After my Dad gave me a brand new Pentium 166MHz PC in 1996, I played way too much Quake. What started as a casual hobby in gaming led me deep through parallel paths of game-programming, and pro-gaming. Quake 1's game source code was provided as "QuakeC", and I spent years making small mods for groups of friends while learning what made the game work. At some point in casually playing the game on dial-up modem (yay 250ms ping), czm introduced me to the world of competitive dueling.
I took a collection of replays/demos from the True Gamers Invitational tournament and studied them until I knew what led to each of the decisions the players were making in their games. Shortly after I got on cable Internet, I was contesting the top players and received invitations to join the top teams.
On my Youtube channel, I have some videos that attempt to teach Quake 1 duels by reviewing some demos from one of my favorite tournaments that I played in. I got the idea from a demo that rapha reviewed for a Quake 3 tournament he played in.
Quake Tournament History (2003 - 2008)
1st - GGL Americup 2 (1on1)
Top 16 - Quakecon 2007 Quad Damage (all 4 quakes)
1st - GGL Minicomp (1on1)
1st - Genocide 5 (4on4)
3rd - Vendetta (2on2)
1st - NQR North America Season 1 (4on4)
1st - NQR North America Season 2 (4on4)
Eventually I got word of Reflex Arena, which is a game that has elements of various Quake games in a custom (amazing) engine. I was very involved in that community, making a video tutorial series that was featured in the game's menus (and the text version of that tutorial is here), moderating the Discord server and forums for a while, competing in the early tournaments, and casting later tournaments.
Reflex Tournament History (2015 - 2016)
1st - New Years' Reflex
3rd - Sanetopia 2
1st - Reflex NA tournament
Since Reflex, I've only been casually playing games with friends (Quake Champions, Overwatch) or playing singleplayer games. Metroidvanias are among my favorite, and I feel there is a distinct lack of FPS Metroidvanias on PC that needs to be corrected some day.
After I graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a B.S. in Computer Engineering (2007), I took some time to settle into real life while gaming a little less seriously. For 9.5 years, I worked in Systems Engineering of a Nuclear Power Plant, maintaining computer systems the operators used to run the plant, administrating the site Software Quality Assurance program, and helping out with cyber security.
Right now, I'm a co-founder of The Meta, serving as the Director of FPS Design and Senior Engineer. We're hard at work on upgrades to the FPS Aim Trainer, and can't wait to share it with the world!