I’ve been a gamer since before I knew the classification existed.  I started out playing console games but have since graduated (yes, I’m joking – console gaming is legit) to PC gaming as well.  My passion for gaming grew beyond simply playing.  I was an active forum participant on gaming sites and read everything I could get my hands on.  While I have been an enthusiast for quite some time, I had never delved any deeper than that.

Given my enjoyment of and passion for gaming, some friends and I began working to build a game of our own.  We had lots of ideas, lots of user experience, but an admitted lack of inside knowledge of the game industry.

Then, in the summer of 2011, I landed an internship with PLAYXPERT.  It was during my senior year of high school and it seemed like the perfect opportunity to earn some money, earn some school credit, and work in an industry that I love. 
PLAYXPERT has helped me get a better grasp on the gaming industry, adjusting my perception of game developers, publishers, and other game-oriented businesses.  Companies who I had watched and studied from afar through their games, their communities, and their products began to seem smaller.  I started being able to put faces and names to big titles out there as well as getting closer and more active in communities of gamers.

The summer internship turned into a full-time job.  I have since built a couple iPhone applications that are now live on the App Store (Release Pro and Urban Hipster).  I am also the community manager for gamerDNA.com, one of the sites that PLAYXPERT operates.

As community manager with gamerDNA, I am responsible for the health and vitality of the site.  I work with the management team to determine the trajectory of the site, and I work with the development team to make sure that bugs get addressed.  I love the communication with users - being able to see and hear how they feel about site updates and events gives me great visibility and understanding of how communities are affected by things in their environment.  This helps me to plan out the future of the gDNA community and site.  It also gives me more insight into an industry that I love.

I am still working with a small group to build a game of our own.  We are in the concepting phase and have made a lot of great progress.  It’s still not easy to create something unique in the gaming world, but I have a better understanding than ever before of how the industry operates.  And the more I get to know it, the more I love it.