In the summer of 2012, the summer of my sophomore year in college, I needed a job. I liked to talk and write about film, so I set out to find something that would help get me experience, hoping I was well on my way to becoming the next Roger Ebert. Instead, I found a website called Operation Sports that was eyeing new feature writers for sports video game content. I loved sports, but I knew next to nothing about video games. I applied anyway. Raychel Sanner, the editor in chief at the time, took a shot on me. All of the sudden, I wrote about video games and that was my job.
As part of my career arc, I thought it important to become more familiar with video games – something that I wasn’t particularly nuanced in outside of series like Halo or Call of Duty. I started sifting through some of the best reviewed games of the Xbox 360 generation (that was the only console I owned at the time!) and found Borderlands and Dark Souls. At the time of its release, it was amazing to me the lack of writing there was about Dark Souls, which had shaken my very being to the core. At the time, I wasn’t the right person to carry that torch. Flash forward five years later and it feels like games are in an entirely different space. People like Dan Stapleton, Jason Schreier, Ryan McCaffrey, Jeff Gerstmann, Brandon Jones, and Laura Kate Dale became inspirations to me. These people had been writing about games for years now, all eloquently and with different perspectives. I wanted to be a part of that, and decided I would be.
After a couple of years learning under Raychel and my friend Chase Becotte at Operation Sports and a handful of other freelance oppritunities, I decided to move on. Since then, I developed a platform for myself through my near 5,000 followers on twitch.tv/bengeman10. After working with Blake Guthrie at the University of North Florida, I took an interest in academic-style writing. I formed Epilogue Gaming in the Fall of 2017, recruiting Blake and our friend Preston Johnston to help with its formation. Their curiosity for video games and enthusiasm for research behind the words on the page helped get Epilogue to the point it is at now. Without them, or any of the people mentioned on this page, this website would not exist.
Since the website’s inception, I have spent a lot of time behind the scenes trying to organize and manage the various talent we now have doing work for the website and community. I still stream from my Twitch channel, though less than I used to, and produce content for the website – mostly videos and reviews. I host the Epilogue Gaming flagship podcast (available on iTunes and elsewhere) alongside Emilia and Marcos. As of 2020, you’ll also be able to find me leading the way on the Epilogue Game Club via EpilogueGamingTV on Twitch. I am so thankful to have a platform and voice in a division of entertainment that was once undervalued and lacking voices. Now, I’m proud to be one among many that talks about, loves, and respects the value that games have brought into people’s lives.
Thanks for being a member of the Epilogue Gaming community.
