Max web design

2 Comments Written by Robert on February 8, 2008 – 5:44 pm

Appearance is everything, and if you’re going to do it up, you might as well go big. And so, standing there wide-eyed on the sticky, soda- and gum-riddled floor of a nameless boardwalk gallery where the machine was first viewed, my life as an innocent effectively ended. Right then and there, an obsession with the fabulous, fantastical game industry, and scaling its loftiest heights, effectively began.

Bad timing, though: Being that I wasn’t exactly well-connected, $999,999 short of a million and, you know, barely out of my He-Man underoos and Keds at the time, it would be nearly 15 years before I’d begin to apply the insights this titan among games bequeathed. In the meantime, my mind was left to fester during over a decade’s worth of Trapper Keepers, wedgies and pop quizzes, and wonder… Why were other kids so fascinated with Transformers, G.I. Joes and these mysterious creatures known as girls while all I could ever dream of was playing, making and marketing interactive entertainment?

To put it in perspective: When I was in grade school, others loved Garbage Pail Kids and 5th period French; me, I spent days dreaming of River Raid and Tutankham. Come junior high, while classmates spent weekends playing basketball with friends or flirting with members of the opposite sex, my best pal was the NES, and the furthest I ever got wasn’t to second base – it was the outfield in Bases Loaded. Circa high school, buddies started to come around, and dreamed of careers in game design… somehow I was the jerk who wanted to grow up to be the fat cat CEO sitting on top and deciding what they’d publish. And by the time college rolled around, well… I’d just had enough entirely – instead of attending class at all, I practically locked myself in my dorm room and refused to come out until I’d mastered Warcraft II and Shadow of the Comet.

Throughout this process, one thing remained constant: No one would give me a break to save my proverbial behind. And so, despite being willing to work virtually as slave labor, by the time I was 17, I’d already begun having to actively call up companies and offer to beta test crap games for free just to get a foot in the door.

Thankfully, a few years later, after being rejected by dozens of publishers, going headfirst into a windshield in a freak car accident, and hobbling to E3 the day after without even press or biz credentials, I finally caught a lucky break. Courtesy of the good folks at French publisher Microids, I was off to Paris for a magical, starstudded (read: unpaid) internship, during which I had the good fortune to quickly rise through the ranks, sign a hit title (SHOGO: Mobile Armor Division) and rocket off into Z-grade semi-stardom.

So I can sympathize… All your life, you’ve probably heard about the American dream, and what it’s like to go to school, work hard and raise a family like most honest, respectable citizens. Unfortunately, as with most members of Generation X and those who came after, you’ve probably also grown up knowing deep down that you’d happily sacrifice all for a shot at living out your Space Invader- or Street Fighter-filled dreams. And, ironically, that those who most deserve a chance at computerized acclaim are sometimes those least likely to ever get a proper crack at living the fantasy.

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