Every now and then someone asks, "Why don't you just go back to producing silly videos, playing videogames or something?"

Usually, that someone is me.

Full transparency: I don't talk to many people these days. A guy at Costco once mistook me for someone from Corridor Digital and that was pretty cool. A highlight, really. So no one actually asks me anything. Which is nice.

About five years ago I hit a fork in the road. I could keep doing the thing that paid the rent while slowly eroding my sense of self, or take the terrifying detour toward figuring out who I wanted to be. I wasn't proud of the version of me who lived online. I wasn't particularly fond of the one offline either. Videogames weren't the problem, but they were a representation of a world I didn't belong to.

Let's talk about the on-camera persona. First of all, it's not for me, at least not full time. I applaud those who can do it. If it ever looked like a natural talent, it wasn't. It was survival.

The only reason I ever showed my face was because early in my career Machinima sent a 5"4' man to Cologne, Germany to interview some game devs. He wore my red Master Chief helmet, shot some footage, sent it back to me, and said, "Here, you do the rest of the work now."

That was some real BS. I wanted to sit on a cramped plane for twelve hours. I wanted to be jet-lagged. I wanted to walk around in public wearing a poorly painted child's Halloween costume. But the truth is, I didn't want any of that. I was just afraid of losing the work I had put in. The other producer sent on the trip encouraged me to show my face, because according to him, "It should be you out there, no him."

That meant taking off the helmet and putting on a mask. I have crippling performance anxiety and there's only one way I learned to deal with it. Imposter syndrome doesn't quite capture the feeling. It's more like a deeply rehearsed impression of someone I thought people wanted. Affable. Quick-witted-ish. Never too weird, never too real, but open at times. The sardonic funny guy. The one-note dork. A face I put on every morning for a decade and hoped no one noticed.

So after the shorter-man-than-I tried to take my place, the weekly news show where I was just a voice turned into a daily, live-action me. That turned into a channel. The channel turned into a persona. And on and on; the mask growing thicker.

I never meant to build a career around videogames. I was just in the right place at the right time. Whatever personality people saw was me mimicking guys who were better at it. Even in the early Inside Halo days, I was chasing someone else's rhythm—in awe of Mike's (aka Sodagod) production abilities, his voice delivery, his editing talent. That's how it started. That's how it stayed. Imitation at best.

Even as a kid, I remember just being what other people needed. A chameleon complex wrapped in a floury tortilla of people-pleasing. I never wanted to forge my own path. I just wanted everyone to be happy. I didn't want anyone else to leave me. I was happy to making content in and around games, it was a passion of mine but it never felt real.

"But you played videogames for a living...how could that not make you happy??"

Look, Mr. Therapist Who Looks Like My Great-Grandpa Having Sex With Someone Else's Great-Grandpa wearing a mask of Henry Kissinger: yes, there were moments. Laughs. Wins. Silly bits that landed. But mostly I was on autopilot. Reacting. Performance over presence. A kind of emotional dissociation that looks like fun from the outside but feels more like sleepwalking. A fugue state, whatever that means. I had to disconnect otherwise the anxiety would kick in and I would freeze. I didn't realize I was just stacking all of that crap, letting it fester.

I have a lot of positive core memories around games. Genuine moments of glee. Yes, it's nostalgia, I know that. Experiencing Metal Gear Solid for the first time. Doing the longest Majora's Mask quest until 4am, reading a borrowed Brady guide. My mom walking in after an overnight shift, early dawn seeping through the doorway. "What the hell are you doing up?" she screamed. "Getting the Fierce Deity mask!" The subsequent beatings were well worth it.

Those were personal moments. They never felt like a job.

Around 2017 I noticed I'd lost the ability to enjoy games without seeing them as fodder for the YouTube machine. Couldn't get an hour in without thinking, "Gotta relive this moment for when we record." Everything had to be optimized—not for joy—but for views. Even casual conversation got swallowed by the red and white machine. Being stopped mid-sentence, told to "save it for the podcast."

Nothing about that life felt real.

But what about streaming?

It never clicked for me. I don't enjoy watching it. I don't enjoy doing it. I've tried it solo and every time I could feel the pressure shaving years off my life. Some people thrive in that space. I die.

These days I play what I want. No camera. No commentary. Just me and something I probably won't finish. The way it was before every hobby got monetized. My brother and I play Marvel Rivals from time to time. Almost 80 years of combined life on this earth and we finally found a game we can play online together. Even if it's just a Chinese interpretation of a Western mythology, licensed by a behemoth corporate entity aimed at the ass-loving gooner crowd; it's been a nice way to connect without feeling performative.

I've found new interests that capture that feeling of discovering something new. Cooking. Self-hosting a server that's always breaking. Home automation that's also always breaking. Occasional motorcycle stuff.

The common thread is I can enjoy them alone. I can choose to involve someone else, but mostly it feels more special as just stuff I like. No pressure for a hot take. No need to get in on the latest trend.

And that's the crux of this whole thought-vomit: I don't want to add more noise to the crowded arenas. I don't want to make every hobby of mine into a video. The digital space thrives on performative outrage and shitting all over other people's hard work. It's easier to cast snark than throw out genuine praise. I did the snark thing a lot. Hell, I still do. I'm working on it.

And from my experience, nobody hates videogames more than people who play videogames. It's a very binary crowd and I rather not make that my sole identity again.

That's not to say I won't do gaming content again. I just don't think it'll be my one thing.

I'm contradicting myself here—shitting on people's hard work while saying I don't want to do that—but I love broken videogames. I know games are one of the hardest mediums to ship from a technical perspective. I just get so much joy out of breaking them. And now that I'm playing most things on Bazzite, things are breaking more than ever.

I'm sure something will come of this unholy union.