As a junior studying at the University of Oklahoma, I often get asked my why. Why am I here? Why did I decide to become a writer? And (a question I’ve seen through glances and eye rolls ten too many times) why video games?
Don’t worry. I’m not going to give you some long, profound, and borderline egotistical answer about why I’m going to be the next writing messiah to bless the shelves and the screens for the next decade to come. Rather, the answer is quite simple. I like stories. No, really. That’s it.
Since I was a little kid, I’ve always liked stories. It was my escape; whether it be from books I was probably too young to be reading, my favorite soap opera ‘House of Anubis’ that I was painfully addicted to, or stories that lived rent-free in my head, desperately waiting for me to give some sort of medium to.
Yet, I didn’t start out wanting to write at OU. I was admitted for international relations, but after a bumpy (and painful) ride through Price College of Business, I landed back to my escape. The one place I can truly be myself in: writing.
Now that I went through my monologue, you may still be wondering: why video games? And again, the answer is quite simple. I really enjoy them. I grew up loving RPG maker horror games, such as “The Witch’s House,” “Mad Father,” and “Misao.” I started watching let’s plays on YouTube, watched my sister play “Lego: Star Wars” in the living room after school, and even spent years learning how to finally beat both of my sisters at “Mario Kart” during our annual Thanksgiving battle. But it didn’t stop in my childhood. You could find me in one of the basement pods in the Biz watching Markiplier complete his run of “Until Dawn” during my freshman year after my study sessions and my passion for video games only grew during quarantine.
So after (almost) twenty years, I’m proud to say that I finally figured out my why: I’m here because I want to write video games.