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More Victims <-[Previous]
Feb 11, 2009
I WORKED AT THE SAME INTERNET COMPANY FOR 11 YEARS, AND ALL I HAVE TO SHOW FOR IT IS ... SOMETHING LIKE 600,000 TEE-SHIRTS
Whoa, hello! I wasn't expecting visitors. Please, have a seat. Twelve years ago, around the time that a 56K modem was "pretty slick" and everyone was excited about the future of ISDN, I started a website with a man nicknamed "Bastard." The site was called PlanetQuake, and in order to build a community of users, we chose a friendly and welcoming slogan: "TOTAL DOMINATION OR COMPLETE HUMILIATION." It had a warm, home-towny kind of feel, like a Norman Rockwell painting.
Bastard enjoyed demolishing people at Quake on his own server with his dedicated T1 connection. I didn't know it at the time, but often, if he wasn't getting a low enough ping, he would disconnect the web server and take the site down so that he could dominate at Quake. That's one thing I learned about running a startup company: you have to make sacrifices for what's important.
Twelve years have gone by since we launched that site, over eleven years since I came aboard as a full-time employee. GameSpy started as a four-person company sharing office space with a guy named "Mr. Chucklepants" who created a business selling Christmas-themed screensavers.
We looked at what was happening with Quake on the PC. During our nightly deathmatch sessions, we enjoyed kicking ass. And we thought to ourselves, "ALL games should have native Internet play. ALL games should have built-in server browsing. ALL games should have a community where people can make and share mods..." this would just expand the number of potential asses we could kick online. We had a hunger to shoot every man, woman, and child on the earth in the face with a rocket launcher while taunting them over voice chat. Everyone has to have a dream.
Over the years we did our best to realize that dream. We created community sites, editorial hubs, file download centers, and technology that powers hundreds of games on PCs and consoles. I'm immensely proud that Japanese kids going online with Nintendo's Mario Kart Wii are using our technology to throw turtle shells at people around with world. Yep, we did it.
And now? I have like 600,000 tee-shirts from trade shows. I'm thinking of building some sort of circus tent. I can't get rid of these things. I'm serious. I'm pathologically incapable of throwing out a free swag tee-shirt with a C-level videogame on it. Even worse are the shirts that are part of history. I have an Ion Storm tee-shirt. That thing's awesome. Probably my most prized shirt is the Tabula Rasa shirt autographed by Richard Garriott that he sent me, with a personal note, completely unbidden, because he liked one of my columns so much. That brings a team to my eye. I will wipe it with my Duke Nukem Forever shirt from 2002.
Kids, there's a moral to this story. About following your dreams. If you dream about shirts. I can help you there. I'm not really sure about your other dreams. The ones with Scarlett Johansson rolling in the pizza dough? I can't make that one happen.
But I digress. Today is my last day at GameSpy, and I want to thank all the readers who've been with me this whole time! The Daily Victim was one of my favorite features and I hope you enjoy these archives. Start with Victim #1 and work your way through the whole list, or, Check out the reader favorites. You can also read my farewell PlanetFargo column for details about what I'm doing next. Also, I may sometimes twitter at Twitter.com/DaveKosak. But no guarantees.
Keep on gaming, everyone!
Just What is the Daily Victim?
The Daily Victim is GameSpy's daily tribute to the millions of fine people who populate Internet culture. Every weekday a new victim is posted. The most beloved victims will return in our full-color feature and continuing story each week.
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