Hello all

I'm also here through an invite to the beta so having a look around. I'm from the UK, new to writing but not to games as I've been playing since the 80s. I contribute blogs to two sites and enjoy sharing my gaming experiences with others.

Hey there,

I'm Rachel Lara, Content Director/PR for GirlGamer.com. My job within the company covers everything from site functionality to video hosting events, directing and producing A/V as well as Editorial Content, and for the most part delivering a user-friendly hub for video gamers looking for game releases and reviews, community forums, coverage of events as well as the latest news on tech developments, ...
Thanks for the invite. I'll do some browsing around ^.^

Rachel Lara
Content Director/PR
GirlGamer LLC
E:      Rachel@Girlgamer.com
Tw:   @GGRachelLara
FB:    /rachelofgirlgamer
*    *    *     *     *     *     *     *
Www.GirlGamer.com
Www.YouTube.com/GirlGamerTV

Good Evening / Afternoon,

I am more related to Game Server Hosting, mainly revolving around online. In the back burners is a project well over 3 years now regarding a game that i hope will be published in due time. For the moment, i am concentrating on the network of the server side establishing various servers across Europe, U.S. then expanding into the Asian market. Although costly at first, the main factor is to have the network organized and battle ready for when the game is released it can be hosted and supported by the existing company. Although that does not exclude hosting game servers for public use or private use as its a basic function in allowing the various gamers to have an access to high support and streamlined servers. Several game publishers have opted to rent game server purely for beta testing but that was also accompanied by an NDA for obvious reasons.

In closing, looking forward to reading the various threads and generally interacting.

Sincerely
Jim G.

I am here to connect with more games journalists and people in the gaming industry. I am truly looking for more friends. I am a contributing Editor/Forum Moderator and thekoalition.com. Feel free to check out my posts there. I also have my own blog called Otaku News Network. I have a podcast called The Real Gamer Show and a new one coming soon called Deathmatch. I would love to have some of gameleon members on the show. I am a Gaming enthusiast and collector. I am celebrating over 30 years of gaming and I am a Gaming Dad. If you need a different propective on gaming just let me know. I am pretty new to the blogging world,but I am a fast learner. See you all at E3 2010. Contact me anytime.

Take care everyone,
Andre Tipton
thekoalition.com
E:andre@thekoalition.com,otakuman5000@hotmail.com

Hey all,

I am here through a Beta invite, thanks for that. I am new to writing reviews for games, but have been playing since the Atari 2600 days from that up to now across multiple platforms, just starting to get the hang of actually putting whats in my head about a game onto paper, in a constructive manner. I'm sure ill get the hang of it after a while, I have just started with a site here in Ireland called www.bone-idle.ie and would not have access to great resources such as this only for the guy that runs it, thanks man. Browsing around now reading threads, great looking informative site. Nice job, keep it up, see you all around the forums.

Hey guys,

*Trying not to make himself sound too lame* My name is Chris from California, started writing last year for a website..un-wiredtv.com, been a gamer since I was 6 and my parents sat me infront of a Atari 5200 so I dont get in any trouble. Started out as an art major, and took some writing classes and a friend of mine started his own website and asked was I still a big gamer. I end up also reviewing movies, music and events as well as games so keeps me pretty busy. Since im still technically a Noob, I thought this would be a great place to learn from people who have more experince and willing to give me a few tips.

Look forward of what may come, 

Email:     Chris@un-wiredtv.com
aim: Roymustang89
Tw:   Twilightgamers
FB:    rock89

G'day!

My first experience with gaming was when my father brought home a pong console and hooked it up to the TV in the room euphemistically known as the recreation room but whose real purpose was to keep the kids out of mum's hair and which we called the Cell.  My father was a bit like the character of Mr. Weasley in the Harry Potter movies -  ever fascinated by technology and willing to provide it to his children and then watch as they mastered it. 

For as long as I can remember there was a termnal in my father's home office that was connected to the mainframe at work, and through that to what would one day become the "Internet" but was then called simply "the wire" and sometimes Arpanet.  After swearing on my life not to do anything harmful my father allowed me to use the terminal to play a game called Spacewar and a variety of other text-based games.  I sent my first email (then called System Mail) in 1976...  In 1979 I discovered MUD's and remained intensley interested in them until 1983 when my father gave me a Commodore 64 to replace the Sinclair I had fried trying to interface it to a small screen display to make it portable.

Though I used the C=64 to game, by 1984 I was running my own BBS on it (Byron Bay BBS) using three 5.25" drives, and then in 1985 with the help of one of my sister's boyfriends who was an engineering student, we breadboarded an HDD controller interface to the C=64 and connected a surplus 10MB Winchester Hard Drive that my father had acquired from work to the C=64 and I was the first person that I knew to have a hard drive on their home computer.  With a massive 10MB of available storage I expanded the interest of my BBS to all sorts of gaming and even hosted a small MUD-like game on it, called "Traders" (written by Tom Clarke) that simulated the Dutch East Indies Company of the 1700's era.  I was hooked on gaming at that point.

The usual story follows - Uni, a job that did not last very long, and then my parents encouraged me to travel for a bit before I settled down to seriously finding my career path in life.  Bad move on their part really, because I met a girl on a train in Colorado and the rest, as they say, is history. 

Had an interesting life filled with tech related work until the late 1990's when I was badly injured in a work-related accident and lost the ability to use my legs.  My career was effectively over at that point - so I re-invented myself and began writing for business and technology publications.  I did a lot of corporate writing for internal company publications and industry press, and got pretty good at 400 word pieces but I hated it.  Did a lot of money writing to pay the bills, writing Bed and Breakfast reviews under a variety of female aliases since publishers in the early 00's preferred to have women writing that sort of thing and did quite well at it...

Completely by accident I ended up shopping a feature piece to the Cape Cod Times when the publication I had originally written it for had closed down.  They asked me for another piece, and another after that, and then asked if I wanted to write a regular column for the Business and Technology Section, covering everything from the 'net to gaming, and of course I did.  That eventually expanded to include game reviews for their online site. 

I still do syndicate work - mostly news summary and features for the expat press, and a fair bit of freelance in the game industry, including walkthrough's and the like.

I write on gaming because I am a gamer and I rather enjoy it, though I have noticed that this has changed my personal gaming habits quite a bit and not always for the better.  Still I cannot imagine a job that gives more satisfaction on a daily basis - unless it were the position of quality tester at the wack-a-mole production facility in Illinoise, which I imagine is a very satisfying job that would keep me quite fit...

Cheers!

Chris

I received an invite recently and joined up. Seemed like a good idea to start communicating with people in games journalism. I've been playing games from a young age on a Spectrum 48k, moved through the console ranks and home computing accordingly, from the Master System, Mega Drive (Genesis) N64, Playstation and only recently started getting back into gaming properly last year. We were sitting around a lot talking about games, my friend and I, so I suggested maybe we should start a podcast. Maybe send it out to people and see what they think. I realise that sounds pretty unenthusiastic, or accidental, but I think we were reluctant to commit to something spontaneously. A few hundred hours of solid games-playing, recording and coding and we're completely in for the long haul.

So that initial wary behaviour snowballed into commitment with questions about hosting, a homepage, writing articles and content and we continued in this vain until we couldn't stop. An internal drive to perfect all the small parts turned into renting server space, considering recording equipment, being picked up by a larger gaming network and attempting to take ourselves seriously, which is probably dangerous for our irreverent, dry reviewing style. :-)

OK, thought I would add to the obligatory "Hi Everyone!" topic. My name's Matthew Blackwell. I've just started my videogaming website (www.vigigames.com) with the lofty ambition of attempting to fuse critical theory and analysis with, well, a videogame website. I'm based out of Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada (not exactly a hotbed of videogame activity, let me tell you), so I guess I have somewhat of an outsider's perspective. I'm very new to all of this, so I'm glad there's a community of people to communicate with, and I'm excited to do so. Awesome sauce.

Hiii people!

Well, I'm really new in this job (not so much, i think). I'm Brazilian, and write news about games and stuff since March 2009. Actually working only in games blog.

Always loved play games and know much more about industry and process of making games. I read these huge posts and feel ashamed with mine. But i really appreciate this network, and hope this will put us in contact and share knowledge and information about everything. Its good to see big names and interesting people here.

Everyone feel free to add me, I'm here for new friends too!