P.M. Gleason

My earliest memory is dueling with my brother, us wielding Atari joysticks and pretending there was a
sword sticking out of each. In my mother’s wedding album, there are pictures of the Zelda intro screens
that I took while the reception was going on.

Games have been a very big part of my life, and have helped to mold my educational path and creative
urgings. Video game narrative is my focus, and I feel it has a lot of potential that has yet to be tapped as
a compelling storytelling medium.

What I’m Interested In:

I’m big on turn-based strategy games, my genre of choice, but they are becoming a rarity. I’m hot
and cold when it comes to role-playing games, and I dip into adventure games every now and then as
well. If a game has an interesting premise, and it’s executed well, I’m not horribly finicky about genre
conventions. I play a lot of first-person shooters and survival horror, as well.

Outside of games, I’m interested in the gaming community and culture at large, and how video game
companies interface with their fans and audience. I’m also interested in the superstructure that the
gaming community has made since things such as databases and wikis surfaced.

What I’m Not as Interested In:

I’m a soloist, and outside of massive multiplayer online games, I tend to prefer to play alone whenever
possible. There’s a variety of reasons for this, mostly because I appreciate narrative to the point where I
feel as if I’m spoiling it with others being present. It changes the entire dynamic of how you play a game.

I will freely admit that I loathe sports and have no interest in sports games whatsoever. I’ve tried! Can’t
do it. Besides a certain NHL game on genesis, which was just pure entertainment due to the high levels
of violence in an era when Mortal Kombat was sparking off controversy about violence in games and
censorship.

Favorites:

I don’t generally sit down and compile lists of things I like the most, but if you spend any amount of time
in a general gaming forum, you come to have access to this kind of information readily.

My favorite game series of all time would have to be X-Com, not counting the current thing that is in
production, which I do not consider to be an X-Com game. After that, I’ve always been into Tomb Raider
and the Diablo series as well. Disgaea deserves an honorable mention. Mass Effect is too new to make
my list, but I highly enjoy the games. Dragon Age…not so much.