Growing Up Geek: Ed Zitron

When I grew up in England, I legitimately wanted to be a games journalist. This sounds strange, but the moment I started using tech, I started playing games. I'd play The Humans on my dad's computer for as long as he'd let me. I'd even play an aged version of Duck Tales on a monochrome laptop. Well, calling it a laptop was generous, as this thing had handles like a suitcase and if you dropped it on your foot you're going to get a broken bone before you get a broken computer.

My first piece of technology that was "mine" was the Game Gear, a monstrously large SEGA handheld (I have small hands, and this was a challenge) that I used to love so much that I'd hide from my parents before bed to play it more.

Then something interesting happened; that weird internet thing came to be, and I'd start playing Ultima Online using my dad's PCMCIA sub-56kbps dial-up connection on Compuserve. I'd learn from other people in chatrooms, which all seemed far more innocent than they are today, about how to build computers, what the different specs mean, and eventually we'd purchase our own family computer that my dad would let me help pick (because I somehow knew more). I was elated to start playing games with real 3D in them, and even learned how to install new RAM and 3D cards (such as the Voodoo FX5500 - which added in things like bump mapping and anti-aliasing) that my dad didn't know why he was buying but knew it made me happy.

I loved it. I'd learn about the internal parts of the computer through whatever pre-Wikipedia means I had, usually those I knew through the vestigial world of online gaming and internet forums. It was fascinating and I felt like a wizard being able to stick things together and then the electricity would go through them and magic would happen.

Depressingly, things at secondary school would not go so well, as I'd find my new-found geek knowledge didn't play so well with a private school of sporty bullies. I'd dive further into Everquest than any child (or human) should, one of the early adopters, importing the game from America and somehow convincing it to accept my (dad's) credit card. I'd get eat, I'd get sad, I'd play Everquest. Rinse and repeat for a few years. It was sad, but I sat there - without realizing it - that I was actually seeing the rise of one of the most lucrative parts of the games industry, something that would go on to influence huge parts of technology. Everquest, by proxy of its (relative) popularization of the experience system (though it was far from the first to do so) would lead to everything from World of Warcraft to the % of "done-ness" you'd find on your LinkedIn profile.

By 17 I'd learned to loathe my geeky side but couldn't escape it. I'd started to reject the comics my brothers Matt and Will had given me, I'd somehow gone through the entire anime timeline of "Hey this is cool!" "huh that's alright!" and "oh my god, tentacles, no," and thus was back to simply playing Everquest out of addiction. On the side I'd still play my console games, which are really easy to put time into when you don't have friends (I was an RPG man, sticking to the Final Fantasy titles).

Then something curious happened. Through some family connections I got an internship at the now-dead Computer & Video Games magazine (which I'd read since the age of 8). My dad sat me down after my first weeks went well and I was offered a chance to take part in the "readers' issue," telling me that perhaps all of the gaming stuff was good for me, and that despite being in a school where it was generally looked down upon to have this kind of knowledge, I could make a career out of it. A day or two later, I had a guide to how I was going to lose weight from him, and I dropped 100 pounds in about a year. My father is a marvelous man of mathematics and spreadsheets and management consultancy. One might call him a geek, but that's for him to say, not me.

One day, after graduating high school and feeling quite svelte and fancy-free. I still played games and felt fairly proud of turning it into a career. I emailed my old friend Will Porter (who at the time was a lower-level person at CVG) - he was now Deputy Editor at PC Zone, the other games magazine I read that has also been shut down.

I asked him if he had work.

"You know anything about MMORPGs?"

I laughed, emailed him I'd played Everquest for 5 years and remained quite into WoW.

"Well, how about a review of a Final Fantasy XI expansion?"

I ground away at FFXI for hours, then stepped up to review the expansion.

A hundred reviews and way more random features, previews and think-pieces (within games and technology) later, I'd end up deciding to leave England. Getting a visa to write about games was not happening, so I thought I'd try Public Relations.

People were quite sad when I left. They even make a fake-Ed to commemorate my passing.

When I moved, I joined a firm that was quite confused by my technical knowledge. I'd meet "tech PR" people who didn't know what RAM was, or what haptic feedback was, or how to put together a PC, or how even the most basic HTML worked. Many would even boast that this gave them an "objective perspective" on the industry. I said it gave them "bugger all." Many reporters would agree with me.

I'd continue to use this new-found "money" that one makes in PR to buy random gadgets, tablets, phones and other doo-dads, simply because I wanted to know. I'd sort of married myself to the idea of picking apart technology endlessly, and it helped talking to reporters, who usually were quite surprised that a PR person would be able to sit there and talk anywhere near their level. It was strange. I felt out of place at events.

One time I was in trouble at my first PR job for "being too geeky" on a call with a client. I'd eventually stifle my geekness into the back of my head through a series of bad dating experiences and worse work experiences.

Out of spite, and immense luck, I'd write my first book and somehow convince Warren Ellis, author of many fantastic comics including Transmetropolitan, RED and the even more excellent book Gun Machine, to write the foreword. I receive hate mail at a consistent clip thanks to it because apparently "this guy doesn't know anything about PR" and "just writes comics."

Some years later, I'd end up starting my own PR firm and felt my geekiness snap into place. I couldn't hide who I was anymore. I couldn't be a facsimile person and I simply gave in. I'd have every game release I wanted, I'd buy geeky things and accept who I was as long as I didn't turn into a social hermit again or bankrupt myself in the process. Eventually this won me huge clients, some that I can't even talk about publicly (yet), because I actually knew up all about the things they were talking about and could do my job.

I'd been slowly getting back into comics for years, and my brother (through a few excellent recommendations and the film Guardians of the Galaxy) recommended I consider purchasing some comic artwork, as after all Arthur Adams had just drawn the cover (and was drawing the entire issue) of one called Guardians Team-up. A few months and a few lovely lunches later and I handed Arthur a check and bought the entire original interiors and the cover of the issue, always wanting some artwork on my walls. Or one entire wall. This led to a huge collection of interiors, including one of the largest of Warren Ellis and Stuart Immonen's Nextwave. With 12 issues of the comic and a huge cult following it's become my geek crusade.

Now I've both grown up and grown into being a geek. I hope I never grow out of it.