Video games have become integral to the way I identify myself. And that’s a huge reason why I find it so difficult to write about them.
I started pretty young with a Famicom knockoff called Good Boy that I broke in with a cartridge packed with 101 games—Super Mario Bros., Circus Charlie, Battle City, Excitebike, and dozens other titles of diminishing quality. It was a clear sign I was hooked when my dad had to restrict my gaming to summer vacations because my school grades were suffering.
My fixation for video games only grew stronger from there. I owned every generation of Nintendo handhelds. With my paltry teenager’s money, I amassed a stack of bootleg computer games over the years, shaping my love of single-player fantasy and sim games. I dabbled in LAN-based games with my high school friends, which confirmed my dislike of social gaming altogether early on. Instead of having friends to discuss Video Games as a subject, I bought and read back issues of EGM, GamePro, and Game Informer cover to cover. And, with the inevitability of the internet, my consumption of video games transcended the act of being merely played: I became enraptured by the media cycle of games being announced, hyped, speculated upon, reviewed, critiqued, and celebrated in every medium imaginable.
Which leads me to the reason I've never written about my experiences as a gamer until now. I guess it’s a classic case of imposter syndrome: are my observations about the video games I play mine or from a video essay I just watched? Maybe this brilliant opinion I have about The Last of Us is actually just the ghost of a Reddit thread I read a few days back, masquerading as an original thought? I found it difficult to have a voice when I know so many great writers who already do that on my behalf.
By creating Cutscenes, I hope to overcome that fear of sounding unoriginal about my experiences in gaming. As I’ve said, video games are just so ingrained in my lifestyle that I’m doing myself a disservice by not writing about them more often. I’ll most likely write about very personal takes that won’t resonate much with a broader gaming audience, but that’s okay. I’d like to do this for myself, for starters.
Hopefully, I write well enough to begin a conversation with you. I’d love nothing more.