In the very beginning, I had no ambition for games to be my career. Sure I had made games casually; I made my first game software at 7-years-old during my initial programming class at Penn State University. We made Snake in QBasic. There were no books or special interests groups for gaming then in Pittsburgh 1992, so games weren’t on my radar as a pursuable future.

This remained the case as I grew up. My love of games as entertainment and even as a tool for learning grew. Pennsylvania’s GATE Program allowed me to play Rosetta Stone to learn language. Will Wright’s SimCity, Number Munchers, and Oregon Trail were being played in computer class. Sports, especially in Pittsburgh, were the most universally accepted example of beneficial gaming, and ultimately what led me to a more serious take on games.

In 1999 I attended an international boys’ boarding school and became close to a group of Korean students. Our relationship was symbiotic: they felt isolated, thousands of miles from their home and culture, and I was a local, starved from lack of international exposure. In our cultural exchange, they introduced me to a game from their country: Pump It Up. Sports were mandatory at the school, yet this dancing game would inspire me to exercise despite being exhausted from daily practice. It motivated me in ways I’d never been before, and I was obsessed. It was magic!

As an American, Pump wasn’t available to me in stores, but the game that inspired it, Dance Dance Revolution, was. I got every iteration of it I could find, and celebrated it online and in my community. This led me to seek out social gatherings for it, and as my talent for the game exceeded what the community could provide, I became a pro gamer in what is now called “esports”.

During my tournament circuit starting at the turn of the century, I was contacted by Red Octane, who was beginning to be known as the go-to source for peripherals and hardware associated with rhythm gaming. It cost a lot to import games from overseas, especially metal dance pads that weighed in excess of 50 pounds. Red Octane’s value proposition was that if you acquired a copy of the GuitarFreaks software for example, the predecessor of DDR, you could buy the heavy guitar peripheral from them separately. With my website and connections to their target audience of hardware buyers, I was perfect for their consumer sales needs and became a paid seller of Red Octane’s products.

Despite Red Octane being a California-based company, they were active on the East Coast where they found me. This can be seen later when they collaborated with Harmonix Music Systems, a MIT-born games startup in Boston, to repurpose their GuitarFreaks hardware to create Guitar Hero. My value to Red Octane continued into college where I was able to provide the hardware to the student body and DDR became a cornerstone of the school’s gaming culture.

In 2005 Red Octane was acquired by Activision and I received my final check from them. I was thrilled to have had the opportunity to work with them. My rhythm-centric, web-based experience would continue again that same year as I was hired by Viacom’s MTV Networks to report on social web trends in my school and with my peers. Even in my teens, I had created a brand for myself that led to more great jobs with brands and companies that I loved.

My past would continue to catch up with me: making games with Will Wright, building the new SimCity at Electronic Arts, developing a language game at Rosetta Stone, creating games for health, change and learning about international cultures, and the list continues. It’s really amazing how even without actively pursuing them myself, professional opportunities in my interests have found me.

The lesson that can be taken from this is that true passion shows through. Celebrate your interests and make a job of it, and your interests will quickly become your job. It’s a cliche, but it’s too true to not be said, as I can tell you from my life’s experience. So many young people I meet and teach are working desperately to start a career in games, but it’s rare for me to meet someone with a genuine, earnest love for their interests. It seems that the world constantly pressures us to define and quantify ourselves, but few successes in my life came from me trying to manipulate my story. Accept and respect who you actually are and don’t focus on the spin.