digitaltaco.com

"WE AIN'T GOING TO THE TOWN...

we're going to the city."

since it's now official, i suppose i can announce that i've taken a new position at ziff davis. 1up.com will now have bad-ass video content. (as i typed-up that link, i realized what a short url it is. score.)

best of all... i'm not going alone. jane's coming with me. in fact, she's the reason i get to go in the first place; although raymond did begin putting ideas in sam kennedy's mind months ago. so anyway, big, big thanks to jane. seriously. kid, you're a very positive force in my life and i can't thank you enough. i won't let you down.... i promise.

i'll miss my mates out at gamespy and ign editorial. you guys made the last two years a blast and i don't regret anything i've done with the company. that said, i'm glad i'm finally getting the chance to move on to more interesting things. keep your eyes on my new site. it's gonna be an interesting year :)

FIELD TRIPPIN'

working for ign definitely has its moments; usually, those moments are had in front of our street fighter II turbo: hyper fighting cabinet. but earlier last tuesday was one of the first times i have actually been proud to be an employee. for whatever reason, just over a half-dozen eighth grade boys visited our offices on a field trip.

THIS KID KILLED EVERYONE...

david adams, the fellow in the neighboring cube showed the kids how he enters new stories into our back-end system just before i gave them a brief video creation demo. i would have had a better chance keeping their attention if i hadn't had the brilliant idea to allow them to play the game we were capturing footage from. apparently destroy all humans is much more interesting than avid. at least there was one interested young mind. seeing the future video producer in him just warmed my heart. so damn cute...

during the roundtable session, the children were free to ask a group of us editors questions about the business, our industry, etc. of course, it only took about two-and-a-half minutes before the subject matter in question was no longer inter-office protocol but rather the Playstation 3 launch line-up and Halo 2.5. The adult supervision present didn't seem too thrilled about the gaming conversation, but oh well. it wasn't their day.

we took them into our demo rooms for some 16 player halo 2 multiplayer matches before interviewing the lot of 'em on-camera for an upcoming feature. the distraction did keep me from my desk for the morning, which i, of course, totally appreciated. in addition, i could tell that those children were genuinely thankful for the day's experiences. i know i would've loved to have had the chance to visit a gaming publication at such a young age... i would've loved to have been able to show my parents proof, without a doubt, that there were people who made money writing about games. sometimes, i still don't think they believe it.