About

I’ve played PC and console games for most of my life and worked for many game companies over the years, including Sierra On-Line (later Sierra Entertainment), Microsoft Game Studios, Nintendo, and some others.

About this site

After Examiner.com folded in July 2016, I created this site to continue writing and covering the video game industry, with a focus on game and product reviews, previews, and interviews.

Because this site is a ‘labor of love’ more than anything, I’m a straight shooter. I don’t write good reviews to get traffic. (It’s nice to see traffic numbers go up, but it doesn’t translate to any monetary gain at this point.)

As someone with connections to the “early days” of gaming, I appreciate (but don’t focus on) retro games, as well as PC games with long and interesting histories, such as Starsiege Tribes.

What I’m doing now

Presently, in addition to this site, I occasionally contribute to Wide Screen Gaming Forum,  MMOSITE.COM,  TheMasterSwitch.com, and others.

I also do some writing, editing, and consulting for Gaijin Entertainment and Crytivo Games, along with occasional freelance odds and ends for sites such as ROGArena (here’s one: Blizzard games that changed the game) and Overwolf.

(I pick up freelance work wherever I can, although it’s never been my “day job”.)

How it all started:  A little personal history

My first ‘real’ job out of college was working for Sierra On-Line‘s technical support department. As one of the few writing-oriented technical support reps, I started writing a lot of technical content such as troubleshooting guides and knowledge base articles.

Eventually, I was able to convince someone to let me write for Sierra’s Interaction Magazine.

Fun fact: Current gaming industry heavyweights like Geoff Keighley and Chris Hudak wrote for Interaction Magazine ‘back in the day’. 

But while I was a prolific writer I was never a heavyweight. I continued writing professionally (as a freelancer) about games and tech for magazines such as PC Today, Smart Computing, Processor.com, Computer Power User, and other Sandhills Publications. I wrote a lot of ‘how-to’ and tech shopping guides back then; it was well-paying but hardly sexy.

By 2007, Sandhills had largely shifted to in-house writers and the work dried up. Around 2008 I was approached to write for Examiner.com, and thanks to an already pretty well-established network of game industry connections, I quickly became the main PC gaming writer for them from 2008 until the site shut down in 2016.

Outside of gaming and journalism(ish) endeavors, I’ve written for some small/indie games. I was the main writer for Westward III: Gold Rush (PC), a contributing writer for Kuros (PC), and the writer for Gimka Entertainment’s Defender Chronicles 2 (iOS).

I also wrote a lengthy casual RPG for a small indie group, but it was never published. The lead developer left the project— when it was very nearly completed, unfortunately. (Thankfully, though I was disappointed all my work would go unseen, I was still paid for my efforts.)