My bedroom is dark, I stare intently at my T.V. and all other sounds are drowned out. I'm 9 years old and I'm about to set a new record in Mario Kart Double Dash on my GameCube. That is the start of a lifetime of gaming. It is now 11 years later and the only thing that has changed is the console I play on. I still play Mario, but now I have expanded my library to include First-Person Shooter, RPGs (Role Playing Games), Puzzle and the new genre of Sandbox gaming. You can even see me at the Laramie GameStop once or twice a week. To others this might just be a hobby, but to me, this is a part of my lifestyle.

While was in Middle and High School I had sever ADHD causing me be easily distracted, cause disruptions and drive my mom up the wall. I got my first console when I was 9 years old, it was a brand new GameCube and for the longest time the only game I had for it was Mario Kart Double Dash. with my mom going to school and my dad in Colorado, there wasn't a whole lot of money to spend on luxuries like video games so I spent a LOT of time on Mario Kart. I got really good too, I would invite the neighbor ids to race me and I can say I was never beaten once. I was in love with games. I wanted more and more, plus at the time I was an avid Yu-Gi-Oh player so it felt like the next phase of my gaming life. Come school and video games calm my nerves, even when they aggravate them. All that excess energy I had was finally given an outlet. a process fell into place through middle school. Come home from school, do homework, do chores, play video games, go to hockey, come home and repeat. Because of my ADHD and the lack of understanding that most 7th and 8th grades have, I was quite the outcast. I wasn't the smelly nerdy kid who avoided everyone. No, I was Ryland, the hyper, twitchy, and loud kid who was always in trouble with teachers who had equal understanding of ADHD as their students. In high school it got a little better, I was in therapy and I was able to talk to others without putting my foot in my mouth too much. I had lessened my time playing, but it was always there, I spent more time with Hockey and trying to socialize. I was playing excessive amounts of Call of Duty and Assassins Creed. This is about the time I started looking at Video Games as art and literature, not just mindless time wasters. These ideas took me to the internet where I found thousands of people who think the same way I do. YouTube was finally hitting its stride so popular YouTubers like PewDiePie, CinnamonToast Ken and Vanoss Gaming were till in the thousands of subscribers. I became enthralled with Lets Play videos, this idea of just playing video games and recording myself while doing it was amazing, but I had neither the time or money to even attempt it. Then one Christmas I got my first laptop. First thing I did on it was research on how to make one of those videos that I had spent hours of my life watching. My first capture card was a Roxio Game Capture card. It was cheap, $120 range, easy to hook up and the program was free. That's when the road blocks stared to pop up. My Playstation 3 didn't allow game recording on it, so I was back to square one. I just was playing video games, then I had my first emotional reaction to a video game that wasn't frustration or happiness. It was awe. Pure awe. The video game The Last of Us tells the story of a man and young girls tale of trust and acceptance. It was more than just playing a game, I was connecting to the characters like in a movie or book. I felt their pain and and relished in their success. I had never felt like this before to a video game, never realized that they can teach lessons so profound. I began to play games to find the meaning of each one. What was is the message they want to say. This was the point where I realized my need to have video games be apart of my life forever.

Que 2014, I'm graduating in two days and I get a call from the GameStop here in Laramie.

"Ryland, do you still want a job here."

"YES!"

"Good, we will talk later about a good time to get you all settled in."
"Thanks so much."

I have been working there ever since and now I have access to nearly any game I want to play, and at a discounted price. As I worked I met people who saw video games at the same level as me, for all the beauty they held and the lessons they could teach. I also was given a position where I was asked for my opinion on games and it would be considered the "professional opinion" to that person.

I know that video games can be addicting and people can take it too far, like in all things. It's all a matter of finding balance. the community is considered one of the most venomous, but there is so much good that one can gain from them. people have made friends across the globe just because they had a similar taste in games and met in some online forum. I want the stigma that video games have to end. not because most of them are becoming less and less true, but because when the video game community comes together it has proven that it has more control of this industry than any other communities over theirs.

So with my story out in the open, I want to start something here on the Odyssey. My friend does the Gentleman's Guide and I want to something different. I want to do my own game reviews. now, it won't be every other week, but when a game comes out, I will play it, tell you about and what I think,easy, peasy. I want others to see video games as I do. The anger inducing, frustration riddled, beautiful, rich and vibrant world that video games accept anyone into.