This past weekend, sitting across from one Miss Faith Harrison, the up and coming hottest name in gaming, and one Mr. Max Dyckhoff, whose very name evokes the drooling of fan boys everywhere, I was reminded of why I’ve kept Gameinatrix (and Gamer Girls Radio) going so long. It’s inevitable that after doing this for so long, you get a little burned out. Running a gaming site is a never ending race, with no clear finish line, if there is one. But I knew that when I signed on for this gig. The race gets hard, your legs cramp, you often lose sight of where you’re going and some days you don’t want to run at all. I get up every day and I do it anyway, even when I can’t remember why. Sitting across from these two and listening to Faith speak about her love of the industry, I saw in her face, the why I get up and do it. It’s not for fame or fortune, its love, plain and simple. It’s a love so deep that I’ve sat at my PC, Xbox, PS3, and Wii, with a trashcan beside me, throwing up from the motion sickness of trying to review a game or learning to do level design in Unreal or Hero Engine. A love so deep, that I’ve fallen asleep with the controller in my hand in the middle of playing Halo. It’s a love that forces me to make the trek across country to any event I can, in spite of my deeply intense fear of flying. It’s staying up until the wee hours of the morning scouring the internet for the next new indie game. It’s me pacing the floor at Starbucks, speaking to myself out loud about coding, while people watch me, fingers ready to dial 911 if I should completely flip. It’s a love that makes me stop random people in the store to urge them NOT to buy an M rated game for their 3 year old. It is a love that makes me walk the floor at a PAX or an E3, my feet blistering, but a smile on my face, because I’m so happy to be there. A love so deep that I would endure jackasses asking me my boob size, or stalking me, because I happen to be a woman who knows her way around a controller. It’s a love that enables me to drown out any drama in my real world and lose myself completely and find myself at the same time.
It’s a deep and passionate love that very few things in my life rival. It’s not an obsession; I’m very clear on that. I don’t think, I HAVE to finish this level, or play a certain game. Rather I look at a good game and study it in complete fascination and awe. It’s not even game specific, I love it all. I notice every texture, every graphic for the good or bad. I even look at the bad ones and begin thinking what they could have done differently to have made it a good game. And though I’m not adept at coding or texturing, I know how and that lends a type of church like reverence to my observations. I understand, in depth, just how much work went into making something like Skyrim. The hours of one’s life lost, just to entertain me and I respect it. Yes, gaming is my church, my religion, my lover, and my best friend. I could never leave it, or this site, no matter how much you’d pay me. I’ll never leave it, not even after I die. And if there are no games in heaven, then I don’t want go. One of the original taglines for Gameinatrix that never saw the light of day was, ‘Game or Die’. I’ll add to that, ‘Game or die trying’.
-GxC
PS. Faith thanks for the reminder, Rawr! ;)
