On
the 20th of February, 2017, while in despair at my previous job, I
decided to make a gaming blog. I was worried at first about how it would go; I
knew that the market for videogame writers was vastly saturated. In the end,
however, my need for an outlet won the day and I made my first post in earnest;
a messy little article geeking out about how Resident Evil 7 brought back a sense of horror authenticity to its franchise.
Starting
my blog was the best decision I ever made. As I wrote more I quickly found a
passion in what I was doing and though the click count was low, my blog quickly
became a much-needed source of pride and hope.
It
wasn’t until I started my Twitter account, however, that I began to experience
just how great the gaming community as. While growing my own presence, I
quickly fell in love with how friendly and welcoming the gaming community was.
I really love using Twitter to catch up with the little circles in which I’ve
found myself, and I get to enjoy so much more about what I do. I realised that
I didn’t just want to write, but I wanted to become a part of this great
community and engage with it as much as I could.
I
met the excellent editor of Pressquit, another gaming site that I found
inspiring and fun to read, and even wrote a couple of my own articles on the
site. I am most proud of my Aven Colony review on Pressquit, as it gave me a
taste not just of writing for an audience, but also with getting demo copies of
games for review. I felt immensely proud as it felt like a seal of approval on
my work that I could write articles that got developer attention.
While
I went quiet in the latter end of 2017, as I had a holiday with my fiancée and
also needed to concentrate on my new job which became increasingly busy around
the festive period, I got back to working on the blog as soon as I felt the
writing bug take me again. One of my proudest moments came from previewing It Lurks Below, an inspired survival game built by the industry legend that had a
big hand in creating Diablo. Again, it felt like a seal of approval to get
attention from such an important developer.
My proudest moment, however, was in writing my charity article for PixelGirl.
This amazing streamer was one of my earliest inspirations as I joined the
gaming community. Her infectiously friendly and kindhearted nature made Twitteran uplifting experience every time I saw her post something. To have the
privilege of collaborating with such an influential advocate was one of the
greatest moments of my blog, even more so that it was for a worthy cause.
Today,
my blog is in the middle of being tweaked for compatibility with my future
plans. What started out as Stev3LGaming is going to become XYZGaming, as my
focus continues to shift on the gaming community. The most important thing to
my online identity is that sense of community that I found; the networks of
people I have met along the way have been inspirational. If I can be half the
person that these people are, I would be a very happy man indeed.
I
wrote this blog post with a sense of newfound pride; XYZGaming is more than
just a blog for me now. It’s my gateway to an awesome community, and a much
needed creative outlet. My little hobby is now an achievement I can look upon
with no small amount of pride.
I’ve
seen some amazing things this last year and met even more amazing people, but
what has been the most humbling part of all of this has been the people that
make the gaming community what it is. Whether developers, streamers, fans,
other bloggers or Let’s Players, the game community has been an absolute
inspiration to join and I thank you for being so welcoming to me. I find myself
humbled by how the gaming community has shown what it’s truly capable of, and
now that I’ve seen a glimpse of this greatness I am filled with elation and
pride that I get to be a part of that. So
from the bottom of my heart, to every single visitor to this little corner of
the internet:
Thank you.
-Stev3L, editor and writer of
XYZ/Stev3LGaming.
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