My first memories of videogames were Wolfenstein, Descent and Sonic for the Sega Genesis. For those of you who weren't around for the Sega Genesis age, those games didn't have a save system and were isnanely unforgiving. Typically you had 3 lives spread across dozens of levels and if you died, you restarted the whole game. But there was one game in perticular that got me: Red Alert 2. I played it at my friend Jeremy's house. I had NEVER seen an RTS before. I begged my mom for the game for christmas and waited patienty, well as patiently as a 10 y.o. could. 

I starteed putting red and blue tacks into a piece of cardboard and pretending I was playing. I'd come up with some kind of arbitrary, illogical rules as I messed around. Slowly, it evolved into dice rolls and different units that could do different things. I had a system for what my opponent did in response to everything and there started to be times where I'd start loosing. Imagine a combination of checkers, chess and DND. THen something odd happened...I got the game for christmas.

I played it and within 30 mninutes I had a strange feeling: the game wasn't remotely as fun as I remembered it. The anticipation for it was more exhilarating than the actual game. I was torn ebcause why would I want to go back to the tacks when I have a real videogame in front of me? I ended up choosing the videogame but that strange confliction always stuck with me. Little did I know, it was the first signs of my creativity desperately needing an outlet. 

Time would pass and I'd find myself with another piece of the puzzle that is my brain: Starcraft Campaign Editor. Starcraft was one of the biggest videogames of all times. Conventions, tournaments, you name it. It was the Halo of my generation...until Halo came out lol.

While I loved the campaign, the map editor was the absolute shit. You could modify the game so much that it wasn't even really an RTS anymore. It used a simple "Action, effect" dropdown menu to do everything that would be considered coding. I spent more time making than I did playing. It was a combination of that and making stuff with KNEX that made me realize how badly I wanted a creative outlet. 

I had dreams of being a game dev as a little kid, but back then you HAD to do coding and there was no clear guide on how to get started. Every intro to coding video was convuluted and too technical to get into.