Hello everyone:

For those fearless enough to actually want to follow my Blog on a regular basis you will have to wade through literally paragraphs of text. These arent meant to be short posts, just ideas I have had at large and at random, they might be about me, about a game, life, something I read, anything. One thing will be constant though they will be long.

So with that in mind I would like to write my first proper Blog entry. My name is Gabriel Bell and I am a 20 year old BSc (Hons) Computing (Games Development) student (in my first year) at the University of Abertay Dundee, Scotland. I have had dreams to enter the entertainment industry since what seems like forever. 

It began when I trully started writting (towards the ends of the 90s). Writting fictional premises for stories. What were initially short 1000 - 2000 word essays soon turned into full blown novels. There were problems though, sometimes I just couldnt be bothered to write out ideas that seemed to stretch on forever as well as the fact that it seemed (to me) like an inferior medium to film, which in many cases could take a literal piece of work and transfer it to screen. As well as the fact that whenever I began writting a film would begin rolling in my mind. As much as the text on the pieces of paper I wanted to see different camera pans, shots, sets, things that I just couldnt put into the story without going "The shot was from behind his back and over his shoulder". 

After almost three years of writting I had realized that what I really wanted was to SHOW people things that where within my imagination more so than tell them about. Prose were good, but the power of image seemed superior to me. A medium where you could show the same story in different ways (at least from a photography standpoint) was something that I found immediatly appealing to me. Besides film incorporated the telling of stories based on scripts which were to all purpose and intents nothing more than written stories for film.

On that same note I had been watching films since I could remember. My father is the biggest movie buff I have ever met and I inherited his passion for the medium. I enjoy watching movies so much, that for a long time it seemed like creating movies was the way to go. When I would watch a movie, I would take so many different aspects into consideration I surprised myself (crew, cast, camera shots). It seemed like a natural progression towards my goal of telling stories to people and more importantly moving them emotionally.

It wasnt until December of 2002, when I finally got a Playstation 2 that I played a little title known as Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. Now dont get me wrong I had been following this game since it had been announced and had played the original way back in 1998 (I wasnt knew to gaming in anyway). For some reason though despite that it wasnt until I completed that game, I realized games would take and excel what movies could ever do both in terms of storytelling and user involvement. For some reason I guess I had always leaned more towards film, because more people understood it including myself.

Playing that game I realized what my goals where in life and who I wanted to become. Looking back at it I remember games like the original Metal Gear Solid having one of the biggest impacts on me, besides perhaps Starcraft, Twinsens Odyssey and Final Fantasy VII, that any form of media could ever have hoped to achieve.

Having choked up when ~Spoilers~ Otacon laments the death of Emma ~End spoilers~ I knew one could do things with games that were not only FUN (in ways movies and books could not be) but as moving and as impactive as any of those forms of media. It was thus in the beggining of the new millenium that I realized that my life long strive to convey stories and move people emotionally could not be better achieved than throught the medium of gaming...