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Unread postby Saf » 27 Dec 2010 21:33

Hello. I'm a native English speaker, and my gaming history started with the PS1. I discovered emulation pretty soon after that, though, so I spent most of my early days playing SNES games more than anything else (especially since I couldn't afford many non-emulated games, lol).

These days I like to play all types of games, but at the moment I'm addicted to discovering classic arcade titles through MAME.
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Joined: 27 Dec 2010 07:58
Location: Australia

Unread postby Halzebier » 08 Jan 2011 22:01

Hello. I'm a 38-year-old gamer from Germany. Here are some of my favorite games:

- Paradroid
- Bubble Bobble
- Quake III
- Esprade

One of my earliest memories of computer games is of me and a friend playing Castle Adventure on a green screen. During the summer of '84 or '85 we frequently rode our bikes several miles to the university where our fathers worked. One of the PhDs let us play the game on one of the university's computers and even helped us with two puzzles. We had an absolute blast.

I discovered Insomnia when looking for reviews of Cave shooters and I've been a constant reader ever since. At the moment, I'm slowly working my way through the essays for the second time. This is far and away the best videogame site on the internet.
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Joined: 07 Jan 2011 23:54
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Unread postby bee » 18 Jan 2011 17:02

Hello fellow comrades. I'm a native English speaker from London. I'm 34 years old.

I've held onto my passion with gaming since playing in the arcades as a kid at the seaside towns in the UK and particularly in the South of Spain on holidays.

I recall the sounds and smoky atmosphere while searching out my favourite shooters such as Phoenix, 1942 and R-Type to test my skills, delve into the unknown and frequently feel like a god. Bloody magical.

My first machine was the Commodore 16, then the ZX Spectrum 48K, Amiga, Mega Drive, SNES, PS, N64, Dreamcast, PS2, NGC, Xbox.
Memorable games were The Great Escape, Paradroid 90, Xenon 2, Ganbare Goemon, Axelay.

I now have a custom arcade stick for PC, Xbox 360. It really does make a difference to enjoy all the old favourites again using a tough arcade stick.

I worked as an English teacher in China for two years, had an amazing experience, discovered this site whilst there, back in the UK and currently enjoying Do-Don-Pachi Dai-Fukkatsu.


[Banned for not properly separating paragraphs. --icy]
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Joined: 18 Jan 2011 15:08
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Unread postby Joshua » 11 Mar 2011 00:50

Hello. I'm from Pennsylvania.

From an early age I was renting new games to play every week. Other than the fact that they were mostly platformers, shooters of various types, and fighting games, I really cannot remember much of what their titles were since this was all in my early childhood. Later, in late elementary school, I was playing Pokemon on the Game Boy and lots of PlayStation and N64 titles (e.g., Crash Bandicoot and Super Smash Bros., respectively).

I'm not going into much detail with that stuff because while all of that was fun, the only games that had ever really mattered to me were Police Quest, Age of Empires II, and games in the Star Wars: Jedi Knight series.

In Police Quest you could die instantly for not following realistic police procedure. For some reason, I like games that are unforgiving for the sake of realism.

While I liked Age of Empires when I was young, my interests have moved on to more realistic strategy titles, such as those made by Paradox Interactive, AGEOD, Matrix Games, etc. They are such a big time commitment, though, that I may have to quit my job to play them seriously.

I liked the Jedi Knight series when I was younger because I was a Star Wars fan and thought that I had nothing better to do. This led to me spending my entire adolescence running clans in Jedi Outcast (Jedi Knight 2) and Jedi Academy (Jedi Knight 3), at first because swinging lightsabers was so much damn fun. The original Jedi Knight was essentially a first-person shooter with the option of hitting enemies with a glow-stick (though third-person view was possible). By JK3 it had become a kind of 3D fighting game that exclusively used lightsabers.

But that did get boring, and what kept me sucked into this world was what the culture of the game had become--a kind of political sandbox game where clans functioned like nations at war and there was constantly a cutthroat social game to be played apart from the game itself. I've been looking for new games that are like this but haven't found any that handle it correctly, apart from complete garbage with lazy, overpaid developers like Face of Mankind, Mortal Online, etc. (EVE Online comes closest, but travel time is unbearable. I can't stand the hugeness of its universe.)

At the moment I'm into Men of War: Assault Squad. I play plenty of other games too but not enough to comment on very many of them.
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Unread postby pnom » 28 Jul 2011 05:56

Hey everyone! I am a long-time reader and fan of Mr. Kierkegaard's website and articles.

Here is a list of some of my favorite games:

- X-COM: UFO Defense
- Deus Ex
- Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn
- Fallout 2
- Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup
- Blazblue: Continuum Shift

I enjoy complex and challenging games, and play mostly on my PC, though I own many consoles. I'm attracted to many competitive multiplayer games, games with exceptional narrative quality (very few!), and tactical turn-based games (such as X-COM or the Civilization series).

I also have a great fondness for tabletop gaming, particularly card games and pencil and paper roleplaying.

Here is a list of some of my favorite traditional/tabletop games:

- Delta Green (Call of Cthulhu Campaign Setting)
- Arkham Horror (Lovecraft/Cthulhu Mythos Board Game)
- Magic the Gathering
- Unknown Armies (Pencil and Paper Roleplaying Setting)

I'm looking forward to reading more interesting game theory and philosophy from insomnia.ac!
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Joined: 11 Jan 2011 03:34
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Unread postby SriK » 06 Nov 2011 01:23

Hey, I'm Sri. I currently live in the United States, and I'm a native English speaker.

I was first introduced to videogames by my uncle when I was around 3 or 4 years old. The first game I ever played was Sonic the Hedgehog for the Sega Genesis. I immediately fell in love with the series, mostly due to the colorful visuals and catchy music (it was only a while later that I came to fully appreciate the level design.) I still like the series today, even though I've come to recognize some major problems with the games over time (the ring system, the imbalanced spindash move and boring level design in Sonic 2, 3K being a bit too long for its own good, etc.)

Over time, I've been exposed to a lot of awesome games on a variety of platforms. Some of my favorites have been: Deus Ex, Alien Soldier, Metal Slug, Armed Police Batrider, Salamander 2, God Hand, Vanquish, Sonic 3 & Knuckles, The Secret of Monkey Island, Mother 3, Metal Gear Solid. The genres I'm least experienced with right now are probably strategy and fighting games, which is something I hope to fix in the future.

I also enjoy amateur game development, and it's a path I'd love to pursue as a career in the future. In fact, I first heard about this site through a 300 page TIGSource forum thread about icycalm, lol. I would be lying if I said I immediately recognized Insomnia's value, but over time, after reading the posts of icy's supporters and trying to understand the site's articles, I began to appreciate the sheer amount of knowledge, work, and talent that's gone into building this site, and just how much better it is than anything else out there. I also began to realize why so many of the most prominent "indie" games I had played didn't engage me much at all, and what their true design mentality was behind the whole "retro"/"art" facade (the opposite of what many of them claim to be: "retro" games with savestates and checkpoints every 15 seconds, "art" games that are primitive in almost every way.)
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Unread postby Vogel » 14 Nov 2011 22:49

Hello. I'm 22, Swedish, and I've been lurking Insomnia for a few years. I just started subscribing because, well, you can't see much with the blinds closed, and I don't want to miss a thing. I might post if I feel that I have anything to contribute.

As for my introduction, I've been playing since I was 6, and one of my earliest memories of playing games was when a friend of my father showed me Rayman on his PC. Some of my favourite games growing up were Metal Gear Solid (PS1), TES III: Morrowind, Half-Life, Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven, Freelancer, Max Payne, Icewind Dale and Heroes of Might and Magic 3. Recently I've been playing Mount&Blade, Vanquish, Ninja Gaiden Sigma, Mass Effect 1 & 2, and I'm still playing Heroes 3. I try to keep up with new titles, and I try everything that interests me.
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Joined: 14 Nov 2011 14:33
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Unread postby Zakharov » 17 Nov 2011 00:50

Hello. I'm 21 years old. I am most familiar with FPSes, though I have started playing fighting games and STGs as well. Quake, Planescape: Torment and Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri are some of my favorites.

My first reaction to the articles was to think them wrong and I sought to discredit them. I at least had the integrity not to dismiss them merely because their author was merciless; I wanted to expose things like contradictions, misconceptions, and pedantry. As I read through, I began thinking with greater rigor and realized there were no inconsistencies to be found. Continued reading required payment so here I am.

This website was a slap in the face which ended my undisciplined way of thinking and of playing games. Alex Kierkegaard cured my faggotry.
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Unread postby David » 17 Nov 2011 22:19

Hello. I'm a native English speaker, 22 years old. My favourite games include: Deus Ex, the F-Zero series (well, X and GX, anyway), Super Metroid and Worms 2 (playing roper games). Over the years I have mostly played various 3D action games, racing games and platformers. The reviews and essays here have inspired me to start playing STG's and turn-based strategy games as well, so I expect before long I will place some of those games among my favourites.

I count discovering Insomnia among the lucky accidents of my life. I can't recall exactly how I first found myself here, but ever since reading several of the essays on that first visit, I have been enthralled. Finally, I had found a site that is passionate about videogames not for what they could be, but for what they are. A site that treats videogames with seriousness not because they have something profound to tell us, but because they are immensely fun, and fun itself is serious business. A site with the tenacity and the intellectual rigour to expose the vacuousness of the tired old concepts and conventions of popular game criticism, and to erect in their place a standard of criticism that this highest of art forms deserves.

The writing style didn't prove an impediment to me. On the contrary, the style was part of the attraction. What could be more entertaining than writing that is every bit as methodical as it is passionate? Every ounce of fury coming from a place of contempt, not resentment, and laced with a wicked sense of humour. Entire theories and "movements" crushed beneath a fist, and always with a grin.

I haven't even mentioned the philosophy. Having been dissatisfied with the small amount of philosophy that I had studied at university, the Insomnia reading list set me on to reading Nietzsche. The experience proved to be immensely pleasurable and useful for me -- the very opposite of the sterile scholarly chatter that the universities had told me was philosophy. I'm close to finishing reading Nietzsche's works (for the first time, anyway -- I'm sure I will end up reading them many times), after which I will certainly be reading Wittgenstein and Baudrillard, and then Orgy of the Will.
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Unread postby antaru » 25 Mar 2012 23:26

Hello,

I'm 35, Hungarian. Not a native English speaker.
I'm working as a Japanese-Hungarian interpreter, hence the nickname.
Antaru is the way Japanese people pronounce my real name, Antal.

In 2003 I started to write articles for video game related magazines, both on and offline.
At first, I was writing about Japan, then import game reviews and later I became a regular reviewer.

Everything went well until I started to question the value, score and reliability of the reviews and reviewers of some hyped games like Prince of Persia (2008).
It was a battle between lack of interactivity and a beautiful fairy tale.

Needless to say, repeating the same routine with other games made my presence unwanted.
But the feeling was mutual. I fed up being told everyone can have his/her opinion and every opinion has the same weight. That there aren't good or bad opinions just opinions, and everyone's opinion is equal and must be respected equally.

That's bullshit.

I believe evaluation of a video game must be based mainly on its interactivity, its gameplay, not on things being the matter of personal taste (art design, etc.). And I believe a reviewer must understand this.

So I've had enough of review poetry madness and started to look for Sparta.
And that's how I've got here.


[Banned for not knowing what a paragraph is and for the "game-play" nonsense. -icy]
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Bo's Introduction

Unread postby jeffrobot494 » 28 Sep 2012 09:01

Hi Everyone,

I'm Bo. I originally discovered Insomnia and icycalm when I found the TIGSource thread about the argument between him and Jason Rohrer. I was definitely an "artfag" back then, but what Icy was saying rang true for me. And seeing someone on a forum writing like Nietzsche was... this mix of my own contemporary culture with one of my most revered figures of the past that just made me squeal with delight (very similar to when I first saw Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, and I learned that musicals could be modern and cool). I looked up the site and have been reading the essays ever since.

The most fun I've ever had playing games was in big Halo LAN matches with my friends. There were a few years where I pretty much stopped playing single-player games, since they were never as much as fun as those Halo LAN matches. I became an evangelist for multiplayer games. Eventually I realized it wasn't the multiplayer aspect that made those experiences so fun - it was playing with friends (it also had to do with some personal issues I had, which I only realized after reading "Why Scoring Sucks..."). Which is why playing Halo 2 online with strangers never really did it for me, but I can enjoy taking turns playing a single-player game with my friends.

icycalm's "Arcade Culture" essay was a series of "OMG YES" moments for me. I read it right when I was puzzling over single and multiplayer games, and it illuminated a lot for me (I have a crazy theory that I might present after I've improved it - it's probably ban-worthy right now). It inspired me to start developing a version of PONG that had people playing together in a way that recreated some of the elements of an arcade. I never finished that game, but a demo of it was recognized by some folks at Atari as being pretty cool.

A few months ago I got into a Korean MMO called Tera. Tera's combat is the most compelling I've found any combat to be in a long time. Probably since Halo. Sadly, I quit Tera because the designers (and likely the publishers) put enormous obstacles in the way of players fighting each other on equal terms. Your damage was heavily dependent on gear, and getting gear was incredibly boring and time-consuming. So I quit. In my spare time I've been programming what I hope will become a 2D version of Tera's combat without all the grind.

Though I'm a little scared of being banned, I'm looking forward to discussing game design with everyone. I'm also curious if anyone would be interested in playing some games online together. Maybe some Street Fighter 4? I just picked it up.
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Unread postby Rovan » 01 Nov 2012 19:18

I remembered from the posting guidelines that Alex regards this place as a second home, and that I should therefore have introduced myself before posting. I walked into a stranger's house and just started mingling with his guests! I apologize for that.

Call me Rovan. I have a ton of respect for this whole project. All the values it's founded upon, like the novel (for today) idea that you should be an expert on a subject about it before trying to write authoritatively about it, are so obviously true. But they come as revelations in today's industry. The idea that if you want to cover new theoretical ground as Alex does, that you need to read up to where the last theoreticians left off... duh. But I never gave serious thought to that before. And no one else seems to be doing that. I've learned probably a dozen similar lessons like this.

Alex, I have more respect for what you do than for any other undertaking I'm aware of. I really want to learn as much as I can from you, both about philosophy and game design. If there was a church of icycalm, I would gladly go and become a disciple (seriously, I would go live in a monastery in the mountains -- though obviously you wouldn't lead a monastic brotherhood like that).

Utmost respect for this site and for icycalm. And respect for all the other people that contribute to the site and the philosophy too. I look forward to contributing.

As for gaming, I'm mostly interested in it when I can do it with other people. My favorite thing in games is competing with my friends and acquaintances. I only get a fraction of the enjoyment if I'm playing with strangers. MMOs were a great fit for me because they let you get to know the people you're playing with, but I got bored of them because their combat always sucks compared to other genres, and they are so grindy. Lately I've been getting more into single-player games by instituting the 1CC rule whenever I play. I'm going through the Halo: Reach campaign with the included option of having the level restart every time I die. It has definitely provided some exciting moments. I definitely have different tastes from icy, and I often ask myself what makes that difference. The site is helping me understand.
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Unread postby Sparkster » 10 Nov 2012 10:54

Yo! I'm Sparkster, another native English speaker. I'm currently spending the majority of my game time playing 2D fighters, though I've branched out to most genres. Still, I'm a total novice at shooters and strategy games and I'm looking forward to remedying these areas.

My gaming history is common enough. I played whatever Nintendo games I could find, as well as most of the major PS2 titles. Of course this meant I had little access to arcade games and an abundance of action games and "JRPGs". My gradual change in tastes coupled with Insomnia's insight make me unable to humor the idea of going back to play any of those "RPGs". I get a good laugh when someone recommends me one of the countless "must-play" Playstation One strategy games. I branched more out into PC gaming when I created a steam account, and my adventures in fighting games began on GGPO upon news of Street Fighter IV coming out. I had heard SFIV was shit so I was pretty damn content with playing Third Strike and SFIIX for a long while before I eventually moved on to the KOF series.

icycalm, the truth to this site is phenomenal! To think that there is absolutely no competition, no single rebuttal attempt to any of your articles found within this multi-billion dollar industry only warrants one word: lol. I hope I can contribute to the genius of your legacy.
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Unread postby Pretas » 08 Feb 2013 19:19

Greetings. I am Pretas, a native English speaker in the United States. My name is a reference to one of the realms of reincarnation in Tibetan Buddhism, although I am an agnostic myself.

My gaming history begun when I received a black-and-white Game Boy with Super Mario Land 2 for my fifth birthday. I was also given NMS Software's Star Wars game, but that was nowhere near as remarkable, and the nonlinear overworld of Tatooine greatly confused me at that age. (Thanks to the infuriating Death Star stage, I still haven't finished the game almost 20 years later.) I was immediately captivated by SML2's fluent controls, varied and imaginative stages designs, selection of powerups, and lushly detailed graphics. I still own the same cartridge, and occasionally pull it out to run through a couple stages every now and then.

My next gaming love was the brilliant 1994 "puzzle platformer" reworking of Donkey Kong. I also greatly enjoyed playing Daytona USA at the local mall arcade, although I was barely tall enough to reach the pedals. 3D graphics were this incredible new thing to me. Unfortunately, I was too young to have participated in the heyday of arcade games, and by the time I came of age most of the scene had evaporated. I was lucky to be able to participate in some fighting game tournaments in the declining years of my local arcades, though.

Eventually I discovered emulation, which figuratively kicked the doors wide open. It allowed me to develop my current taste in games and catch up on all the history I'd missed. Beforehand, I had no idea how much I was missing out on by only owning Nintendo systems. I was particularly enthused with the STGs, beat-em-ups and fighters I had access to through MAME. When I had more money in later years, I ended up buying many of these games, and the original hardware to play them on, where applicable.

Some of my all-time favorite games are:

Ninja Gaiden Black
Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising
Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus
The Punisher (CPS2/Arcade)
Deus Ex
Akumajou Dracula (X68K)
Zero Gunner 2
Quake III: Arena
Super Puzzle Fighter IIX
The King of Fighters XI
Virtual On: Oratorio Tangram
Tsumi to Batsu: Hoshi no Keishousha
Vampire Savior: The Lord of Vampire
Alien Soldier
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Joined: 08 Feb 2013 02:58
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Unread postby icycalm » 24 Jun 2013 21:41

A new user subscribed yesterday (haven't made his account yet; I'll do that later today), and I did a little Google search on him, as I usually do with every new person who comes here. It's a good way to get an idea of what to expect, and even if they don't end up posting anything I am always curious about the kind of people who subscribe here.

So I came across his Steam collection:

http://steamcommunity.com/id/orkaizer/games/?tab=all

Now this is the kind of person that I want posting here. Do you see any "indie" games? Do you see any mini-games? 100% real, heavy games. That is the sort of person I am writing for, everyone else can go fuck themselves as far as I am concerned.
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Unread postby icycalm » 25 Jun 2013 01:01

He was actually an existing user with an account from 2009, and a banned user moreover lol. But I don't remember the incident any more than I remembered him, which probably means it was something minor, so I reactivated his account and unbanned him.
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Unread postby lemec » 27 Jul 2013 07:22

Hi, my name is Mark and if I'm not playing games, reading this site or dealing with errands, then I'm either drawing concept art for a client, or working solo on my own video games - doing the sound, music, programming, design and testing myself. Also a warning: this post of my past involvement in video games cannot possibly be done in chronological order because I have constantly been jumping over from one aspect of game development and returning to another over many years.

I first got into programming by way of DOS QBasic on an Intel 25Mhz/80486 PC when I was in junior high school and made several clones of other games and a few of my own shooters. I later learned Object Oriented Programming by creating modifications for id Software's Quake, which used a scripting language called Quake C. I had been making mods for Quake for about 6 years due to the ease at which I could change the rules and tools (or weapons) that the player used.

I also toyed around with adding in features that are pretty standard for more advanced games (but were not implemented in Quake) such as headshots, full-level darkness where your eyes would adjust to the dimness but your nightvision would decline if you were staring at light or saw muzzle flashes, and you would have to avoid enemy flashlights and enemies would create chains of breadcrumbs of sound clues you made either by mistake or intentionally (such as shell casings hitting the ground, or gunshot sound locations).

Later, when Quake II came out I switched to C++ since the mods had to be made into DLLs, and also played around with Unreal C and much later, I worked on simple mods for Half Life II and DOOM 3. I also made a game called Gunner with Flash MX 2004's actionscript.

Programming opened a great many doors for me. When I was in high school, I had partaken in a pilot project where our public school had secured ridiculous funding for state-of-the-art Silicon Graphics Workstations upon which we were to learn to use Alias|Wavefront's PowerAnimator and several Macs (I use personally-built PC's) for Photoshop and Macromedia Flash. I was the only student of my class to get heavily into using the IRIX operating system and acted as a part-time system administrator, and the only one who went on to earn a degree in Computer Animation in Post Production at the now-defunct International Academy of Design (the degree was worthless). It was there that I learned to use particle effects and to continue working as a part-time system administrator, and one of the instructors there got me a job at the now-defunct Calibre Digital Pictures as a Technical Director, where I would make a lot of software tools for other animators and deal with dynamics simulations necessary to create special effects for film and television.

I then went on to work for MR. X. Effects and worked again, as a technical director, but by then being pegged as "the programmer guy" was beginning to wear on me and I knew that I didn't want to be a programming gopher forever. I quit and became a freelance visual effects artist, but it should be noted that during that time I had NO drawing ability and that I *wanted* to be able to create my own digital comics.

I taught myself to draw, largely out of an understanding of how 3D modelling/rendering/animation software works and shared my findings of drawing techniques by recording over 250 long-winded YouTube tutorials.

I was also dissatisfied with how my WACOM tablet functioned (the software is garbage) so I hacked it.

By then, a lot of things had changed about how games were made, bought and sold. There's Steam Greenlight. There's the Google Play Market. There was Game Maker Studio. There were game jams in Toronto. These things reminded me of my original dream of developing games, and motivated me to redirect my efforts back into developing games.

I work with Game Maker Studio because developing engines does not interest me. I don't care to fight with sound libraries and sprite libraries and controller libraries. Instead, I want to deal with a game's rules and tools. I'm interested almost entirely with the goals the player is trying to achieve, the limitations the player must deal with, and the possibilities that the tools and interface provide the player to get those jobs done.

Examples:
This is a game I made in 3 days called Gravitron.
This is another game (prototype) I made called Akimbo.
This is a prototype remake of Gunner that I did in Game Maker Studio.

Unfortunately, the things I value in a game do not create nice screenshots or box art. But since I believe in being an entirely self-sufficient developer (I've begun to hate the word "indie") I use my own self-taught skills to draw my own art, and make my own music and sound as well. Sadly I have never developed any marketing nor business skills so at present, all of my own projects are on hiatus while I work as a concept artist for another self-funded developer to keep myself afloat.

And yesterday, I discovered this site and am here to learn. I would talk more about the games I've played and love but I feel that my involvement in producing games is more uncommon and of interest than my consumption of them.
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Joined: 27 Jul 2013 01:44
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Unread postby icycalm » 27 Jul 2013 15:31

lemec wrote:But since I believe in being an entirely self-sufficient developer


And I believe in being an entirely self-sufficient rocket scientist. Welcome to the loonhouse.
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Unread postby icycalm » 27 Jul 2013 15:37

lemec wrote:I use my own self-taught skills to draw my own art, and make my own music


I MYSELF USE MY OWN SELF-TAUGHT SKILLS WHICH I ALONE TAUGHT TO MYSELF ON MY OWN AAAAAAAAAAAARGGGGH!!!!

So many ways of saying that you will never be involved in the production of any game worth playing.
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Unread postby earthboundtrev » 24 Dec 2013 10:49

Hello, my name is Trevor. I have been playing videogames for nearly my entire life (of 21 years) with my favorites being titles such as: God Hand, Jet Set Radio, Pikmin, Jak II, Alien Solider, Tsumi to Batsu Hoshi no Keishousha, Red Dead Redemption, Gears of War, and Super Metroid. As a result of playing videogames for so long I became extremely passionate about them, but became unable to share that passion with others precisely because I am so passionate about them. I couldn’t discuss the videogames I listed above with the general population because we played different games and the ones they did play were played passively.

It wasn’t until I found Insomnia that I knew exactly where I could find people discussing videogames on a much more technical level. I have been reading Insomnia for years now frequently refreshing pages to absorb all of the content that I could – it has been a fantastic resource for me. I tried Pikmin, Jet Set Radio, and Alien Soldier through recommendations found reading Insomnia articles and reviews.

Insomnia has also opened my eyes to philosophy. Through reading the essays and articles posted on the site videogames were related to philosophy in a manner that made exploring philosophy seem interesting to me than attending public school ever could. So, I’ve purchased and started reading a couple of books from the reading list and have so far enjoyed them immensely.

I look forward to interacting with everyone on the forum.
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Unread postby System Blower » 26 Dec 2013 20:06

Hello. My first console was a GameCube, which I received when I was fairly young. The first three games I played were The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Metroid Prime, and Super Mario Sunshine. The game that I ended up logging the most hours in was Super Smash Bros. Melee, with my two brothers.

After getting my first computer capable of running games, I entered a PC phase that continues to this day (though I never abandoned consoles and my PS3/360 remain trusty). As of now I'm clearing Far Cry 2, Metro 2033, and The Witcher 2 on PC, while trying to finally beat Ninja Gaiden Sigma on the PS3. My next purchase will probably be an arcade stick so I can play shooting games correctly.

I joined Insomnia because I love everything about the site. The frontpage alone blew me away (it's gorgeous!), while the content, and the passionate people who run the place (not to mention the passionate people who browse it) absolutely justify the price of admission. It's a privilege to be able to spend time here.
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Joined: 20 Dec 2013 00:22
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Unread postby strangemoe » 14 Feb 2014 06:38

Hello.

I'm a native English speaker from America, and I've been playing videogames since I was very small.

Though I was born in the mid-'90s, my first games were Defender and Joust, played on DOS arcade compilations. I also had Need for Speed III and some flightsims, which were incomprehensible to me at six years old. After mastering the driving game and wrecking my keyboard trying to improve my score in Defender, I had nothing to play.

Some years later I received a GBA and a PS2 for Christmas. I played these, and my old PC, until high school. Starting with driving games and platformers, I branched out to pretty much every genre available on consoles while sticking with the arcade compilations, strategy games, and vehicle games on PC. Up to this point I had been playing games by myself or with one friend.

My high school had a gaming club which held open tournaments, so I joined and became more serious about improving my skills. After graduating, I've mostly used a laptop and handhelds because I lack access to a decent TV.

Some favorite games:
Defender
Tempest
Bosconian
Hydorah
Gradius III
Koumajou Densetsu: Akeiro no Koukyoukyoku
Rockman X
Super Mario Bros.
Unreal Tournament
Star Wars: Battlefront
SoulCalibur II
Bushido Blade 2
Age of Empires II
OutRun 2006
Sega Rally Revo
Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit
F-Zero GX
Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria
Knights in the Nightmare
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strangemoe
 
Joined: 12 Feb 2014 23:09

Unread postby icycalm » 14 Feb 2014 09:56

The purpose of italicized titles is to make them stand out in the text so that the reader doesn't confuse them for regular words. When you are making a list you don't need to italicize them. I see this practice quite a lot among nerds. It looks weird, and betrays that you are following a rule without understanding what it's meant for. Welcome to Insomnia :)
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icycalm
Hyperborean
 
Joined: 28 Mar 2006 00:08
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands

Unread postby gr.luke » 01 Apr 2014 19:06

I am a professional software developer, with a career path in games. I've loved games always. I'm glad to be here.

I love PC shooters, SNES RPGs, AAA schlock. I also love to LAN -- though I haven't done that in a while.

My professional expertise lie within "procedural content," as in game stuff produced by an artificial intelligence. I particularly like the idea of content built around the needs of a particular player, determined during play (by the program).

I know next to nothing about the arcade scene. I'll play pretty much anything I can at home, but it's been a while since I've played a game "for pleasure only," instead of "for research." My favourite games are probably those that try hard to blend narrative with everything else.

Some favourite games/franchises:
- 2D Marios
- Half-Life
- Deus Ex
- Final Fantasy
- Prince of Persia
- Timesplitters 2
- Diablo II
- Counter Strike
- Starcraft
- Modern Warfare 2
- Planescape: Torment
- Sacrifice
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gr.luke
 
Joined: 01 Apr 2014 02:42

Unread postby icycalm » 01 Apr 2014 19:17

Practically every aspect of your post, including your avatar, scream "indie", so I would advise you to tread carefully here.

And we don't use the term "AAA" here. We just call them "games". Everything that's not "AAA" is student rubbish that barely even deserves to be called a game, fyi.
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icycalm
Hyperborean
 
Joined: 28 Mar 2006 00:08
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands

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