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A very fine welcome to all of you, and thanks for joining us on this edition of "Meet The Mob!"
I'm joined today by Brian Petro-Roy, the 30-year-old computer engineer from Massachusetts who's just finished his first month on Bitmob. We'll take this opportunity today to get inside his head a little and discover the man behind the words, and see how he reacts when he really gets put on the spot!
Before we get into the real questions, Brian, how about a picture so our audience can put a face to the name? Do you have any lying around that really sum you up?
I think my current Facebook profile picture does a pretty good job of that:
Um…wow. What exactly *is* that monstrosity?
It's a 67-inch 1080p Samsung LED DLP – my old set conked out in Feburary and I needed a replacement. It took me a month to decide I wanted this model, and managed to get one on clearance just before they were discontinued.
The whole process actually turned from a simple TV replacement into an enormous project where we completely repainted our living room, so I really feel like I earned it!
With a TV that big, I'm guessing you do mostly console gaming, then? Why is that?
That's mainly due to history – I first started gaming on the venerable Atari 2600, way back in 1982 when I was four years old. By the time we finally got a home computer in the early 90's, I'd already been gaming on consoles for nearly 10 years, not to mention the computer we got was a Mac (which has always been a pretty limited gaming platform), so consoles were what I stuck with.
Plus, I find gaming on a couch much more comfortable than in a computer chair.
I can see a 360 and a PS3 in that picture. What other consoles do you own?
Besides those two, I currently have an Atari 2600, NES, Game Boy Color, Super NES, Saturn, PlayStation, Dreamcast, PS2, Gamecube, Xbox, and 3 DSes (one Phat, two Lite) – all still in working order. My console game collection, including downloadable titles, is currently at 373.
373? You call that a collection? That's barely more than one game for each month you've been alive. What else have you been wasting your time doing?
Aside from reading, TV, movies, and following sports – I'm a die-hard Patriots, Bruins, and Celtics fan – I've spent the better portion of the last 15 years playing Ultimate Frisbee. Unfortunately, that excludes this year, which I took off to recover from foot surgery I had last November. So, to fill the frisbee-shaped void in my life, I took up disc golf instead.
Like in Tiger 10 for the Wii, right. Speaking of which, you didn't mention a Wii – you don't have one?
Nope – I just haven't been able to justify it to myself yet. I already have a ton of games to play for the two high-def systems, and worse-looking games with waggle don't appeal to me (although I am bummed that I've been missing out on Metroid Prime 3 all this time).
I just don't think that motion control has matured to the point where it's worth replacing a controller. I do hope Natal and/or Sony's new motion control system will prove me wrong, though.
Moving on, it says here that your Xbox Live gamertag, PSN handle, and Twitter username are all "Twxabfn." How did you come up with that…thing?
Anyway, I was fiddling around with the specialized stylus motions they had for writing letters, and scribbled t…w…x…a…b…f…and n. Looking down at it, I said "Hey, that's a pretty cool word!" and adopted it as my online handle. Best part is, it's never taken!
All right, enough softball questions. You've written 14 articles on Bitmob in your first month – that's basically one every two days. Why the high output? Why Bitmob? What are you hoping to get out of this?
This is going to take a bit of explaining. See, I got an engineering job straight out of college and held it for seven years – and while I didn't hate it, I probably spent as much time reading gaming news and posting on gaming forums as I did working.
I was laid off last June when the economy started to tank, and I got so freaked out by the crappy job market that I jumped right back into engineering without a second thought.
When I found a new job, my commute quadrupled and I was suddenly doing work that was very, very different from what I'd been doing. For the first few months I wondered if I'd made the right choice, and spent a lot of time asking myself why I'd never thought to find a career in gaming.
I pondered going to grad school for game design, I read advice columns about freelance journalism, and I even thought about going into retail – but nothing looked like it was going to pan out.
Then, a month ago, I stumbled upon the USAToday.com interview with Shoe and Demian about Bitmob, and my eyes lit up. A group of game journalism vets were running a new blog where community articles could get promoted if they passed muster?
As far as building a writing portfolio went, it sure sounded a hell of a lot better than starting a WordPress blog or buying my own domain, which would have required as much (or more) time doing promotion and site upkeep as actually writing.
So, here I am. Even though life at my day job has vastly improved as of late, I'm really enjoying writing for Bitmob and being a part of this community – so even if this doesn't lead to some sort of gaming journalism career down the road, it's still definitely worth it.
I'm gonna hit you with a quick one now, "High Fidelity"-style. Top 5 all-time favorite games – go.
Five? Are you kidding? That's it??? Oh, man.
*thinks*
Okay…um…all right, I think I got it.
Mass Effect is a definite, as it's easily my favorite game of the last 10 years.
Jet Moto makes the list – I am the world record holder, after all!
I've played way too many Mega Man games to leave one off the list, and since Zero is probably my favorite videogame character ever and he was the most fun to play in Mega Man X4, that goes on there.
Guitar Hero has to get on here, but I want to be very clear that I just mean the original game, not the series as a whole. I think I had the most fun overall with the first GH (and when I finally beat "Bark at the Moon" on Expert, I celebrated like I had just won the lottery).
Last entry, I suppose, has got to be Final Fantasy VII Eternal Darkness Psychonauts Chrono Trigger Panzer Dragoon Saga Super Metroid Chromehounds Dragon Force Star Wars: KotOR Missile Command Zelda: Link to the Past screw it, I'm only doing four. Next question.
Fair enough. So what are you playing now, out of curiosity? What's in your backlog?
I'm currently playing through the Broken Steel expansion for Fallout 3 (just hit level 26) and since Jason's space sim posts got me jonesing, I bought Descent from GOG.com and am getting my joystick chops back, in anticipation of finally playing the Freespace games.
I've also got unopened copies of Prince of Persia and Rainbow Six: Vegas sitting around, so those are next on my list, and I'm annoyed at myself that I haven't gotten around to playing inFamous yet.
Looking forward to anything in particular coming down the pike?
Well, my wife and I are budgeting pretty hard this year (you have to do that in years when you buy a brand new TV) so buying games at $60 is a little hard to swallow. Still…new games…
I do have some points saved up for Shadow Complex; I likely won't be able to resist the new Professor Layton and Scribblenauts; October 13th is going to kill me when Brutal Legend and Uncharted 2 come out on the same day; I'm going to be keeping a very close eye on Dragon Age: Origins; God of War III is pretty much a given; I really liked Indigo Prophecy until it turned batshit insane, so I'm looking forward to Heavy Rain; and I'm already planning on taking a week's vacation when Mass Effect 2 comes out.
Wait – now *you're* kidding, right?
No.
Ooooookayyyyyy…on that note, I think we'd better wrap this up. Any final words?
I'd just like to say thanks to Shoe and Demian for founding this site, to the editors who have promoted my articles, and to the Bitmob community for reading my stuff in the first place. I hope you've enjoyed my work thus far, and I'm going to try my best to keep entertaining you!
