I might be a little late to the party, and everyone might be sick of these by now, but damnit I need to tell everyone why I love Destructoid. You see, when I first joined the Dtoid community well over a year ago, I came for two main reasons. The first reason was because I needed a place where I could meet people who were as passionate about video games as I was. I have a lot of friends who play video games, but most of them aren’t passionate about them. Yeah they might play some of the big name titles like MGS4, GTA4, and Madden, but that’s about it. They don’t play any of the lesser known titles and they don’t pay attention to what’s going in the industry.

Because of this, I could never really talk to any of my friends about video games the way I really wanted, and that bothered me. I needed a place where I could meet people just like me, who I would actually be able to have real conversations with about the video game industry and all the crazy games coming out. I realized the best way to do this was to blog, and out of all the websites I looked, Dtoid had the best community blog section. This was the place I needed to be.

The second reason I joined Destructoid was because I was hoping it might be a way to get a job as a video game journalist. At the time I absolutely hated my real life job, and I wanted a change to something I was passionate about. Since I was passionate about playing and talking about games, I thought being a games journalist might be the best fit for me. Unfortunately I had absolutely no experience at all, so no one would even consider hiring me. I of course didn’t blame them. I then thought that if I started blogging and writing about games, maybe someone would think I had talent and might hire me. At the time the idea seemed extremely farfetched, but when you have a dream and a goal you have to start somewhere right. If you never even start toward your goal, you won’t get anywhere.

Well it’s been 1 year and 3 months since I joined the Dtoid community, and what I’ve gotten out of this site has just exceeded every expectation I ever had. First of all, I found exactly what I was looking for, a place I could fit in perfectly. I have had so many incredible and in-depth discussions about games here that I never thought I would have with anyone. Besides that, I have met tons and tons of incredible people, from every walk of life and every part of the world you can imagine. I’ve even forged some bonds of friendship with certain people which I hold very dear.

As for my hope that joining Destructoid might help land me a job as a video game journalist; for the longest time I tried and tried to write good pieces so that someone would notice me, but no one ever did. After a while I sort of gave up and submitted to the fact it would probably never happen. I never lost all hope, as I’m a very optimistic person, but the dream faded more and more with each passing day. Then one day I got an extremely unexpected email from an unexpected source, offering me a chance to write for a new and upcoming gaming site. After checking out the site I accepted the offer, and I’m now proud to say that I’m an official staff writer for GamerLimit.com. If you get a chance you should check out the site. I write under my actual name: Shawn Evans.

Unfortunately, being a writer at Gamer Limit has reduced the amount of time I can spend writing for the Dtoid cblogs, but I still visit the site as much as I can, and of course I'm still part of the Cblog Recap Team. Most importantly though, my heart still lies in this community. Actually, it’s really the community that makes Dtoid so great. There simply is just no other video game centric community like this on the entire internet. There is a reason I visit this site 20+ times a day, and that’s because of all the incredibly awesome people here. Everyone from the staff to the community members make Destructoid a special place. Thank you, to everyone.

Destructoid …. I <3 You!