The following was my submission to the Geg Kasivan fanfiction contest. It ended up much longer than I had intended, but it turned out well, but, I didn't win.Here is my entire submission. Don't feel obligated to read the whole thing, but you will probably enjoy it. Sorry for the bad formatting but this site is crazy, Thanks.
Greg Kasavin, the very name has become a thing of legends among the long and storied field of game journalism. His in-depth, tough but fair reviewing style inspires all who read it to expect the highest standards of the games they play. Before Greg moves forward into game development, it is worth taking a look backward at the choices and live which have established Greg Kasavin as the must trusted reviewer in video game history. The following is the partly-true (mostly made-up) story of his life.
Like so many prominent game journalists in the United States, Greg was born in Moscow, Russia in 1977 (In fact, the Kasavin’s household was located right across from Zangief’s). At this time of his birth, Greg’s family was undergoing serious financial difficulties. Greg’s father (referred to as “Tim” from now on) was a prominent figure in the broad but still burgeoning field of “technology”. However, since Brezhnev (who had a deep seated fear of a Robotron apocalypse in the near future) had taken office, he had been gradually downsizing the entire field. Tim had been in fear of it for years, and in 1983, it became a reality, he lost his job as a leading technology guy and was forced into a job making smoothies in the soviet army. After two days of doing this, Tim decided that he and his family would immigrate to the United States.
The transition to a whole new country was hard on six year old Greg because of the loss of his friends, but he soon realized that the opportunities presented here were worth the sacrifices. In fact, Greg’s ability and love of observing situations and objects fairly was apparent from his early life. In, fact a common story at the Kasavin household every Thanksgiving is when young Greg first saw the Golden Gate Bridge and gave it a 6.8, saying that it “simply hadn’t lived up to expectations”. Greg’s parents believed that to find success and happiness, one simply had to be willing do the best work they could. Greg clearly took this philosophy to heart as he quickly became one the top students in his class. Both the teachers and the students were simultaneously impressed and horrified with Greg’s ability to write a 5 page review of the continuity of the writing style and illustrations within “Horton Hears a Who!”.
Through Greg found immediate success in the academic world, his social success was more hard fought. If you were to look over the schoolyard during a typical recess, you would see a large group of kids playing kickball or touch football. Then, if you were to look a little to the right of them, you would see Greg, a black T-Shirt tied around his head like a ninja cowl, slinking around in the grass and throwing punches and kicks at invisible rival ninjas. It would take Greg a while to find a true social crowd to hang out with; he soon found something to tide himself over until that time.
As Tim was always on the cutting edge of technology, he had owned an Apple 2 computer since 1980. So, as a birthday present for seven year old Greg, who had always displayed a love for fantasy books, Tim gave all three Ultima games. No one could have anticipated the effect this would have on Greg’s life. Though he had found his brother’s Atari 2600 to be an enjoyable diversion, the Ultima games proved to Greg that games could be something more than a diversion. These games were entire stories, entire worlds that could be placed inside of the computer with the simple insertion of a disc. After months of playing these games, Greg knew that he wanted to help play a role in creating these games in the future.
Greg continued on his path of doing well in school and playing every game he could get his hands on. However, it was not until 1992 that Greg’s life would undergo its next major change. It was a hot day in July and Greg was ready to spend some serious quarters on King of the Monsters at the arcade. Luckily for history, there was a new game in town. When Greg entered the arcade, he was baffled to find every machine empty. That is, except for one machine in the corner, which was completely surrounded by at least 10 people. 15 year Greg got to the back of the line and pushed a few little kids out of the way to get a better view. The game was Street Fighter 2. He saw something which completely blew his mind. Though the game itself didn’t look radically different than anything he had seen before, the way people were playing the game completely caught Greg by surprise. Rather than simply moving their characters around. People were moving their joysticks in precise little circles to get their characters to shoot fireballs. This was a level of depth Greg had never seen and he knew he had to play it. One kid was winning every game and people were constantly being sent to the back of the line after losing to him. Soon, it was Greg’s turn, he excitedly stepped up to the machine and picked the character that looked the most like a ninja (which was the main criteria he used when picking a character for any game). Anyway, by the time he had figured out which kick did the most damage; he was hundred-hand-slapped to the back of the line.
Though Greg’s first Street Fighter match was not a victory, he would have many in the future. Nearly every day that summer, Greg would go down to the arcade for at least 3 hours and play game after game until his hands were sore and callused from Dragon and Tiger Punches. He soon became a sort of celebrity at the local arcade, people would come from blocks away to challenge him and he made many new friends that shared the same interests as him. As with any sort of fame, it can go to your head, Greg’s life spiraled out of control for nearly a month and he embarked on a bender of greasy foods, sassy attitude towards his elders, and some games of World Heroes that he would most likely like to forget. Though Greg soon got his life back in order, the significance of these events in cannot be overstated. Greg realized that video games were more than a simple hobby that he and some buddies did in his basement while eating salty snacks, but it had grown into a community, a culture, full of dudes playing games in their basement while eating salty snacks. Greg understood that his best road to game design would lie in becoming part of this culture.
Greg continued to grow through school and excel in writing. He decided that his ability in writing might be the tool he needed. He got a job working at Newtype Gaming Magazine, but soon left that job when he realized that only about two people read that magazine. His father recommended that he try and take advantage of this new tool known as the “internet”, which at the time had more than 200 users. Greg took this to heart and he and some friends started a website called Arcadia Magazine (a name that confused many readers looking for it on the newsstands). Greg ran this website through the rest of high school and through his first year of college at Berkley. Despite the fact that everything reviewed on the site was simply given an 8.2, the powers that be at the local website Gamespot.com, recognized that fact that Greg had talent and baldness, which could seriously bolster the reputation of their site, so, they offered him in internship. Faster than you could recognize the hard punch sound, Greg accepted. So, for the next four years, after classes, Greg would go to Gamespot and make coffee for and lose rounds of Tekken to Jeff Gerstmann and Ryan Macdonald. However, as more of the editors left the site for jobs in game development (those insensitive jerks), Greg was able to gradually move up the chain of command until he became editor-in-chief of the entire site. Which is where we have known him until 2 days ago; thanks to his creativity and devotion to hard work, Gamespot.com has evolved into one of the most widely read video game sites on the internet (heck, it’s still my only audio source). Greg’s work ethic and high standards will serve well as he branches out into the field of games design. However, all he has already done for Gamespot.com and for the industry as a whole will not be forgotten. Oh yeah, and somewhere in there he got married and had a kid, so, good for him.
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