I've been at the helm of App Trigger for over a year, and I've finally gotten around to writing what would pass for a bio. I've been writing and playing video games for four decades at this point, although it took way longer than I planned to do so professionally.
My first reviews were in my middle school paper, alongside reviews of pro wrestling, and at that age, it was still real to me, damn it! I had seen magazines such as Nintendo Power, but I couldn't imagine making a living doing it, as I didn't know that anyone did. I understood the magazines and books I read came from somewhere, but that was in the era when reviewers often used pseudonyms.
My lack of any real knowledge about how publishing anything worked led me to start jotting down notes for a book I would write called The Coach's Playbook. Again, I had zero idea of how I would publish this book, and no realization that any such process in the 1980s would take so long my tips in Tecmo Bowl would be quite useless by the time anyone got them. I didn't know it yet, but I was ready for the Internet to happen.
I started a job as a respectable newspaper journalist in my hometown of Shreveport, La and tried not to be too nerdy in front of the wrong people. I'd always fail at this. If I disagreed with the review of the latest Mega Man, I felt compelled to tell someone. In most cases, whoever put that in print had simply pulled it from our wire service and they couldn't care any less whether it meant anything to anyone. It filled an eight-inch spot in the paper, and that was its purpose.
As you've noticed if you've been reading my work, my favorites are sports games and strategy games. But I'll play anything that intrigues me. This year, I've discovered surivor style games and I'm already hooked on a couple of them.
My first big gig covering video games came at the now-defunct TechnologyTell network. I got to attend CES and two E3s before it went away. I kept my E3 press passes, not because I realized the way the industry was going but because I just wanted to remember the good times we had. Despite all the crime scenes and high-school football games I covered, I don't think I ever felt more like a reporter than when I was in the room for big announcements such as the reveal of Titanfall.
I've sadly seen more than my share of newspapers and websites go away over the past few years. My love for the industry hasn't changed, so when I saw Fansided needed help in this area I threw my hat into the ring again.
I've got more than a few opinions about the way things are going, and you folks seem to enjoy reading them. So as we often say in the South, "if the good Lord's willin' and the creek don't rise," I'll be sticking around a little longer.