There was not a single thing I could even be remotely negative about! I spent 7 days having the single best time of my life. Nothing happened to make me sad (apart from leaving), nobody was a douche (even king3bo) and everything just completely overwhelmed and surprised me.

Now, I did spend about an hour of the flight home writing a massive ZOMG I LOVE YOU post, and this may well turn into one of those, but I don't want it to. Firstly because I'll start cuddling my cute-ass Yoshi plushie and start crying, and secondly because I'm totally a real man and all negative.... or something.



Basically; this event changed my life, reaffirmed some things and made me re-evaluate others and I'm not good enough at writing to ever express my emotions well enough for me to be happy with it. It's an experience unlike all others and is just so personnel and yet communal at the same time.

So, instead, starting 5 paragraphs in, I want to talk about the impact the week will have on my life.



First and foremost this whole this confirmed that I will never, ever get a shitty boring job. I will have, in a year, a very good degree in Computing from a very very good university. This means I could move to a shitty city, work for a shitty corporation, earn a massive wage and be a miserable fuck. That is not going to happen.

Instead, I want to earn my money making games and blogging. It's the rock and roll of the electronic generation and I want in. I don't want to be owned or have my opinions edited. I want to write what I want and if people can't cope with that, then go to another site! It's not like the internet is a small place.



With that in mind, I have decided to give Negative Gamer another try. It's basically a place where I can rant and talk about games with my own, loud voice. I know I can rant here, and believe me I will, but I love the idea of having my own place.

I will also be blogging a lot more here and on Ripten (Ha! You thought I was going to say I was leaving to go write on my shitty wordpress site! Admit it). Here, I get to write stuff I know the people I love and admire will read. A place where everybody knows my name and where nobody is afraid to be not cool. I'm also on the Jim-cast (or Podcastle, depending who you ask) and it's awesome to feel like I'm contributing something good to the site.



On Ripten I have the platform to not only improve my writing, I can also get contacts, go to events etc and have the credibility of a “real-blogger”. I know I can get that from here, but Dtoid feels like a family, so whenever I go to an event and say I'm with Dtoid I almost feel like I'm getting a favour. Now when me and Jim go to events, I go with my own credentials, and it's such a good feeling. Also, as I said, posting 3 news articles per day helps me improve my writing. I'm using thesaurus.com less and lass each month.

I also want to make more games. As a kid I learned to program in OPL on an old PSION 3 and made hundreds upon hundreds of text adventure games. I only knew GOTOs, IFs and basic I/O, but I used it all to make quite complex games with items and stories and everything! I want to get back into that. Online, browser-based text adventure games will be my first call. Then move from there. After talking to the Gamecock guys in the bar one night, it's now my dream job. Well, it kinda already was, but now it's a reachable dream job.



Before PAX I was becoming disconnected and pessimistic about basically everything. The games I love began to suck or be boring, my internet blogosphere became crowded with idiots and I sometimes just wanted to chuck it all and have a normal life. PAX, or maybe I should say Niero, has changed that.

Niero, I may have told you this in the bar on the first night, but you are one of the few people who goes through life just changing people. Changing them for the better, and for the most part being completely unaware of the impact you have. I have nothing but a deep admiration for you and I really hope you always continue being this awesome. Stay humble and stay awesome. Thank you.

I love you all so so much and I feel so overwhelmed, amazed and inspired.

Thank you Destructoid.

Also, cocks.

Starts bawwing and hugging his Yoshi plushie



Also, huge thanks to the kind people who have uploaded loads of pics to facebook already, most of these pics come from there :)