Do I have to do this in the same Pass Notes style as all the Need to Know threads?
No. Plus, I'm not sure anyone really remembers
The Guardian's G2 section from the 1990s (where the
Pass Notes style comes from). Maybe Mort remembers. Okay then, what do you want to know?
What's your gaming history?
Hardware-wise, it started in the 1980s with a Spectrum 48k (rubber keys!), before progressing to a BBC Model B, and then an assortment of Apple Macs and PCs. I have owned the odd console (N64 and a PS2), but button-mashing isn't my thing.
Those aren't games! Tell us about the games!
The stand-out is
Elite. Original, wireframe
Elite on the BBC. Best game ever, for me. Afterwards, I liked
Civ2 and
Hidden & Dangerous, but serious MP didn't begin for me until 1999, with
Half-Life and
Counterstrike beta. When
OFP arrived I was hooked. When I'm senile, I'll tell the nurses I lived in Montignac.
What's your OFP/ArmAx history?
I played
OFP with Germans and Austrians on the Battlefield server, before finding TJ's, where I became part of both the TimeZone Warriors (AKA the Tizzies) and BAS (Ballistic Addon Studios). Via BAS, I also got involved with some
VBS1/2 projects. When
ArmA came out I began writing and producing the
BAS f mission making framework, worked very briefly with Dslyecxi and joined
Shack Tactical (eventually becoming an NCO and staff). BAS f became
F2 and is still going now - many FA comrades are contributors.
What about the Folk sessions?
I left ST in 2010. I didn't want to stop playing, but as a parent I couldn't commit to any serious group. I also wanted the relaxed-but-organised atmosphere of the sessions Tigershark ran in 2009, and the mid-week EU sessions I helped organise at ST. One night, in a Budapest hotel room, I decided a
low friction vanilla session might work; I thought others might enjoy it too (in parallel, the ARPS crew was having pretty much the same idea). After that, I stopped drinking. With Tigershark, Headspace, Xiathorn and G, we set up the Folk sessions, later meeting and teaming-up with the ARPS admins. The Folk sessions ran until the end of 2012, when FA came into being. I kept the dacha.
And what about real life?
I live near London, in a very small house with my wife and children. On paper, I'm an independent consultant, but it's an elastic job description. Mostly, I talk to people in corporations and make diagrams in MS PowerPoint. Often it's interesting, and sometimes I get to go to sunny places like Beirut, where they also fire AKs when they're
happy!