Imagine a little boy carrying a 45lb backpack containing tomes full of esoteric information that he isn’t likely to ever retain. He doesn’t need them today but he does need to keep up appearances. There’s no telling who’s paying attention. He makes his way over to the local middle school, not because he has any intentions of actually walking through the front door, but to deceive any potential pursuers. Business as usual, as far as any prying eyes are concerned. He commits to the arduous trek, through dirty streets with busy storefronts and across major intersections devoid of greenery. He goes out of his way to pass by people that are barely awake in a city that never sleeps. They seem to him like herds of animals on their way to slaughter, too occupied by their own fear to notice him. But he means to be seen. He needs as many alibis as he can muster.

Origin Story

The man and the woman that he cohabitates with are both too distracted to notice that anything is amiss today. They seem to be living in their own little worlds, orbiting his own only when absolutely necessary. The boy doesn’t know it, but they too struggle with apathy and overwork. They’re all much more alike than any of them know. He isn’t too worried about them right now though. No, what’s kicking his heartbeat into overdrive at the moment are the police. After all, he’s about to commit the biggest misdeed that his young mind can imagine: skipping school.

“Be cool. Act natural. Smile. That’s right, don’t avert your eyes… Don’t stare at ‘em though!”

His is a noble mission, one that supersedes his fear of punishment. There’s no time for learning today. His friends are relying on him. He is just and righteous and his courage will not fail him today.

He arrives at a park, some distance from the school that can’t hold him. He hides and impatiently waits to hear the telltale signs of the start of a new day: the school bell. It screams accusingly and his skin jolts away from his body, threatening to leave the rest of him behind. There’s no turning back now. He stashes his heavy books in the green, taking care to remember where he puts them. The next stage of his mission requires agility, stealth, and finesse.

He takes the long way back home, full of maple canopies and Amazonian bushes. He has a couple of close calls, namely one near a donut shop. Turns out, the stereotypes regarding cops and sweets were not exaggerated and he curses himself for not listening to the myths. He perseveres. The way back home takes twice as long as usual, for he has to be ever vigilant of any adults in uniform. Even the construction workers aren’t to be trusted. He can’t risk any of them seeing him. He doesn’t underestimate the close-knit network of grownups. Not anymore. They’ve burned him one too many times. Before he realizes it, he’s made it to the four story building that he calls his base of operations, with its missing bricks and broken windows.

As he climbs, his heartbeat reverberates through the stairwell, threatening to alert the neighbors. He’s done all he can. He’s performed admirably. The rest is up to Lady Luck, ever fickle. Any one of these doors could fly open, revealing him to the naked light of day, destroying all of his hard work. There’s the door, his door. All he needs to do is walk through it and he’s home free. He fumbles with the key as he hears footsteps drawing near. The apartment yawns awake as it consumes him. He trips over the lip of the threshold as he slams the door behind him, urging it to rest once more. He presses his ear to the door, hoping against hope that he wasn’t spotted. The footsteps get closer and closer until they’re right on top of him. He quiets his breathing and… the footsteps get further away. He’s in the clear. Now the real work can begin.

He runs over to his bedroom. By now his parents are at work and so there’s no reason to be quiet. They won’t be back ‘til evening. Even so, he switches on the device that has served as his only solace, lowering the volume to the lowest possible setting. His friends Donald and Goofy welcome him to the fold, congratulating him on his success. And the three of them dutifully prepare to defend Master Xehanort from the Nobodies of Organization XIII. It’s a thankless job, but somebody’s got to do it. And he can’t imagine how anything else could ever be more important.

That little boy and his friends did eventually go on to defeat Organization XIII that day. And his parents were none the wiser.

My History

I’ve often felt like a ship in the middle of the ocean, collecting scraps of cargo everywhere I go but never having any sense of direction. Aimlessly drifting to and fro, unable to anchor onto anything tangible. Video games served as my lighthouse, guiding my way to stiller waters.

I’ve had a lot of passions throughout my life. So much so that I wonder if I might not possess some latent autism, what with my tendency to hyper-fixate. When I was still toying around with the idea of illustration, I would stay up at all hours of the night perfecting some piece of art or another. When I got into fishkeeping and aquascaping, the art of creating underwater landscapes and environments, I was juggling 10 aquariums at once (much to the dismay of my roommates). When I decided to try my hand at dog training, it consumed 9 years of my life. I have a hard time doing anything half-cocked.

I’ve held a lot of jobs in my life. If I had to guess, it would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 different jobs over the course of 15 years. A few I had for years while others I couldn’t stomach for more than a couple of weeks. All completely disparate jobs in completely different industries, but they all had one thing in common: They all felt like a monumental waste of my time. And I bet a lot of you feel that way.

And how could you not? Corporations that have more money than they could ever spend in 100 lifetimes are allowed to continue to abuse their employees. Owning a house, going to college, and raising children are all increasingly more expensive adventures to undertake. And, if you’re a fellow video game enthusiast, you’ve probably noticed the more than 30 studios that have disappeared over the course of 2024 alone; an industry that is estimated to have generated hundreds of billions of dollars in global revenue this year laid off tens of thousands of programmers, artists, and writers in the name of corporate restructuring. These people weren’t lacking in experience or passion or work ethic, but that didn’t seem to matter. Kind of makes you wonder why any of us would even bother.

Throughout all my years of heartaches and nihilism, I had games and I had writing. Video games helped me to see the parts of the world that I was often too distracted to appreciate. And writing helped to make sense of the maelstrom inside my mind.

I, and probably many of my generation, was raised by pragmatists. Not through my parents specifically, both of whom were absent for a great deal of my youth. I was raised instead by TV, movies, books, and video games. No, the pragmatists were the members of society that, as children, we often look to for guidance. Educators, professionals in their fields, adults that purport to have unlocked the meaning of life. At some point, people were sold on this exercise of feeding the machine with their blood and their sweat while The Powers That Be get fatter and richer. I was led to believe that there was righteousness in suffering silently, in broken backs and in calloused hands. Even while contemplating a profession in the arts, I was encouraged to pursue something more in line with something that might actually generate a wage.

“You know that artists don’t make a ton of money, right?”

Well, I guess I rebelled pretty severely from that notion, the way a kid raised with Christianity might dye their hair and gravitate towards My Chemical Romance. I’m surprised that I ever acquired a high school diploma at all with the amount of classes that I missed. I was considered a generally smart kid but I felt like the American education system failed me in a lot of ways. When I moved from New York to Florida, I had to retake many of the courses that I had already taken years ago. Something in my transcript got lost in translation. Have you ever made a kid retake an Algebra or a remedial English class? I can tell you from firsthand experience that it’s tantamount to torture at that young age. And it felt like more of the same after I joined the workforce. I’d plug away at mind-numbing work for a moderately living wage, rewarded with more mind-numbing work for raises that amounted to pennies on the dollar.

I don’t mean to turn this into a session of “woe is me.” I only mean to illustrate some of the frustrations that I’ve accumulated over the years. And I’m not alone. More and more people are deciding to put their fate into their own hands. Twitch streamers, YouTubers, and other creatives see fit to cut against the grain of a system that isn’t interested in serving them. They’ve decided to stop running around a maze, waiting for the proverbial scientist to drop a piece of cheddar, shocking them as they meander down the wrong paths. Hence the onus for starting this blog.

BitWorm

In truth, the picture that I see in my mind isn’t one that’s in high definition. I have a lot of ideas for what this might turn into and very few answers for you at the moment. And I think I’d prefer it that way. How often have you had to sit in front of someone who holds your life in their hands while you squirm and lie and oversell yourself? I’d rather this not be that.

I do have some inklings though. I imagine emulating the staples of blogs like Kotaku or Polygon: reviews, previews, guides, and news. I wonder if I might be able to churn out the number of listicles that reside on sites like GameRant. I fantasize about doing real journalism, the likes of which you might find in the books of Jason Schreier (hard recommend). I even have some ideas that are, dare I say, wholly original. Or maybe I’ll do none of those things at all and, rather, this blog will be nothing more than the ramblings of a tempestuous madman.

Whatever the case, I know that, at the moment, I’d like to play video games and I’d like to write. And I’d be honored if you chose to join me on that journey.

Long has the stereotype of the gamer been dispelled: that of a man-child alone in his parent’s basement, his brain rotting away, enraptured by violent depictions of gunning down his fellow man. Yes, games can be shallow and frivolous. And I welcome frivolity. But they can also be so much more than that. They can bring to light the best of us and are enjoyed by people on completely opposite ends of the spectrum. They can make us cry and laugh and think and feel in a world that oftentimes doesn’t want us to do any of those things. There’s no question that games can be art. And the best kinds of art are shared.

I’m something of a nerd (surprise). If I love something, I can’t help but want to know everything about it. That passion carries over to gaming, arguably the world’s most multi-faceted medium. If a protagonist rides a horse, I wonder what kind of training it takes to keep that animal calm in the face of overwhelming odds. If a designer sprinkles in commentary regarding collectivism into his game, then that means I have no choice but to consume the works of Ayn Rand. If I play a game that takes place in a post-apocalyptic United States that’s been ravaged by an epidemic, then I turn into an amateur epidemiologist. I treat video games the way a worm might treat an apple, getting into all of its nooks and crannies, acquainting itself with the entirety of the apple’s anatomy, and leaving satiated for days to come. I’m a bit of a BitWorm, you might say. If you can relate, then I’d love to create a home for you here.

Reach out to bitwormblog@gmail.com if you have any thoughts regarding the direction this blog might take with the subject line “Solicited Advice.” I welcome the input of readers, writers, editors, and gamers of any persuasion.

Thanks for joining me! Happy gaming.