I didn't always want to do this. When I was a teenager, I wanted to be a scientist. I read a lot of cyberpunk novels back then, and the notion of grafting some bitchin' bionic razor-blade shit onto my 4'10", 75-pound frame sounded cool. Then, when I got to college (at the age of 14, thanks to the University of Washington's early-entrance program), I discovered that I was a lazy waste of flesh, with a temperament wholly unsuited to engineering or the sciences. Luckily, the history department -- and later, the University of North Carolina's graduate program in Library Science -- came to my rescue, providing me with studies I could skate through while playing videogames and jerking around on the Internet.

Not long after that, people started paying me to play videogames and jerk around on the Internet. I didn't ask, but Dave Halverson offered, and at the time it seemed like a good deal. Later, IGN.com offered -- that was a pretty good deal at the time, too. A few years after that, the Ziff-Davis Media Game Group offered, and in that case the deal was honestly pretty rad.

In a full-time career spanning...geez, more than eight years now, my writing has been published by Gamers' Republic, IGN.com, Gamespy, Gamers.com, 1UP.com, Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine, GMR, GameNOW, Xbox Nation, Electronic Gaming Monthly, Computer Gaming World, Pocket Games, PSM, PiQ Magazine, Brady Games, Interact, Newtype USA, Animerica, G4/TechTV's X-Play, GamePro, the Finnish game magazine Pelaaja, the Carolina Otaku Uprising zine Animosity, a couple of buyer's-guide rags, and TV Guide. I'm a sort of unofficial stenographer for Electronic Gaming Monthly and Games for Windows magazines. I've done a couple of internal evaluations of projects for publishers who may remain nameless, and Gonzo Digimation once asked for my expert opinion on something, although I'm afraid it probably wasn't that helpful. I helped edit the translation of a major 2007 RPG release, but I did an embarassingly bad job on that one and very much wish I could go back and do it over again. My ugly mug and unkempt hair have appeared on the G4 TV programs "Icons" and "Filter," as well as the Konami-produced "Metal Gear Solid 2 The Trailer" DVD released in Japan in 2000.

I've covered the industry's two biggest trade shows, the Electronic Entertainment Expo and the Tokyo Game Show, five times each. (I attended the 1999 and 2005 E3s as well, but I didn't work them full-time, so they don't count. I appreciate 1UP.com's staff putting up with me that latter year, though.) More recently, I helped cover bits of the 2008 New York Comic-Con -- never again. The 2008 Tokyo International Anime Fair was pretty cool, though.

My work has also been nicked by a great many European game sites, and even once by GameSpot, although in that case it was an honest mistake, and Greg Kasavin sent an apology that was about nine times nicer than it needed to be. Greg's a prince of a guy, though I would still turn him down if he offered me a job again.

I've also had the chance to interview some of the more notable figures in the gaming world, including Hideo Kojima (creator of Metal Gear Solid), Tetsuya Nomura (the artist behind Final Fantasy VII and Kingdom Hearts), Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka (founders of BioWare), Tetsuya Mizuguchi (creator of Rez), Yu Suzuki (founder of Sega-AM2), Akira Yamaoka (composer and later director for the Silent Hill series), Yoshinori Yamagishi (producer of Valkyrie Profile and the Star Ocean series), Keiji Inafune (creator of Mega Man and Onimusha), and several others. I doubt any of them got much out of meeting me, but I sure got a boot out of meeting some of them.

Finally, I jumped in the pool at Sony's E3 2001 after-party while stone-cold sober. Security threw me out of the club, over the very kind objection of SCEA public relations boss Molly Smith. I'm still kind of proud of that.

Right now I'm a bum. Puts it a bit bluntly, sure, but it's more respectable than calling myself a "freelancer," in my opinion.