My Darkest Moments of 2006 Video Game Reporting
Last week I posted a link to a piece Stephen Totilo wrote for MTV about his personal worst moments in video game journalism in 2006.
At the time, I emailed Totilo and asked if he would mind if I stole the idea from him. You see, 2006 was a bad year for me, book ended by two particularly horrific ordeals and since most of my days are marked by what games I am playing, what gaming stories I am writing, what gaming people I am talking to, it's hard for me to separate the two. I don't write this seeking pity, or attention, but to say thank you for being there for me, whether you knew it or not.
The Death of my niece and a small part of me
It's Feb. 16. Late. I'm playing Star Wars: Empire at War on my computer online against random gamers as I finish up my review of the game for the Rocky Mountain News.
The phone rings:
"Brian?"
My mom sounds tired, frail, empty on the phone.
"What's wrong?"
"Brian, are you sitting?"
"What's wrong mom?"
"Jennifer's been murdered, she's been murdered."
I spend the rest of that night and the next morning desperately trying to find my brother, 18-year-old Jennifer's father. He lives in Atlanta, she lived in Austin.
I can't sleep. My brain is reeling. My stomach churning
I finally find one of my brother's friends and get her to go to his house. To wake him up. To tell him that his daughter has been shot to death. That his life will never be the same.
I call to talk to him, but he can't come to the phone. He's in the bathroom throwing up.
The next morning, weary, shell-shocked. I realize that I have an interview at NetDevil's Broomfield office.
An NCsoft rep flew in from Austin so she could sit down with me and the development team to talk about Auto Assault.
I call her, tell her what's happened and that I will try to make it.
My wife drives me the 45 minutes to their office. The team is prepared, knows what just happened and walks me through the development and my questions. I barely take notes, but manage to finish up the interviews and then head home.
Justin Crabbe, the teen who admitted killing my niece, still hasn't gone to trial.
An E3 I'll Never Forget
On Monday, May 8. My second E3 was about to kick-off. With the help of Joel Johnson, we assembled a team of excellent Gizmodo and Kotaku writers and were in full force at Sony's Pre3 press conference.
Despite not being allowed to check into my room on arrival and having to change in a bathroom stall and stow most of my gear with a sketchy baggage guy, I was in a pretty good mood.
After filling up on tiny hot dogs, drinks and other bits and pieces, the assorted press was filed into a sound stage to hear the Playstation 3 pitch.
I unpacked my bag of goodies: Laying out a digital camera, my laptop, my cell phone, a notepad and a trusty pencil. About a minute before the conference started, I decided to get my tape recorder as a back-up to taking notes.
I pushed down the lid of my laptop and then leaned forward to dig through my bag when I heard a loud snap.
Crap! Opening my laptop, the screen greeted me with a line of black ooze instead of Kotaku's backend. Wonderful, I just broke the LCD screen.
I took notes through the conference, than ran outside to beg a laptop from one of the other writers. I ended up filing my story for the Rocky an hour late, the first time I've ever broken a deadline for a newspaper.
The next day I convinced Mike McWhertor and Brian Ashcraft to take a cab with me to buy a new laptop, which I later sold at a loss on eBay after spending $750 to get my laptop's screen fixed.
And I won't even go into how sick I got at the show. Let's just say by the final day at least a half dozen people had told me I should go to a hospital.
I snap and so does a bone in my hand
For those of you who read the site on a regular basis, you probably know all about my computer, my hand and my anger.
Turns out that the pinkie bone in my left hand is not, in fact, stronger than a stud of my bedroom wall.
Basically, I got angry working on my computer, trying to get the damn thing to work and paced into my bedroom and punched the wall really, really hard.
So hard that despite years of martial arts, I still managed to roll my fist into the bunch and snap the head back on my fifth metacarpal.
Although the actual break didn't hurt that bad, the doctor setting it almost made me pass out and vomit... in that order.
Thanks to my stupidity, my right hand was in a cast while covering Sony's Gamer's Day and for the launch of both the PS3 and Wii.
Two more deaths
I was traveling when Sony sent me my Playstation 3 debug loaner, but they were kind enough to ship it straight to my mom's house in El Paso.
I was there for her 60th birthday as were a bunch of other relatives. Throughout the party, my Uncle Mero seemed not to be doing so well. He was ashen and gray and complaining of being tired and having chest pains. But he chalked it up to straining a muscle while moving furniture.
The day we left he was taken to the hospital for chest pains, but the doctors said that he would be fine.
From my mother's we traveled to Las Vegas for a short stay, where I failed to spend my time with the PS3 thanks to the crappy television in the room.
The day before we left, my father called to say that my 90-year-old grandmother was sick and in the hospital. Things didn't look good, he said. A few hours later he called to say she had passed away.
The next morning we left to come home. I had already told my dad I couldn't make the funeral because the Wii was waiting for me at the house and I had to finish testing out the PS3 and then the Wii to turn in my story for the Rocky.
The two reviews, and all of the game reviews that were to accompany them, were to take up four pages of the newspaper including the cover of the feature's section. Not turning them in wasn't an option.
When we arrived home I called my mom to tell her we had made the drive safely. She told me that my Uncle Mero had passed away that morning.
The doctors had released him, telling him to get another check-up when he made it back to his home in Hawaii. He and his wife went by a house they were fixing up to check on some things. At some point, my uncle said he wanted to go outside and rest in the car. When his wife came out to check on him a few minutes later he was already dead.
Thanks to everyone for reading this, and all of the other things that I and the rest of Kotaku has written this year. You mean more to us than you probably realize. Without readers we'd just be typists... and not very good ones at that.
Take care, have a wonderful New Years and remember that while games are fun, they're not all that matters in this world.
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