7 years...
Hard to believe that's how long I've been on this site for. Although I was inactive for a good 2 or 3 years of that time, I've had fun. I usually don't make my anniversary blogs too special, but with GameSpot's changes coming up, I may leave the site for good. So this year's anniversary blog will be different and split into two parts. I'm going to talk about my life on here, from my humble beginnings to the present day. Have a seat, grab some popcorn, and listen to this old man's story. :P
Chapter 1: Joining GameSpot
My GameSpot life began when my good friend, ultamite_gamer (he's one of my close real life friends), recommended me to join a gaming website. GameSpot was his favourite website and so invited me along. Until that point, most of my gaming world revolved around Pokemon and Super Smash Bros. I didn't know much about the gaming world outside of that. He was a huge gamer back then and he wanted to make me into a hardcore gamer like him. So on September 15 2006, Sniper-Gamer was born. My username came from my e-mail account at the time (I don't use it anymore) and I was starting to develop a taste for shooters back then as well.
Upon joining GameSpot, I was amazed of how much the gaming world had to offer as well as its past history. Finding such a huge database of games, came as such a surprise to me. I spent most of my early days looking around for games, adding to my game lists etc. In search of places to chat, I stumbled upon these places called unions. They were places for like-minded people to gather and talk about games. Naturally, with my main interest in games being Pokemon, I joined a few Pokemon unions and started my union life on GameSpot. I decided then that I would like to make my own union. I was into MMOs at the time, and I was leading a few guilds so I figured I could handle a union too. As soon as I hit level 6, I applied to create my union. It would be about Pokemon of course. Because you need 6 people to form a union, I invited my friend ultamite_gamer, as well as a few other people I had met in the other Pokemon unions. On October 5 2006 my union, The Ultimate PKMN Fans Union was born!
Chapter 2: The Ultimate PKMN Fans Union
In addition to my friend ultamite_gamer, my initial officers were: -Predatorian-, Burningwolf216, cpman, and pikaby. My friend only joined me to help establish my union; he's not a RPG fan, let alone a Pokemon fan. Since I was still relatively new at the time, I left it up to my officers to recruit people. We reached a good number fast though after the initial rush, not too many people joined. It also didn't help that I had set the union to invite-only since I kind of had the vision of an exclusive club. :P Now since my friend wasn't a Pokemon fan, I mostly talked to my officers and the recruits we had. I grew especially close to cpman and pikaby and they became my first friends here on GameSpot. We had a great system going; Pokemon news would be met with a lot of cheer and some criticism as we analyzed the games. And of course, there were specific threads dedicated to individual games. My union was active for a good three years before activity started to drop. By the time the last posts came around in 2010, it was just me and pikaby left along with a few random recruits that had just joined (I had set the union to open in hopes of reviving the union). I believe the last post was in June 2011 shortly following the release of Pokemon Black/White.
Chapter 3: The Inactive Years 2009 - June 2011
Around 2009, when the union started to die, I found myself coming to the site less and less. My video game playing had increased significantly around then, particularly non-stop hours playing Modern Warfare 2. I no longer felt like coming to the site to look up gaming news. I had Pokemon and Call of Duty and that was all I really needed. I still visited the site from time to time to post in my union and other unions which I had joined. But I felt like I was done with GameSpot. The website had become boring to me.
So... what happened to change my mind and what would lead to my eventual return? Find out next time! ;)