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"My Origin Story"
Writer/Gamer Maker - London
This is a story that I’ve told plenty of times to people in real life but I am not sure I have ever written down. I may have done. I am old and forgetful now, my mind addled by more than a decade of pissing around (“working”) at the bleeding edge of interactive technology. This is the story of why I am what I am, why I do what I do, why I am here writing this. If I were a superhero it would be my origin story.
I am not a superhero.
I make videogames.
I was at University. I was at a house party. I’d reinvented myself a thousand times, ditched games for music and girls. I was totally cool now. So cool. SO cool. What did I know about videogames in the late nineties? Nothing, almost nothing. Sometimes we rented a TV and an N64 from the campus drug dealer so we could play Goldeneye and ISS64. Once I turned up at his room to borrow the console and there was a girl already waiting for him. “He’s out,” she said. “Oh,” I replied “Are you here to borrow the N64 too?” She didn’t answer, just looked at me. I probably wasn’t that cool, thinking about it.
But I was cool-er and while I wasn’t sure exactly what I was going to do with the rest of my life it was probably going to be something awesome and popular and constructive and creative. I was midway through a teacher training qualification, something useful and punishing to do while I considered my future. I was working a lot on my writing. I knew a lot about music. I was in charge of the University radio station. I was going to house parties and it was at one of these that everything changed.
Bored, I wandered into a room where two guys I half-knew were playing on a PlayStation. They were playing PaRappa the Rapper. I didn’t know it was PaRappa the Rapper obviously, because I was cool and everything, and I had no idea what it was. It was bright and dumb and inviting and fun and it blew me away. I watched for a while, left without playing, but it stuck with me because it was something different. I had no idea videogames could be like that, could be anything more than guns and shooting and football and good, manly times rented in 24-hour sessions from nervous drug dealers.
I bought a PlayStation the next day then went looking for games that were different. Um Jammer Lammy was the first videogame I’d bought since I’d ditched the old Ste for music and girls. In GAME I stopped and picked up Edge, alerted by the cover which reminded me of how fun things were before I got all cool. “What’s that?” asked my girlfriend. “It’s Speedball,” I replied of the game on the cover. “It’s a game I used to play all the time when I was a kid. I guess they’re remaking it or something”. “No,” she replied, “I mean what’s the magazine?”
“Oh, it’s Edge. It’s meant to be a videogame magazine for grown-ups. Maybe one day I’ll understand what they’re on about.”
Three months later I was writing for them.
