This is my first interview so be gentle 
I had in mind a couple of people that i wanted to start this out with. I ended up starting with St0rmtk421 (aka Eddie). I chose him because he is and has been and still is a very important and integral part of this fine website. But I feel very few people know of him or if they do they don't know much about him.
Many years ago (about the same time RFGen went to MySpace and Wikipedia...)
It was rumored that this was the only known picture of this
mysterious individual.
[img width=200 height=294]http://www.rfgeneration.com/images/staff/18.jpg[/img]
Now without any further adieu....
How did you find RFGeneration?
I knew Mike Collins since grade school, so when he told me he was putting a website together for video games, I volunteered to help out. We started talking about creating a games database, and I wrote up a simple search page and game pages. Then we talked about having collections, and it kinda steamrolled from there.
What made you join?
I've always enjoyed video games, even though I never had any real consoles growing up (became more of a PC gamer as a result). I was just learning how to program websites at the time, so when Mike mentioned he was working on a website for video games, it seemed like a perfect opportunity for me.
What made you stay?
Well when I was the only coder for the site I kind of had to stick around to make sure things keep working... But seriously I knew a lot of the original founders and for some reason we've always had such a great community around this site which has always made me want to continue helping out and being a part of it.
Have you met or personally know any of the other members of the website?
Obviously Mike (Lord Nepenthean), and of course the man who has since stepped up to help captain the ship in his stead (TraderJake), and The Evil Leon, all of whom I have known since grade school. I also know Hydrobond, The Maligned Leon, SFS/Three, Seamar, Shimra, Maccabeus, Mrs. C, and MPHDeltaForce. A couple of years ago at Cinciclassic I had the pleasure of meeting Den and Sauza in person, both of whom are great guys.
What sort of work do you do on/for the site?
Back in the day I was the lone programmer who maintained the search, collection, and submission tools. Since then Dave has joined in and has rewritten the new submission system, the blogs, and many other new features. I still maintain and work on the collection and search systems, as well as some other administrative stuff.
Are you an active game collector? If so anything specific?
Can't really say I'm a collector of games. As I said I was more of a PC gamer and I love finding the old shareware games online and giving them a go every once and a while. But as for collecting games, I really don't do that.
Whats your favorite game or series (or even genre if your like me and have trouble pining down specifics.)? Why?
Being an engineer, I've always enjoyed strategy games, RTS in particular. One of my neighbors had the old Genesis game Herzog Zwei back in the day and I always loved taking him on in that game. Another of my favorite RTS games was a little known PC/PS game called Warzone 2100 (which is open source nowadays, so you should all go download it )
What do you do outside of RFG?
I'm currently going to school at the University of Cincinnati to pursue my masters in Computer Engineering.
What are you passions?
Gaming wise, I always enjoy a good LAN party or playing a game of rock band/guitar hero. I also enjoy movies (have a projector in my basement) and I've always been interested in photography as a hobby as well.
So in closing I would like to share one of my favorite(and probably earliest) RFG work related quotes from St0rm:
"Alright people, I didn't make this so you could all tell me how cool I am. I made it so that you can create and share your collections.
SO USE IT!!  "
|
|
