Bitmobber: Frank Anderson
Age: 30
Profession: Currently enrolled in a Masters program to teach middle school English Language Arts
Local: Greenville, SC
Twitter: @Videosta
Live: Valor79
PSN: Valor79
Steam ID: 79Valor79
Gaming History/Personal Info:
Gaming is just one of those things that seems to have almost always been a part of my life. My youngest gaming memory is playing my brother's Atari. Next is finding out a certain fat man who favors the color red was not real by my brother opening a closet door to reveal a NES bundle with Mario Brothers, Duck Hunt, two light guns, Rob the Robot and copies of Metroid and Rad Racer.
One summer I was saving up for a Sega Genesis, but then I made a boo-boo. I had a few friends over to spend the night and we discovered the "free" phone sex lines in a nudey mag I had acquired. Lets just make a long story short and say that I discovered the true meaning of the word "free." My purchase of a Genesis was pushed back a few months. Sadly, the whole reason I wanted a Genesis over a Super Nintendo was the "arcade perfect" port of Altered Beast... AND by the time I finally bought my Genesis it no longer came with Altered Beast. TRAVESTY!
I spent a lot of middle school going to the mall with my best friend and splitting copies of PC games like Doom, X-Wing and Comanche.
During high school I mostly stayed away from games until my senior year when a PlayStation was introduced to our senior lounge. We spent countless hours not studying and instead playing Jet Moto and Twisted Metal. Soon after I got to play Goldeneye and Star Fox 64. That is when my love of gaming truly blossomed into a healthy obsession.
For a while during the time of the Gamecube I would have called myself a Nintendo fanboy. After I finally broke down and bought an Xbox I turned into a Xbox fanboy. By the time I bought a PS3 I was console agnostic. Of course, in between these times I was a pretty belligerent force online and could often be found fuelling the flames on the 1up message boards. At the time I was pretty highly depressed, lonely and getting into substances I should have been staying away from.
Now, I am substance free and a much more mild person. I'm happily married and the father of a brand new baby boy, but my love of gaming persists.
I have a case of Gaming ADD that has me almost constantly playing about three games. It really takes an engaging game to keep me playing from start to finish.
For a few years I was a freelance writer for my local paper. I wrote game reviews as well as online pieces, but I really only got paid enough to help pay for about half the games I bought. I really enjoyed writing, even though I never planned on it. The only reason I became a writer was because I was so unhappy about their previous writer's work that I immediately replied when they asked for submissions. I was hired a short time after. I really grew to love writing about games, but found the experience a bit unnerving as well. Often my pieces were edited without giving me any kind of feedback, and I never knew when or if my pieces were going to get published. The worst moment was when the cut a whole paragraph off of my Metroid Prime 3 review. It completely dashed what I was trying to say out of the piece. I was pretty upset, but didn't complain because it was already getting obvious that the only reason I was still there was because my editor really liked me.
Eventually the paper I worked for realized they would save money publishing one crappy writer in every city rather than having each area have their own voice, so I was let go. After this I joined up with a friend who was starting his own podcast and website. I got a huge thrill out of working on it, but it soon became clear that I was the only one really invested in the site. I eventually stopped working there when I figured out that I was staying up writing till 3 am most mornings, while the rest of the "staff" was sleeping.
I also worked at GamesStop for years. At one point I thought I wanted to make that company my life.... Then I realized I was being a complete idiot and quit to join the program I am in now.
Now, I write about gaming just for fun. It would probably be more accurate to say that I am compelled to write for fun. I no longer dream about making it a job, mainly because I have so many more responsibilities. Also, I am pretty excited about being a teacher... even if the pay sucks and I am much better at teaching literature than I am grammar.
Favorite Games/Genres:
Action/Adventure games are probably my favorite, but I am also willing to try almost any FPS on the market. I play RPGs every now and then, and tend to be into western style RPGs more than Japanese... Although I love the Persona series. Go figure!
I love a good platformer and if you see me playing a kids game online, please don't mock. I have found that with all the dreary, grey shooters out these days that playing a colorful, positive game every once in a while keeps me in a good head space.
I really enjoy Survival Horror titles, but over the years I have learned that I have a fair amount of trouble actually finishing them. To date the only two Silent Hill games I have beaten are Shattered Memories and Homecoming. I have beaten most games in the Resident Evil series though.
My favorite games of all time are Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, Super Mario 3, Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Perfect Dark, Fable 2, Star Fox 64, Peggle, TimeSplitters 2, Resident Evil, Oblivion, Eternal Darkness, Metal Gear Solid 2, Persona 3, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Grand Theft Auto III, Metroid, Sim City, Gauntlet: Dark Legacy, Phantasy Star Online, 7th Guest, Betrayal at Krondor, X-Wing and Crimsion Skies
Favorite Contributions To BITMOB:
My favorite posts of mine are all from my "Can Video Games Make The World A Better Place?" series. I take my gaming seriously, and think we should all be doing our best to prostelyze the good side of gaming. Here are the links to these stories--
Can Video Games Make the World a Better Place? (Re-Mission and Folding@home)
Can Video Games Make the World a Better Place? Part 2: Creativity,
Can Video Games Make The World A Better Place? Part 3: Charity.
Can Video Games Make the World a Better Place? Part 4: Body Movin'
Deserted Island Game (with internet):
My choice would be Phantasy Star Online. Sure, I already put hundreds of hours into playing the single player portion of the Dreamcast, Gamecube and Xbox versions, but I don't regret a moment of it. Playing it online would be a pleasure! Of course, then you get into the issue of no one really playing that game. So, in a perfect world I would be playing a new version of PSO that doesn't suck like Universe did.
Deserted Island Game (w/o internet):
I suppose the game to go with if there was no internet is Oblivion. Sure, I enjoyed my initial run of Fallout 3 more, but I eventually got sick of the grey, barren landscape and found myself waxing poetically for the lush, green vistas of Oblivion.
Three adjectives to describe yourself:
Heafty, nice and.........................................huggable.
What do you like best about BITMOB?
I found Bitmob after becoming pretty disillusioned with 1up after the mass firings and shuttering of EGM. To me, the Bitmob community puts most gaming sites to shame. I can find like-minded individuals here that are out for a more meaty discussion that "Xbox is Nubmer ONE!!!!" or "PlaySation is da shizzzzz!"
I love that I can still dabble in writing about games here, and still get a rush whenever I get feedback or one of my stories catches on.
Great Meet the Mob post, Frank! Man, you must have a lot of patience if you're going to be teaching middle school kids. And that's one of the best Sega Genesis stories I've heard.
I feel ya on editors ruining your pieces when you write for a local newspaper. I was a freelancer for a short time as well, and they butchered my one-and-only "games as art" piece. Not only did they not publish the entire thing due to it being too long -- they also left it a cliffhanger and changed the argument to make it sound like I was supporting Ebert. I'm not against editing, but they should at least inform you of their censorship policies and word count guidelines.
Ha, I remember when my Fallout 3 review got edited at my college paper. I originally had said I enjoyed when you met up and fought alongside the Brotherhood of Steel and thought they needed more of these squad-based shooter instances.
It was cut to say "the game would be better if it were a squad-based shooter," with no reference to why I felt that way. People gave me weird looks about it and I had to explain myself constantly.
Also, because I wasn't a big fan of Fallout 3, I tried to make a joke at the end of my review about being "over encumbered" with so many great titles that fall that Fallout 3 was something to drop. That got cut too.
It's still my favorite line I've ever written and it didn't even see the light of day.
@Chase: It's beginning to sound like butchering the author's work in campus newspapers is fairly common.
Finally, some context!
Also, someone else who gets to hang in the parent wing here at BitMob. Which, oddly, is a much more popular place than you'd first expect. But, like you said, that's what makes this site so great: it's unbridled open-mindedness. As the kids say, FTW!
Frank - I have no logical explanation for this, but I was picturing you as older than me for some reason.
Thanks for sharing. Keep up the good work!
Good to get to know you better. I didn't realize you were so old. I think with so many in the parents wing of Bitmob, we need to break it up into 2 sections. Young and hip parents, and over the hump parents. 30 is the hump, by the way. Sorry.