought I married young at 19.

[William Abner]

30 years old
Freelance Writer / Stay at home pop
Assoc. Editor @ CGM until the Globe.com-Bottom-Fell-Out (tm) (Curses!)
Married w/ a 2-year old daughter
2 dogs (mutts)
Lives in Columbus
OSU grad with a degree in English - 18th Cent Lit./Critical Theory
Go Bucks
Nice House
Despises yardwork of any kind
Drives a '98 Ford Contour (power everything!)
Plays way too many sports games
Would like an Incubation re-match with Senior Chick
Still needs to buy Tivo
Hi mom

[Gladguy]

Not to pry wzrd, but aren't there statutory rape laws in your state? :lol:

[Matt Perkins]

Not to pry wzrd, but aren't there statutory rape laws in your state? :lol:

Yes...and my dad was considering pressing them. That's one of the reasons I got married. My wife to be and I talked about it then I went and thought about it for awhile...and asked her to be my wife.

If my kid wanted to do the same, I'd tell them they are crazy and I'd do my best to talk them out of it and probably not offer consent (at least one parent has to consent in georgia, where I got married...odd laws in georgia, glad I live in FL, old people land) unless I was REALLY sure and even then I don't know.

But for me, it worked out great. I love being married and having my family.


(I've probably shared to much now, but it's late and I'm tired so "na na")

[Jakub]

So I'm 24 years old and am the acting editor-in-chief of FiringSquad's games section. Been working there three-odd years, though only recently have I focused on actual professional development.

I've been gaming for ages. A Commodore 32 was my first computer, and an 486DX/33 was the first PC I had. My fondest gaming memory is my first PC one, despite all the trials I went through to get it running. My mom came one night with Wing Commander in her bag, gave it to me - and predictably enough, it did not run. Not that it was buggy, just the typical problem of the day - not enough memory. Having just left the Amiga, I was incapable of understanding how a game couldn't run on 8MB of RAM. It took me a while to figure out the 640k limit, EMS, XMS and autoexec.bat/config.sys files. In the meantime, the poor people at the old Trade 'n Play exchanged my game 4 times, my hard drive suffered a format I cancelled halfway through and I attempted to install WC on a RAM drive.

Aside from the obvious lessons, the most important one I learned is that sometimes, the manual makes the game. In my over-active teenage imagination I read the WC manual ("Claw Marks") and memorized all the ship's stats. In the week it took me to get the game running, I'd re-read the manual a half dozen times. Characters became more real, locations more fleshed out and battles more intense. I imagined the game modeling individual people on the ships, turrets that could be disabled, perhaps capturing them... of course, none of that was happening.

I'm saddened to realize now that if I played a game like Wing Commander and had all those expectations (ie, features listed in a manual, even just a 'color' manual, that didn't exist in the game) ... I'd be disappointed and roast the game alive. Yet nothing is going to take the spot of WC as my best-ever game experience.

[DennyA]

Commodore 32? Do you mean Commodore 64? Or a PET 4032 or 8032?

No such thing as a Commodore 32. :-) C16, Plus 4, CD32, yes, but no C32...

[Jessica]

Must have missed this thread while I was on vacation in September.

I'm a 47 year old MMOG and online games/services consultant and author who has been knocking around the industry since 1986 (and started modeming two years before that when my brother wrote a terminal program for the Apple II and got me hooked). I started with GEnie as a contractor in 1986, designing and implementing Rim Worlds War, a combined email and chat space combat game, and setting up and managing the Computer Games Company Support RoundTable.

Moved to AOL as a contractor in 1987 (when the company was still Quantum Computer Services) to set up the Apple IIe/GS and Macintosh Game Forums on what was then known as AppleLink-Personal Edition. Moved inhouse at AOL in 1988 as an associate game producer, convinced the company to snag an AD&D license from TSR, got SSI and Beyond Software to agree to develop the original AD&D: NeverWinter Nights and never looked back at honest work.

Since then, I've worked or consulted in MMOGs and online games in general for Interplay (where I also produced several PC SKUs), Engage, MPG-Net, News Corp, Kesmai, EA/OSI, MM3D and the Themis Group, to name a few. Also did a couple Mac game reviews for Johnny Wilson at CGW, back in the day. Currently back in consulting and looking forward to my first real book to hit the printers on January 29 (I don't count the two strategy guides) . Developing Online Games: An Insider's Guide, co-written with Bridgette Patrovsky and from New Riders, should be on the shelves around February 20. We're already working on our second book. Books aren't as fun as making games, but you get to do it in your PJs, so it all evens out.

And I write the bi-weekly column Biting the Hand, now in it's sixth year of existence (http://www.skotos.net/articles/bth.html). I originally started writing the damn thing to help scuttle my game career and let me move on to something else, but it ended up bringing in more work than I had time for. The Law of Unintended Consequences strikes again.

[Jakub]

Commodore 32? Do you mean Commodore 64? Or a PET 4032 or 8032?

No such thing as a Commodore 32. :-) C16, Plus 4, CD32, yes, but no C32...

I'm sure it was a 32.

Or some bastard hybrid. It had a full-sized keyboard, but cartridges on the back and a more primitive tape drive than the 64.

[Anonymous]

Or some bastard hybrid. It had a full-sized keyboard, but cartridges on the back and a more primitive tape drive than the 64.

Commodore Vic 20 maybe? It had both cartridge and tape I believe.

[chet]

There was never a 32, unless you mean the CD32, which from your description you don't. It may have been the 16 or the really ugly plus 4, and I have a hybrid special edition plus/16, but it seems to really just be a 16 with a new case, maybe the 128B?

Sadly, I collect old pcs from that era and have never heard of a commodore 32 past the CD game player.

[Jakub]

There was never a 32, unless you mean the CD32, which from your description you don't. It may have been the 16 or the really ugly plus 4, and I have a hybrid special edition plus/16, but it seems to really just be a 16 with a new case, maybe the 128B?

Sadly, I collect old pcs from that era and have never heard of a commodore 32 past the CD game player.

Well, I was like 7 years old at the time, so you have to forgive me if my memory doesn't serve quite right.

[Xemu]

Wow, what a great thread for someone to unearth!

I followed the site avidly until, uh, it stopped updating, and wasn't until some time later that I realized there were forums with interesting people still surviving. :-)

Anyways, a selected gameography:
System Shock, Programmer (1994)
Flight Unlimited, Programmer (1995)
System Shock 2, Lead Programmer (1999)
Age of Mythology, Lead Programmer (2002)

Plus lots of assorted playtesting, voice acting, and general industry kibbutzing.

During crunch time I am survived by a beautiful wife who tolerates my hours and my gaming habit, and cute little 21-month-old who already knows how to use a Gamecube controller and thinks Mario is the coolest guy on the planet.

I play a LOT of games, probably bordering on unhealthy obsession. While I think it is practically impossible for anyone to have a complete collection of PC and console games that come out yearly, I probably make a pretty good shot at it... :-)

[Sean Tudor]

Anyways, a selected gameography:
System Shock, Programmer (1994)
Flight Unlimited, Programmer (1995)
System Shock 2, Lead Programmer (1999)
Age of Mythology, Lead Programmer (2002)

That's a fantastic pedigree Xemu. I have lost more hours than I care to count on the above games. You've done a great job ! :)

[Jakub]

Anyways, a selected gameography:
System Shock, Programmer (1994)
Flight Unlimited, Programmer (1995)
System Shock 2, Lead Programmer (1999)
Age of Mythology, Lead Programmer (2002)


Wow, you've got a "few" fans here. :D

[dannimal]

Somehow having missed this thread for 6+ months...

I'm 29, divorced but engaged, father of an almost 8 year old girl in Saline, Michigan.

Currently working 30 hrs./wk (75%) split about 80/20 between System Administrator and Database Developer for the U of M. The other 10 hrs./wk I'm taking an American Sign Language Interpreter Training Program at a local Community College. The goal is to become certified and do some freelance interpreting before jumping in full time and going into education (either school interpreting or teaching deaf/any kids).

Gaming since the Atari 2600 and the Tel-Star. First computer was the Ti-99/4A, with the legendary Tunnels of Doom. First learned TI Basic and LOGO as programming, and went from there. Went to college insisting on being a game programmer until I realized I didn't want to live in a cave eating only snack food and pop until I looked like Gollum so I went into Admin.

Currently playing anything that hits me in the eyes as enjoyable. GBA (Castlevania, Zelda), PS2 (FFX, Kingdom Hearts, Madden...), GC (Metroid, SSBM), NES (Old Skool!), AC2, Civ3, you name it.

Like to fool myself into thinking I have some small skill at drawing or humor writing, but that's mostly a very side hobby when I can trick myself into working on it.

[rhett]

How about the whole fuckin place loves you. :)

[chet]

Jakub, I was actually hoping you would have clarified there was some strange regional version of an odd CBM computer.

[Drunkagain]

Anyways, a selected gameography:
System Shock, Programmer (1994)
Flight Unlimited, Programmer (1995)
System Shock 2, Lead Programmer (1999)
Age of Mythology, Lead Programmer (2002)


Wow, you've got a "few" fans here. :D

Holy shit, no kidding!

[Tyjenks]

Xemu, if I haven't said it before (which I know I have), I'll say it now: I easily tired of the other "Age of" games and was through with RTS titles as a whole. Warlords Battlecry II and AoM have brought me back into the fold. I am still playing AoM daily after having picked it up soon after its release. That rarely happens with this short attention span game addict. Superb work on helping to re-invent, in my mind, Ensemble's prized possession.

BTW, my 21 mo. old girl's b'day is March 27. How close is yours, if you don't mind me asking?

Oh, yeah. I am an 82 year old virgin grandmother of 16. I make the plastic things that go on the end of shoe strings. All by hand and made with recycled twinkie wrappers which I eat the product from before making them.

[Xemu]

Little Xavier was born on March 11, 2001, so two weeks off from yours. Man, they really get a lot more interesting AND harder to take care of when they can start walking around, talking, and insist on doing things for themselves! :-)

Thanks for the kind words on the games... they were all incredibly fun experiences and I consider myself lucky to have had such great opportunities. Ok, maybe my brief stint on British Open Championship Golf (ah, the game that killed Looking Glass) wasn't the most enjoyable.

Hopefully I can continue to meeting the demanding requirements of folks here... :-)

[mtkafka]

Hey Rob, any chance you'd be doing a System Shock 3? dont you know it would rock? Like rock the millenium? Anyway, you rock for helping make that great game (and games). could you convince the almighty Bill Gates that a SS3 type game could blow the socks off Xbox people? It could make Metroid Prime look like kids play and Splinter Cell look boring? anyway, thanks for your leet skillz in making great games!

etc

[Jakub]

Jakub, I was actually hoping you would have clarified there was some strange regional version of an odd CBM computer.

I looked around. I think it's a Vic 20. My memory still tells me the name contains 32... but the Vic 20 looks all too familiar.

[Ergo]

Yep, it's VIC-20. I won one of these at a national high-school sudent council gathering way back in 1983.

[Miramon]

Former Bellcore, GTE Labs, and Verizon Labs technology drone.

No game industry connection, though I have a preliminary interview with Turbine next week. But I have played a lot of games, and in the late 80s, I designed and developed omega, the roguelike game, while in the early 90s I was a senior wizard on The World's Greatest LPMud (tm), The Marches of Antan, doing game content and mudlib hacking.

[Luke M]

-20 years old (watching friends drink during New Year's Eve was a real tease)
-Sophomore @ Bellarmine University in Louisville, KY (yes, _the_ Bellarmine University :) )
-former Computer Science major
-potential Psychology or Theology major
-currently single, somewhat lonely, and trying to survive the ups and downs of relationships
-loves to run and do strength training workouts
-loves to read science fiction and general fiction
-enjoys lots of movies and music
-plays way too many games :)

[Tom Ohle]

Was that in Poland, Jakub? Because I seriously wouldn't be surprised if they had some goofy European Commodore back then. Europe's weird that way. We had a game where you'd just bet on horses and watch them race. That was the extent of it. Place your bet, watch the horses run for about 20 seconds, hope you had the winning horse. Rinse and repeat.

[Will Smith]

Wow, cool thread :)

Here's my info: Will Smith, 27 years old, technical editor of Maximum PC magazine. All mistakes belong to me.

I guess my connection to the game biz is that I review videocards (and games) for the most hardcore PC enthusiast gaming mag there is. Aside from that, I've been in love with computer games since the first time I fired up M1A1 Tank Platoon on my dad's 286.

In my spare time I play pretty much any first person shooter, RTS, or wargame that's available on the PC or Xbox. My girlfriend and I like to play console games that pit us against each other, whether it's DoA3, SSX Tricky, Tony Hawk x, or Rocky. When there's nothing good out on PC or Xbox, I feed the EverQuest demon. Since I picked up Medieval: Total War, Splinter Cell, and Rocky, EverQuest hasn't gotten much playtime. ;)

[JBirns]

-32 year old struggling game developer :)

-Married for 2 years, no kids, 2 cats.

-Started in the game industry in 94 at a comapny called QQP (anyone remember them ?)

-Co-founder/Art-Director of nFusion Interactive, New Jersey

[Xemu]

Man, I *loved* QQPs games! Conquered Kingdoms and Battles of Destiny are some of my all time favorite games. I spent a LOT of time with those when I was in college.

(For those curious, here's a gameography of QQPs games... some real strategy classics out there, though they were never well known I fear):

QQP listing from MobyGames (http://www.mobygames.com/browse/games/o,100/j,1178/)

[Ergo]

-36 years old
-Film major; now a network admin at an EDA company
-Married 4 years
-1 dog and 2 cats
-Live in Wilsonville, Oregon
-Been playing games since Oregon Trail on a VAX terminal
-Familiar with the work of most of the writers here.

[JBirns]

HA ! Someone that heard of QQP!. Actually back in 93-94 QQP ads dominated most of the game mags. Most people don't remember them these days though.

[chet]

I loved the perfect general games. They have to be on my top 10 for actual hours played.

Chet

[Kevin Perry]

Plus the Lost Admiral, not to mention the original Merchant Prince.

Great games. They don't make them that way anymore.

[Jakub]

Was that in Poland, Jakub? Because I seriously wouldn't be surprised if they had some goofy European Commodore back then. Europe's weird that way. We had a game where you'd just bet on horses and watch them race. That was the extent of it. Place your bet, watch the horses run for about 20 seconds, hope you had the winning horse. Rinse and repeat.

No, the "C32" was in Canada.

I had the Amiga 500 in Poland.

[Jakub]

-Started in the game industry in 94 at a comapny called QQP (anyone remember them ?)

Are you kidding?

They'd go down in history if only for The Grandest Fleet!

[Tom Chick]

HA ! Someone that heard of QQP!.

I think you'll find that anyone who's been gaming for more than ten years will remember QQP. And that wretched hive of scum and villiany, Laser Games, who killed them off.

BTW, Killer Bee Software (http://www.killerbeesoftware.com/kbsgames/), which as far as I can tell is just a guy in Houston, has acquired the rights to Perfect General and Empire Deluxe for remakes.

-Tom

[JBirns]

After ALG bought QQP things went down hill fast. Took about a year to crash if I remember correctly. Quite a few games never made it out the door such as Lost Admiral 2, which was almost complete.

Several of us from QQP still work together. We've talked about revisiting the wargame genre but haven't quite made it there yet.

[Qenan]

Lost Admiral, wow. That brings back memories -- it was one of the first PC games I ever played.

[Xemu]

I would pay good American dollars for an updated version of Empire Deluxe...

[Brad Grenz]

-Live in Wilsonville, Oregon

I hope you get bottled water!

[Jessica]

I would pay good American dollars for an updated version of Empire Deluxe...

Check out http://killerbeesoftware.com/. It is coming back, apparently.

Back in the mid-90s, when I was still with Engage, I had an Empire Deluxe license for online games almost in my hands, until 3DO bought New World Computing and closed negotiations (they had their own online plans at the time). It was sooooo close....

[Jazar]

24 year old laid off telcoms chump at the moment studing for a masters in CS and looking for work hopefully in games industry as a programer.

Worked on Ultima Horizons (http://web.archive.org/web/20000816192013/http://www.allgaming.com/ultimaix/) and Deusex-machina.com (http://www.deusex-machina.com/) back in the day. Did some freelance for IGN as well.

[Tom Chick]

studing for a masters in CS

They offer degrees in Counter-Strike? That's hardcore! :)

-Tom

[Ergo]

-Live in Wilsonville, Oregon

I hope you get bottled water!

Believe it or not, the water is actually BETTER than it used to be. Don't believe the hype.

[Jazar]

They offer degrees in Counter-Strike? That's hardcore! :)


Well when you're up against a bunch of LPBs carrying FNPs with KV&H and NVGs, it takes years of traning to compete. :P

[Sean Tudor]

-Started in the game industry in 94 at a comapny called QQP (anyone remember them ?)

Oh yes ! I was a big fan of The Perfect General and Empire Deluxe ! :D

[Machine]

Sheesh!
Is there no one here who comes home from work with dirt under thier fingernails? WHat a bunch of pencil pushers! :lol:

I'm just a regular gamer with no connections at all with the industry, stumbled onto this site a while ago.
I have worked for over 10 years running a large printing press for a daily newspaper in the upper midwest, (circ. 65,000) and spend my freetime with FPS and an occasional RTS.

32 years old, married w/ two kids ages 4 and 8.

[GMicek]

Sheesh!
Is there no one here who comes home from work with dirt under thier fingernails? WHat a bunch of pencil pushers! :lol:

I used to be a forklift driver! Hehe

[JBirns]

Sheesh!
Is there no one here who comes home from work with dirt under thier fingernails? WHat a bunch of pencil pushers! :lol

You mean key pressers ! :)

[Naked]

Um, I'm from sheep shaggin' rural England, if that counts;)

[Oppressor]

]
probably the only truly 100% indie game dev still standing


'Sez you... The reports of our death are greatly exaggerated, but I'd love it if the reports of our existence were exaggerated a little.

Not that I didn't try like hell to sell out... and fail...

37 year-old videogame designer/Ph.D. biochemist/programmer...

Written games since 1975 - irrelevant landmarks include:

Reverse engineering University of Texas Super Star Trek at the age of 14 and then raiding a scary number of corporate and university mainframes to play every Star Trek variant in existence in order to make the one true Star Trek. Final result was stolen by a manager. I tracked him down and "customized" his version. He later complained about how the game was taunting him.

Wrote a multi-user space battle game in 1981 based on 2nd hand stories of the PLATO network. Gained a minor cult following that likely went on to write Galactic Trader.

Wrote a BBS Doors Cyberpunk game in 1987 called _The Matrix_ (believe it or not). I should sue. It ran on maybe 3 BBSes as this was the beginning of an unfortunate trend: targeting orphan hardware (the Atari ST).

and my current 15 seconds of fame:

Wrote the very first 32-player networking console game: http://www.battlesphere.com. Oh what I could have done had XBox Live existed back then. In a universe that made sense, this game got a shot at a major console. But where's the fun in that? It's our fault we chose the jaguar, but then no one else would let us write a networkable game. Oh yeah, we designed our own networking hardware, built the carts from spare parts, did our own box art, and pressured Hasbro into making the Atari Jaguar the first proprietary console to become open. Hopefully, we have another 14:45 of fame left to exploit with our current effort.

And oh the stories I could tell of game suits telling me that networked gaming had no future back in 1996...

These days some of my code is running on many of your computers. But I'm not tellin' tee hee...

[Linoleum]

Another Jaguar sufferer! You must be the other Battlesphere guy who's name I can't remember. I met (Scott?) at the Nuon dev conference back in 99 or so.

Lino (worked at High Voltage back in the mid-90s)

[Oppressor]

Another Jaguar sufferer! You must be the other Battlesphere guy who's name I can't remember. I met (Scott?) at the Nuon dev conference back in 99 or so.

Lino (worked at High Voltage back in the mid-90s)

Heh, yeah, I kind of moved from the Titanic to the Brittanic with that one...

Still, that was a fun conference if only for the go-carts and the Ion Storm jokes... Whatever happened to Adisak? Is he still condemned to writing basketball ports?

[Linoleum]

Adisak and McGroarty are at Midway now and doing well.

[Anonymous]

Oh what the heck....

Names Joel.

32 years old.

Developement director for the NbaLive series at Tiburon.

[Gladguy]

Oh what the heck....

Names Joel.

32 years old.

Developement director for the NbaLive series at Tiburon.

Welcome aboard, Joel.

Now register! :wink:

[MattK]

Name: Matt Keil

Age: 26

Location: San Francisco

Occupation: Associate producer, Extended Play (TechTV)

Lurked for some time, thought I'd finally register.

~MJK

[Tom Chick]

You registered as MattK?

Uh-oh, I think you're going to catch a lot of flak from people figuring you for Met_K. Best of luck. :)

-Tom

[Bokonon]

25 Year old web developer/programmer/culinary student from Birmingham with no substantial ties to the gaming community other than writing a smart ass web site that reviews all games poorly.

Tried before to write for a few mags, but for the most part if you don't know someone or have any published articles they pass you over.

I also unwittingly threatened the TFC dev team with a baseball bat beating one night in IRC long ago.

[MattKeil]

You registered as MattK?

Uh-oh, I think you're going to catch a lot of flak from people figuring you for Met_K. Best of luck. :)

-Tom

The old switcheroo it is, then. Only had three posts so far anyway. :)

~MJK

[ARogan]

- 31 yrs old. married with 1 child.
- been programming for 10 yrs now. lately mostly in VB.
- I work down the hall from sellthekids (see page 1 )
- currently writing my own tivo program
- addicted to games since atari 2600. I also own: colecovision, bally arcade, nes, snes, n64, gamecube, sega master system, genesis, 32x, saturn, dreamcast, playstation, playstation 2, jaguar, xbox, game gear, nomad, gameboy, pocket gameboy, gameboy color, gameboy advance (with afterburner), microvision, game.com, turbo duo
- was recently recruited by the Star League to defend the frontier from Xur and the KO-Dan Armada.
- I still play counter-strike (but only iceworld). 1.6 looks interesting.
- use to dream about getting into the games industry until I started reading this forum :D j/k

[Laralyn]

I'm new to the forums, so I'm glad to find this thread and get virtually acquainted with everyone. Kevin Perry (who also posted to this thread) and I were chatting and I mentioned that I missed Quarter to Three, and he let me know that the site isn't updated, but the boards are active.

Until I saw Jessica's post, I thought I was the only woman here! I know I'm an anomoly: a 37 year old female game designer. Let's put it this way: in the game industry no matter how small the women's bathroom is, there's never a line.

I started in games with my first computer (TI-99/4A) and taught myself BASIC because I fell in love with Scott Adams' adventure games. From there I moved on to one of the first Macs (memories of Wizardry and Bard's Tale, anyone?), even more Macs (Marathon! The Journeyman Project!), and finally the PC world (just in time for Ultima VII, Ultima Underworld, System Shock, Privateer, Crusader and XWing).

I spent some time owning my own game development house in the early 1990's, and like most old-timers, I've worked for several different places that are now out of business. I was at High Voltage for a while, and I'm now working for Pandemic Studios.

[Tom Ohle]

Woo Pandemic! I love you guys ;) Gimme Dark Reign 3.

[DennyA]

Laralyn,

Sparky's in the XX-chromosome club as well, and I know there are a few other females in the industry who lurk here but don't post... So you're not completely alone. :)

Welcome to the board.

Looks like you guys are doing interesting stuff... "Full Spectrum Warrior" puts an interesting wrinkle in the arguments about whether video game consoles can train people to kill... (I know it's tactics training -- I'm very good at shooters and I'm lucky to not miss the broad side of the barn with a real rifle.)

[Laralyn]

Looks like you guys are doing interesting stuff... "Full Spectrum Warrior" puts an interesting wrinkle in the arguments about whether video game consoles can train people to kill... (I know it's tactics training -- I'm very good at shooters and I'm lucky to not miss the broad side of the barn with a real rifle.)

Actually, I think what the web site says is true: "The focus of Full Spectrum Warrior is on critical tactical decision making by the Squad Leader."

So instead of debating whether video games can train people to kill, we can have a debate about whether playing video games can teach people social and leadership skills.

Just think of the implications for the player killer dudez on UO! ;-)

[Tom Ohle]

Oh... and we have about... I'd say 10 or 11 women working at BioWare. So you're definitely not alone.

[Jessica]

Let's put it this way: in the game industry no matter how small the women's bathroom is, there's never a line.

Isn't that the truth.

[Jessica]

I'm new to the forums, so I'm glad to find this thread and get virtually acquainted with everyone. Kevin Perry (who also posted to this thread) and I were chatting and I mentioned that I missed Quarter to Three, and he let me know that the site isn't updated, but the boards are active.

Until I saw Jessica's post, I thought I was the only woman here! I know I'm an anomoly: a 37 year old female game designer. Let's put it this way: in the game industry no matter how small the women's bathroom is, there's never a line.

I started in games with my first computer (TI-99/4A) and taught myself BASIC because I fell in love with Scott Adams' adventure games. From there I moved on to one of the first Macs (memories of Wizardry and Bard's Tale, anyone?), even more Macs (Marathon! The Journeyman Project!), and finally the PC world (just in time for Ultima VII, Ultima Underworld, System Shock, Privateer, Crusader and XWing).

I spent some time owning my own game development house in the early 1990's, and like most old-timers, I've worked for several different places that are now out of business. I was at High Voltage for a while, and I'm now working for Pandemic Studios.

Welcome to the madhouse, Laralyn. Keep your back to the wall; these guys are crazy.

[SpoofyChop]

Well...at the risk of being "last but least" I'll offer my biopic. In order to distract attention away from my extremely limited qualifications in any area of life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness, I'll put this in XML.



<Person nickname="SpoofyChop" gender="male">
<Family>
<Spouse looks="exotic beauty" personality="ultra-sweet"/>
<Offspring gender="female" age="7months" cuteness="extreme"/>
</Family>
<Occupation>
<Employer type="stupidcorporation" name="witheld"/>
<Position type="cubedrone" title="programmer"/>
</Occupation>
<Hobbies>
<Hobby name="PC Games" frequency="nightly"/>
<Hobby name="GameCube Games" frequency="weekly"/>
<Hobby name="Model Railroading" frequency="infrequent"/>
</Hobbies>
<Location state="Pennsylvania" region="Philadelphia Suburbs"/>
<Politics party="Anti-Idiotarian"/>
</Person>

[Tyjenks]

Welcome and don't listen to Jessica. We are perfect gentleman here for the most part. Oh, one bit of info I was curious about: What're you wearin'?




Until I saw Jessica's post, I thought I was the only woman here! I know I'm an anomoly: a 37 year old female game designer. Let's put it this way: in the game industry no matter how small the women's bathroom is, there's never a line.

No line, but I bet there is one of those "security cams" in the recessed lighting. Just to make sure you are safe, of course. :wink:

[Met_K]

Hah, what's wrong with catching flak for being me?... Oh... Right.

Seeing as how I've yet to do this:

My name's Bryce. I live in Dallas. I'm in my early 20's, which, surprisingly, I've been mistaken for being since I was 16. It helped when I wanted alcohol, but doesn't help now that I'm actually the age yet haven't looked to have gotten any older. Now *that's* a butchery of the English language. Oh, and perhaps this explains the temper.

Up until early this month I was a manager of a nice, cozy little record store. As most here probably know, music is my one true hobby. I have three wonderful axes, they're my children. Molly is a gorgeous SRV custom Strat which I picked up at an amazing price. She can do blues better than any guitar I've ever heard. Iggy, my Scorpions custom Explorer (which is actually one of their live touring guitars that I picked up, long fucking story there), is great for really rocking out with your cock out. Then I have my insanely wonderful-sounding acoustic, an old 50's Harmony. She sounds like she's aged 53 years perfectly, but she sure doesn't look like it.

I've been interning at various record studios (mainly one) since I was around 15. I've done production work with the likes of Mike Scaccia, Jimmie Vaughan, about a million different bluegrass bands, and the likes.

Moving away from music, my favorite game of all time is probably (and don't laugh) the Grand Theft Auto demo. I can remember spending countless hours to that game, the counter in the demo made it so much more fun, though. I also remember playing Joust when I was about six or seven while my dad played poker with a bunch of his friends at one of their houses. I couldn't reach the controls so they gave me one of the bar stools. It's basically what got me started into gaming. Nowadays, things rarely hold my attention for very long. I think the game that I've played the most lately has been Tribes, as all other multiplayer games seem to be a little off unless you find a private server.

I have a wonderful girlfriend who I actually will be asking to marry me on Valentine's Day, although we've basically already solidified it with a 'yes' since we're both impatient as all hell. We're also planning on moving to L.A. in March, with dreams of revolutionizing the music industry. And if that doesn't happen, we'd both be happy simply singing old Floyd covers at bars every now and then.

Well, that's me. One, long, giant ramble, but I figured I might as well go ahead so I'm no longer anonymous and a giant troll asshole fuckshit thing (tm).

Cheers.

[Jakub]

Well...at the risk of being "last but least" I'll offer my biopic. In order to distract attention away from my extremely limited qualifications in any area of life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness, I'll put this in XML.



<Person nickname="SpoofyChop" gender="male">
<Family>
<Spouse looks="exotic beauty" personality="ultra-sweet"/>
<Offspring gender="female" age="7months" cuteness="extreme"/>
</Family>
<Occupation>
<Employer type="stupidcorporation" name="witheld"/>
<Position type="cubedrone" title="programmer"/>
</Occupation>
<Hobbies>
<Hobby name="PC Games" frequency="nightly"/>
<Hobby name="GameCube Games" frequency="weekly"/>
<Hobby name="Model Railroading" frequency="infrequent"/>
</Hobbies>
<Location state="Pennsylvania" region="Philadelphia Suburbs"/>
<Politics party="Anti-Idiotarian"/>
</Person>


:(

Why can't I be that witty?

And where do I sign up for the political party?

[Laralyn]

Welcome and don't listen to Jessica. We are perfect gentleman here for the most part. Oh, one bit of info I was curious about: What're you wearin'?

LOL!

I think, with the exception of Stevie Case, the answer for most women in game development is, "About the same thing I would wear to work in the garden or mow the lawn." If I had a lawn or a garden, that is.

Ok, ok, maybe it's just the women in actual development. I imagine the HR women and marketing women probably wear girly stuff. :-)

[Sparky]

I think, with the exception of Stevie Case, the answer for most women in game development is, "About the same thing I would wear to work in the garden or mow the lawn."
Hey now -- I'm wearing a pink tutu and a tiara that spells out "IOWNZJOO!" in sparkly rhinestones. As usual.

[Tyjenks]

Welcome and don't listen to Jessica. We are perfect gentleman here for the most part. Oh, one bit of info I was curious about: What're you wearin'?

LOL!

I think, with the exception of Stevie Case, the answer for most women in game development is, "About the same thing I would wear to work in the garden or mow the lawn."

Wow. So many.....inappropriate....remarks......can't breathe.....one including the phrase "a thin layer of dirt, white gardening gloves, and nothing else", but that may border on being creepy and after my security cam crack....... probably best to step away from the keyboard and say "Welcome! gentlewoman!!"

[Dave Long]

That tiara would make a great Sparky/Qt3 image. :)

--Dave

[Jessica]

Welcome and don't listen to Jessica. We are perfect gentleman here for the most part. Oh, one bit of info I was curious about: What're you wearin'?

LOL!

I think, with the exception of Stevie Case, the answer for most women in game development is, "About the same thing I would wear to work in the garden or mow the lawn." If I had a lawn or a garden, that is.

Ok, ok, maybe it's just the women in actual development. I imagine the HR women and marketing women probably wear girly stuff. :-)

Yep. The women in PR and Marketing at Interplay taught me how to dress in something besides blue jeans and a ratty old sweatshirt.

Who knew high heels hurt???

[Jessica]

I think, with the exception of Stevie Case, the answer for most women in game development is, "About the same thing I would wear to work in the garden or mow the lawn."
Hey now -- I'm wearing a pink tutu and a tiara that spells out "IOWNZJOO!" in sparkly rhinestones. As usual.

OK, I want this outfit, :D.

[Sparky]

That tiara would make a great Sparky/Qt3 image. :)

Okay, I actually made one, but didn't have any rhinestones around (well, not in the right colors), so glitter n' maribou feathers will have to do:

http://www.phobe.com/tiara2.jpg

Kinda hard to read, but I think the stars over the "I" and "j" work well. Perhaps some matching earrings that say "KEKEKEKEKE!!!!"?

[wumpus]

Hey, we can alllllmmmmmmost see Sparky. Tantalizing.*

* Particularly for Murph's "friend".

[Sparky]

Please. It's nothing you can't already see in stuff like Maxim's "Women: From The Bridge Of The Nose And Up!" issue.

[Lunch of Kong]

The majority of women in the game industry work as artists and designers. Overall, there are few women working as programmers or as management. I don't know if that's because game companies are hostile to women, or if its because women aren't particular thrilled at submitting their resumes to companies making BloodGoreDeath III: Sniper Attack.

Oh:

If anyone lives in Austin, we're looking for at least one more person for our Sunday afternoon D&D group. We used to be 6 gals and 3 guys, but we've lost a few to relocations and job pressures. Now were just 2 guys, 2 gals, and Sheri DM'ing (you ex-Origin types probably remember her.)

Must not be allergic to dogs (especially Scottish terriers). Email me if you're interested: rogerw(at)rogerw.com

[Dave Long]

That's just beautiful Sparky. Now if you had it on your head while wearing the alligator costume with the shirt with the human on it over the pink tutu...

;)

--Dave

[Fancy Salami]

I'm a student at Media Studies at The University of Oslo, Norway and an avid gamer. Oh yes, I'm also 27 years old and live in Oslo, Norway.

I discovered Quarter To Three some time ago and checked the main page now and again until they stopped updating it. Then I registered on the still active boards and lurked around a bit, but went away.

Now I have returned partly because I have enrolled in a class called: Computergames: Aestethics and Culture. I was hoping for some unique insights and discussions from all the dedicated gamers and industry-insiders on these boards when I finally decide on my thesis.

Eirik

[Supertanker]

Just a little thread resurrection since we seem to have a lot of new posters. So, make with the posting new people. 8)

[SpoofyChop]

If anyone lives in Austin, we're looking for at least one more person for our Sunday afternoon D&D group. We used to be 6 gals and 3 guys, but we've lost a few to relocations and job pressures. Now were just 2 guys, 2 gals, and Sheri DM'ing (you ex-Origin types probably remember her.)

Must not be allergic to dogs (especially Scottish terriers). Email me if you're interested: rogerw(at)rogerw.com

Is this a paid position?

[Brad Wardell]

I work for the airport. I shoot birds.

At night I work on PC strategy games such as Galactic Civilizations.

[Supertanker]

I work for the airport. I shoot birds.

At night I work on PC strategy games such as Galactic Civilizations.

The stress must be getting to you, as you're repeating yourself. :) See page 4 of the thread.

[XPav]

I'm a programmer that writes C++ for Windows and Linux for a company that does industrial HMIs.

I suspect that my job, while not in the game industry, is a whole lot more fun than the average game programmer because, well,

1) I have yet to experience an all-nighter in the 4 years I've been working for this company.
2) I don't have internet idiots sending me death threats because I nerfed their Level 55 Master Baiting Gnome.
3) I don't have a publisher.
4) I don't have mean people like Tom Chick that make fun of my work.

[Rywill]

I'm 32, and a criminal defense lawyer in Los Angeles. Gaming is purely a hobby for me, one that I guess started when I got my first Atari--the kind that didn't take cartridges--in like 1977 or whenever that was. I had consoles until I got my first computer in 1983 and it's been bliss ever since. Except for the World War Two Online part.

I have no connection to the gaming industry except that I was Ben Sones' college roommate (and believe me, if you had asked me in 1992 whether I thought that would someday be a claim to fame...). Never married, no kids, one cat (the cutest ever) and one brother (who's a great guy, but don't tell him I said so--fellow gamer, too).

[Michael Fitch]

Greetings:
Okay, fine.

I'm past 30 but not so far that I don't remember it.

I design games for a living.

My "old school" cred goes back to the blue book edition of D&D and the TRS-80 model I.

I took a long detour in English graduate studies. Playing games wasn't helping me finish my dissertation, so I chucked the dissertation and focused on the games.

Nothing to see here, move along.

Michael.

[Tom Chick]

I'm a programmer that writes C++ for Windows and Linux for a company that does industrial HMIs. I suspect that my job, while not in the game industry, is a whole lot more fun than the average game programmer because, well,...<snip>
4) I don't have mean people like Tom Chick that make fun of my work.

Hey guys, guess what? I just got a new gig writing for a magazine that reviews industrial HMIs! W00t!

-Tom

[XPav]

Hey guys, guess what? I just got a new gig writing for a magazine that reviews industrial HMIs! W00t!

I wish you did. The "industry mags" for basically all of industrial control are nothing more than paid press releases. In comparison even the worst console rag is a paragon of investigative journalism.

[Lunch of Kong]

Is this a paid position?

Heh. We pay in peanuts, chex mix, and occasionally, sushi.

BTW. We filled the tank position with a half-orc Barbarian, but the lovely sorceress Fure is now our sole arcane spellcaster, and she gets tapped mighty quickly. We're level 3 now. Woo woo!

Oh yeah. Deus Ex 2 is gonna make its release date this year.

[quatoria]

Since someone asked about this thread in another thread, and I didn't know about this thread, I thought I might ressurect it with a brief blurb about myself.

Lots of you know me from usenet, and a few of you know me from IRC, and an even smaller number of you have been unlucky enough to be inflicted with my presence in person, at one E3 or another. For the rest of you...

I'm 24, soon to graduate college with a journalism degree. I'm mostly house-bound at the moment, as I'm waiting for surgery to repair three ruptured discs. Sleeping 17 hours a day and stumbling around in a narcotized fog makes it difficult to lead an active lifestyle. ;)

On the side, I write for various gaming sites: my own, Antigames.com, is currently idle, as the people at Gameshark.com have been silly enough to actually PAY me for my blather.

[triggercut]

Hey! Didn't see this thread before...

I'm 35 and a former music industry flunky who then turned to freelance music journalism to save what was left of my soul. I took a job waiting tables while waiting for Rolling Stone to provide me with a house in California and my own harem of dancing girls...and then gradually discovered that the job waiting tables was paying pretty well, and decided at age 30 to "grow up and get a real job" and was thus, in such weakened state, persuaded into Restaurant Management.

Now I run a cool upscale Steakhouse and Bar in McLean VA, just down the road from CIA Headquarters, or as the sign says, "The George Bush Center For Intelligence"; write your own joke here. Not the world's most glamorous job, but then other than Hido, I eat better than all of you, and have access to unlimited supplies of beer and wine. (If you're in the area and want to drink and eat on the cheap in a nice place, send me a PM or email and if I'm working, which I usually am, I'll take care of you...) It ain't a bad way to make a living for a single guy--it beats working in a coalmine, for instance.

Lessee--first console was this horrid, triangle-shaped thing from Telstar that featured a driving game, a shooting game (with light gun) and pong. Also had the 2600, then an Apple ][e and C-64, an IBM PCjr (ugh), an XT, an Amiga 500, and then all the .*86 processors up to the present. All heavily stocked with games, of course. Best console of my youth was this thing with motorcycle grips that you jumped video busses with, a/la Knievel. Just brilliant fun.

Pretty much retired from writing now, except I contribute monthly music pick page for my buddy Bill's website, billville.org...and since one of my dearest friends is a highfalutin' book editor type in New York, I've been told that if I ever finish that Great American Novel I've been working on, it'll at least get read by someone...

[Union Carbide]

You know, I could have sworn I posted to this thread the first time around. . . oops.

Real name: Tim Smith. I'm 33, and I work at Maxis in Walnut Creek, CA. I'm currently QAAL on SimCity 4: Rush Hour.

I've been playing computer/video games forfreakinever, it seems. Played on pretty much every major home system, and I've blown thousands of dollars in arcades.

When I'm not slavin for the man, I'm usually asleep (stupid crunch time!). When I'm not in the throes of crunch, I like to bodyboard or surf. Or play videogames. Or something.

Current systems: NGC, XBX, PC (x4), PS1.

[John Merva]

Okay then, here's my shot. Real name John Merva. Age 22. Currently studying Japanese and Korean at The School of Oriental and African Studies in London. About to get married this summer and become a father. The baby will be a girl (we've had scans) and we're gonna name her Katherine after my aunt. Not exactly a hardcore gamer, more something I do to stay out of the boozer but always interested in new games (not that I can ever afford them!!!!) Nice to meet you all. :D

[tromik]

My real name is Thomas Ross, but I prefer going by Tom. I'm a part of the PCGO community, and I usually hang out on #pcgamer on Gamesnet with Norm, the PCG intern.

I attend Ryerson University in Toronto (I live about 45 minutes outside of Toronto/the GTA) and I'm going into my 3rd year of Information, Technology and Management and hopefully in 5-6 years I'll have a B.Comm.

Besides PC/console games, I love Japanese cars such as Nissan Skylines and Silvias. I'm not a 'rice boy' or drive a 'rice rocket' (I'm not into that stuff at all). I also like J-pop and hip hop. One of my favorite passtimes is spending hours upon hours in sportsbars eating cheap wings and playing Golden Tee.

I used to be heavily into FPS games such as Quake 2, Half-Life, Counter-Strike and NOLF, but now I prefer strategy games, such as Master of Orion 2 and Europa Universalis 2. I also like RPGs such as Chrono Trigger, Baldur's Gate II and Neverwinter Nights.

Right now I'm spending a lot of time with Neverwinter Nights, SMAC, Master of Orion 2, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 and Advance Wars 2.

Oh yea, I'm 21.

[ElRavager]

Hi, I'm a 34 year old c++ dev, moved up to NH (my wife accepted an assistant professor position in the mechanical engineering dept. at UNH) from Dallas. I currently work from home via vpn developing manufacturing process management software for the electronics manufacturing industry. My first computer was a vic-20 that I bought with my paper route money, my first program was a choplifter clone at programming camp in '84 on a c-64. I'm a die-hard soccer fan, as I went to a boarding school in Chievely, England for four years as a kid. I'm not a total geek as I have a 3rd degree black belt in taekwondo and hapkido and I play regularly in a local soccer league. The games I enjoyed the most over the years are Adventureland (my first), almost every Infocom game, most of the early Sierra games (the SpaceQuest series in particular), Questron, Wasteland, the Ultimas, Doom, and Masters of Magic. I geek out with a bunch of friends from all over once a week playing RPG's /w gamevoice, ie: the BG series + expansions, Icewinddale + expansions, and even NWN when things get scarce... next target: Lionheart.

cheers,

- elrav

[John Merva]

I'm a die-hard soccer fan,

Who'd you support? To get the embarassing revelations started. I'm a Watford fan. :oops: Go on the Hornets!!

[ElRavager]

Who'd you support? To get the embarassing revelations started. I'm a Watford fan. :oops: Go on the Hornets!![/quote]

Heheh, I'm an Arsenal fan.. a friend of mine in boarding school's dad played for Arsenal way back when, I used to listen to the games on my radio in bed after curfew.. memory flashback of listening to the penalty shootout in the cup winners cup against Valencia in 1980.. arggggh! I had another friend who was a watford fan, we used to play subbuteo and he had the watford team and I had my arsenal team.. we used to get in some heated matches hehheh..

- elrav

[Gary Whitta]

Tottenham Hotspur FC, the pride of London.

[John Merva]

Dear God, a gooner and a yid under the same roof! Has to be said I have to lean towards Mr. Whitta and his boys, purely because my old man's a gooner and once you've had 22 years of Arsenal shit shoved down your throat you tend to kinda hate them a bit!!

(Note for Americans and other foreigners, by calling G. Whitta a yid I am not being racist, in association with Spurs he, I believe,would be proud to call himself a yid.)

Edited to add a question: Gary, couldn't find a location for ya, you're not English by any chance?

[Rodge]

Real name Adam Rodgers, age 29. Currently working in Industrial Relations law though to pay my way through Uni I worked as a white water rafting guide, and/or windsurfing and scuba diving instructor.

Been gaming since about 7, which was my first encounter with a space invaders arcade machine. Since then I've had a dedicated pong machine made by Phillips, a 2600, a C-64, a big break in gaming and then got back into it with a 386 which leads me to my current system.

My biggest challenge is trying to find gaming time between (ranked in order of importance) girlfriend, the pub, outdoorsy things, soccer and work.

And just to piss off Gary and John, I've been a Man Utd supporter since '87. (put the year in just to stop you guys yelling out "bandwagon") :D

[John Merva]

Real name Adam Rodgers, age 29. Currently working in Industrial Relations law though to pay my way through Uni I worked as a white water rafting guide, and/or windsurfing and scuba diving instructor.

Been gaming since about 7, which was my first encounter with a space invaders arcade machine. Since then I've had a dedicated pong machine made by Phillips, a 2600, a C-64, a big break in gaming and then got back into it with a 386 which leads me to my current system.

My biggest challenge is trying to find gaming time between (ranked in order of importance) girlfriend, the pub, outdoorsy things, soccer and work.

And just to piss off Gary and John, I've been a Man Utd supporter since '87. (put the year in just to stop you guys yelling out "bandwagon") :D

good god,despite this thread (http://www.quartertothree.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3818&highlight=championship+league), all of a sudden Quarter to Three football fans are crawling out of the woodwork in their thousands. 1987 eh? 'Spose I'll have to let you off then. Congrats on the title though. Arsenal - best team in England my arse! (sorry Elravager :twisted: ) Bet you're gutted about Becks though.

[quatoria]

Heh. A guy doing some intern-level work on a local radio station - Brandt, or something like, I think his name is - apparently plays for Arsenal, or at least he does when his knee isn't fukd.

[Rodge]

Real name Adam Rodgers, age 29. Currently working in Industrial Relations law though to pay my way through Uni I worked as a white water rafting guide, and/or windsurfing and scuba diving instructor.

Been gaming since about 7, which was my first encounter with a space invaders arcade machine. Since then I've had a dedicated pong machine made by Phillips, a 2600, a C-64, a big break in gaming and then got back into it with a 386 which leads me to my current system.

My biggest challenge is trying to find gaming time between (ranked in order of importance) girlfriend, the pub, outdoorsy things, soccer and work.

And just to piss off Gary and John, I've been a Man Utd supporter since '87. (put the year in just to stop you guys yelling out "bandwagon") :D

good god,despite this thread (http://www.quartertothree.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3818&highlight=championship+league), all of a sudden Quarter to Three football fans are crawling out of the woodwork in their thousands. 1987 eh? 'Spose I'll have to let you off then. Congrats on the title though. Arsenal - best team in England my arse! (sorry Elravager :twisted: ) Bet you're gutted about Becks though.

Nah, nowhere near as much as I thought. England is my "backup" team for any World Cup, Australia getting knocked out as per usual, and I think that this move will only help Becks as a player. I was hoping we would get young Harry, but smart money for me was always on him going to Liverpool.

As for the Champions League, no English team is going to win that as long as dodgy defences are the rule in the premier league. Makes everyone soft and lazy.

[John Merva]

Real name Adam Rodgers, age 29. Currently working in Industrial Relations law though to pay my way through Uni I worked as a white water rafting guide, and/or windsurfing and scuba diving instructor.

Been gaming since about 7, which was my first encounter with a space invaders arcade machine. Since then I've had a dedicated pong machine made by Phillips, a 2600, a C-64, a big break in gaming and then got back into it with a 386 which leads me to my current system.

My biggest challenge is trying to find gaming time between (ranked in order of importance) girlfriend, the pub, outdoorsy things, soccer and work.

And just to piss off Gary and John, I've been a Man Utd supporter since '87. (put the year in just to stop you guys yelling out "bandwagon") :D

good god,despite this thread (http://www.quartertothree.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3818&highlight=championship+league), all of a sudden Quarter to Three football fans are crawling out of the woodwork in their thousands. 1987 eh? 'Spose I'll have to let you off then. Congrats on the title though. Arsenal - best team in England my arse! (sorry Elravager :twisted: ) Bet you're gutted about Becks though.

Nah, nowhere near as much as I thought. England is my "backup" team for any World Cup, Australia getting knocked out as per usual, and I think that this move will only help Becks as a player. I was hoping we would get young Harry, but smart money for me was always on him going to Liverpool.

As for the Champions League, no English team is going to win that as long as dodgy defences are the rule in the premier league. Makes everyone soft and lazy.

Here y'are son, we seem to have gone off topic so wander over to Everything Else and we'll continue this chat. (plus Tyjenks has started so it'll be fun!!)

[Talisker]

Executive summary: 33. Male. Single. Partner at a small software studio in Grand Rapids, MI (focusing on the convergence of marketing and IT, not games). First computer game I ever played was either Hunt the Wumpus or Hurkle on at my Dad's office (played on a printing terminal with a 300bps connection to a Honeywell mainframe); first console game I ever owned was Ultra-Pong (32 pong variants in a single console! wow!); first home computer game was Android Nim on the TRS-80. Never had a C64; had an Amiga, though. Wrote games for my DEC Rainbow in high school.

Closest I ever came to an industry job was an interview w/Gamespot back in '98 -- went out to SF for an interview, was underwhelmed by the salary (given that it was SF), and reckon it showed :) Vaguely remember Kasavin getting razzed by his fellow editors for enjoying Carnivores -- while everyone else there was all ooh and ahh over Tribes, Greg just kept muttering "It's fun, dammit" over and over as he took screenshots of the Stego he'd just dropped with his X-Bow, sounding mildly congested to the point that almost was saying "It's fud, dabbit". Couldn't tell if it was a cold, or if that's just the way he sounds.

Carnivores looked kinda fun, so I bought a copy when I got home. He was right.

[Denice Cook]

I'm a 37-year-old gaming grrrrl who started with Pong when it first came out, then went on to the Atari 2600 and the Sega Master System, etc. I also spent a lot of time in the local arcades while growing up. I made the leap to PC gaming in the early 1980s and stayed true to the PC until the PS2 and GBA arrived; these days, I own every major console besides six PCs, a laptop and an iBook. "My name is Denice, and I have a problem." :wink: I volunteered my time at a small gaming site writing reviews for a year before getting hired by Jeff Green and Robert Coffey late last fall. Now I spend my days writing computer game reviews while dripping in diamonds. http://216.40.249.192/s/cwm/cwm/circle.gif

Oh yeah, and I have a habit of jumping into really long, really old Qt3 threads. :P

[quatoria]

I'm a 37-year-old gaming grrrrl

I'm sorry, too many r's in one word. You're going to have to stand in the corner and take a time out, young lady.

[Tyrion Lannister]

I am a 34 year old extremely bitter dwarf with an astounding 16 years of a shitty game programming career.

Despite being hideously deformed I have 4 kids, a lovely wife and a dog that doesn't bite me too often.

I hate my job. I read this site in a desperate attempt to jump start an enthusiasm for games that has been ground out of me by an improbably horrible series of career disasters. Making games is supposed to be fun.

I spend my free time... oh right, no, I don't have any.

I fantasize about finishing my novel, getting it published and living off royalties, and never having to work on someone else's crappy licensed game design again.

Industry Dwarf

[Denice Cook]

I'm sorry, too many r's in one word. You're going to have to stand in the corner and take a time out, young lady.

Grrrrrr! :wink: Well, okay, but only if it's quiet there. As I'm married with a family and two jobs, I could really use a little break, actually... :lol:

[Tyjenks]

I am a 34 year old extremely bitter dwarf with an astounding 16 years of a shitty game programming career.
Industry Dwarf

Well that didn't sound bitter at all. :wink:

Please, tell us of the disasters when you feel up to it. If Reality TV has taught us anything, it is that we love to hear about misery. :)

[gdunbar]

32 year old programmer for Microsoft.

My gaming cred is limited; I coded and ran a PBEM game (Atlantis 3), which I've since released as open source. It paid for the computer and the bandwidth, but little more.

I play mostly RPGs at this point, but lack of free time (married, kids) means I play them at the rate of 1 or 2 a year. Currently Baldur's Gate 2. Infocom games are my other favorite genre; I've finished about half of them.