Listen up, KMartGamer. You need to send me to E3. It is your destiny.
You might be wondering how I can make such a bold claim. Clearly, you need a demonstration of my power.
About Me
I was born into a loving Midwestern family in 1975. My parents were soon replaced by a TRS-80 Color Computer II, and I suckled at its digital teat until I reached manhood. In 1980, I suffered a severe allergic reaction to some some medicine, turning me into a tiny, red, and itchy replica of Frankenstein’s monster. To make me feel better, my grandmother bought me an Atari 2600 and a pack of frozen peas to put on my feet. I do not think she knew what she was doing at the time, just as Pandora did not as she freed all the evils of the world. Wait, this is probably not helping my case.
I’ve been obsessed with gaming in various forms as long as I can remember. I played that Atari 2600 long past the years where you could still buy one in a store. I used a nigh-indestructible Wico Bat Handle joystick until it broke – 15 years later. My roots are deep. Pixels flow through my veins. I know about videogames. All of them. OK, I am exaggerating slightly, but my brain is packed with data that only comes in handy at conventions, back-alley nerd fights, and in situations where I am trying to bamboozle someone into sending me to E3.
If I had to pick a genre, I’d have to go RPG. I started reading my brother’s D&D books when I was about 8, and I’ve been playing tabletop games on and off ever since high school. I like a lot of different types of games, but the necessary ingredient in a game to keep me up at night is a good story. I like games best that mix my videogame chocolate with my RPG peanut butter. Consequently, I’ve loved every SSI gold-box game and everything BioWare has ever made – sometimes in ways it’s probably best that I don’t blog about.
Speaking of blogging, I’ve been causing words to appear on the Internets for almost a decade now. At first, it was just blogging so my family and friends could share in all my misadventures. In 2003, I started playing D&D with some friends of mine and we enjoyed it so much that we started a website called Stupid Ranger, a gaming site devoted primarily to helping D&D players enjoy their game more. That’s when things started getting weird. People were reading the stuff we wrote. Then companies would send us stuff to review By the following year, we found ourselves interviewing some of the staff that worked on the current edition of D&D. That was also the year I got to play D&D with Gary Gygax and Tracy Hickman (if only for about 5 minutes before everybody died). Those were heady days, filled with love and combat. Everybody had enough hitpoints, and there was a d20 in every pot.
A little over a year ago, I found myself wanting to reach a larger audience and blog about more varied things, so I asked the proprietor of this here gaming blog Critical Hits if there was any room for someone of my particular talents. There was, and my life since has basically been me living out one teenage gaming fantasy after another. I attended Dungeons & Dragons Experience back in January, and got to hang out with the Wizards of the Coast R&D team for a couple days. I made some friends there and got to play Secret Games and get perspectives on all the things I loved so much that I would never have been able to get otherwise, and then share them with the world at large. Also, I ate quesadillas in front of the WotC guys often enough that they made fun of me. It was awesome. I’ve also been invited to playtest for Wizards of the Coast, which I can’t say anything else about due to a very scary- looking NDA.
In short, 15-year-old me thinks I am totally awesome. Please do not crush his dreams.
Why I Want To Go To E3
I want to see new stuff. I want to be there when new games and products get announced and feel the rush of the crowd’s excitement when it happens. I want to play stuff that isn’t finished yet. I want to meet the people that made the stuff I love so much. There are a lot of seriously awesome things slated to come out this year, and going to E3 would let me drink right from the fountain. The original Shadow Complex was a tasty blend of everything I enjoy in videogames, and I’d love to know more about its upcoming sequel. I want to soar into the heavens with Bioshock 3. I want to scroll some elders. Five times. And I want to see what Bungie is up to now that they’re not doing Halo. (Did somebody say Myth: The Fallen Lords Kart Racing?) I want to know if Nintendo is going to make a console that doesn’t look like crap on my big screen TV. Will it be three Gamecubes stapled together this time? Four? I want to see weird new control mechanisms and watch as the first humans outside of the development lab look like idiots. I want to look like an idiot as well. I want to throw myself into the MCP of video games and bring freedom to the system. I want to take all these experiences and share them with the world.
Also, I want to see if I can get my inner 15-year-old to explode.
How I Found You
My sister-in-law found a link this morning to your article about your E3 contest. She didn’t read it. She just saw the word “gamer” and sent it to me. Sadly, this means I only found out about KmartGamer and CheapAssGamer today, so any attempts at brown-nosing via a deep knowledge of your sites and community I was going to do would look rushed and very unconvincing. I will simply have to woo you with my charm and pure animal magnetism instead.
Why I Want You Specifically To Send Me To E3
Your name has “mart” in it. I remember putting Zelda II: The Adventure Of Link on layaway at our local K-Mart when I was 11. Also, none of the other major department store chains even gave me the chance to go to E3 on their dime. And I asked.
Congratulations! For all these reasons, I’ve chosen you to send me to E3!
It also certainly doesn’t hurt that an officially-sponsored gaming blog for a big department store chain appears to have been written not only by actual humans but (*gasp*) actual gamers. I also very much appreciate that you’re going to let the winners blog about whatever they choose. This makes me confident that a trip to E3 with you would be a win-win situation for you, me, and the readers. (Wait, does that make it a win-win-win? I don’t care.)
So, How ‘Bout It?
I’m a gamer’s gamer, I’m nothing if not entertaining, and I’ve done this before in a slightly different flavor of gaming. You need an RPG specialist. I double specialize in RPGs. (That’s an RPG joke. See? I am brilliant!)
Send me to E3. I’ll do you proud.
Photo Credit
Recent Comments