Introducing the Division

Posted by Jeff Shaw at 6:00 AM Apr 01, 2008

Geographically diverse and eclectic in terms of console preference, Village Voice Media brings you a team of video game writers with the stuff to satisfy your gaming jones. Some you know from the Game On columns; others are staff and freelancers at papers far and wide.

Let's meet them, shall we?

GARY HODGES: Gary Hodges is a freelance writer, and one half of the dynamic duo that makes up Village Voice Media’s Game On, in his own words: “The Dark Knight to Chris Ward’s Boy Wonder, but please don’t print that.”

With 25 years of gaming under his belt, Gary has owned – and still maintains in a hallowed, carefully packed closet – nearly every console known to man, some better off forgotten. When someone on a message board asks “Hey, I’m thinking of picking up a [insert obscure 20-year-old hardware here], what are the 5 best games for it?”, Gary is usually the one replying with a list of 18, with a paragraph of impressions on each.

To paint a better picture, he’s the sort of geek who feels shame and inadequacy for having never read Dune, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, or anything by H. P. Lovecraft.

Gary’s academic career was nearly permanently derailed when Street Fighter 2 “Damascusianly” appeared one day in a corner arcade tragically close to his high school. Hours were spent playing the game for fun, money, and geek prestige – 5th and 6th hours to be specific, Music Appreciation and Geometry.

His pet topics are “gameplay above all else”, video games as a distinct, legitimate art form all their own, and tales from the everyday life of a diehard game enthusiast who can still sketch maps of every dungeon in the original Legend of Zelda from memory. Conversely, he rarely has anything to say about Chopin or isosceles triangles.

Here’s Gary in the 1915 Fatty Arbuckle silent comedy classic, Fatty and the Goddamn Fanboys.

JONATHAN MCNAMARA: At an early age, Jonathan McNamara's parents expected great things from him. Would he be a doctor? Would he be a lawyer? Somehow “Savior of the Mushroom Kingdom” never entered into their expectations. Since then Jonathan has been devouring video games like Dodongo devours bombs. He use to be on a first name basis with the manager of several Funco land stores. He bought REZ with the trance vibrator in Japan and its potential uses excite him. He has offered God a rematch to let him regain the dignity he lost the last time they played TimeSplitters.

Jonathan used to write game reviews for The Daily Texan in Austin Texas where he was known for angrily pointing out that “Final Fantasy XII still hasn't been released yet” and forcing himself to review Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for the greater good of all gamers. Jonathan writes reviews that are fair, balanced and full of obscenity when something really sucks. He believes that the potential for video games is being squandered by a never-ending cycle of rehashes and sequels and isn't afraid to tell you so.

NATE PATRIN: Nate Patrin is the music listings coordinator for City Pages, as well as a frequent freelance music critic. His video game upbringing was a bit odd: since he never had his own console growing up, most of his gaming experience was spent in arcades, on PCs or bumming occasional game time off his friends’ NES systems. This means his ‘80s were more about Police Quest and RoadBlasters than Mario and Zelda, but he managed to acclimate himself into the ranks of console owners by the end of the ‘90s once he realized the Dreamcast’s lack of a quarter slot was a hurdle that could be overcome.

Nate enjoys a wide variety of games, from epic underwater Objectivism-wracked first-person shooters to sardonic post-apocalyptic RPGs to in-depth racing sims packed to the rafters with high-maintenance Italian sports cars. He’ll be writing about these genres and more, often with a focus on games that are artistically, narratively or gameplaying…ly compelling.

WARD RUBRECHT: Ward Rubrecht first laid hands on an SNES in the hallowed game aisle of his local Target store. Unfortunately for our hero, the system was on a timer -- to discourage young miscreants such as himself from standing glass-eyed in front of the holy machine for days on end -- so it wasn't until college that he saw past the third level of Super Mario World. In the meantime, the young nerd built his first computer and whiled away years of his life on classics like Fallout 2, Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, and Diablo. Ward is passionate about the state of video games as a tool and an art form -- his public challenge to Jack Thompson (Deagles at 10 paces) has yet to be answered. Nowadays you'll likely find him stealing vegetables from castle store-rooms in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and no-scoping with a Dragunov in Call of Duty IV.

JEFF SHAW: Jeff Shaw is the Web editor at City Pages. He grew up playing quarter games of Ms. Pac Man and Q-bert at Halley's Comet Arcade in Eugene, Ore., and cursing that damn dog in Duck Hunt at home. He remembers when the Commodore VIC-20 came out and can own you at Joust playing with just his pinky fingers. Jeff once shot an asteroid in Reno just to watch it die. Pitfall Harry is his personal hero and now the jump sound from Pitfall is stuck in your head, too, sucker.

Jeff recently returned from a year in Okinawa, which he spent getting destroyed at Dance Dance Revolution by 13-year-old Japanese girls. He'll be occasionally writing about all things DDR-riffic and any game that involves karaoke.

CHRIS WARD: Born in a Hardee’s bathroom while his mom worked second shift, raised in the Honeycomb hideout by well-meaning children, Chris Ward lives a charmed life of reviewing video games for the Village Voice’s “Game On!” column while being mistaken for other Chris Wards on a daily basis—such as Chris Ward (gay porn star of “Pokin’ in the Boys Room”), Chris Ward (former Canadian Cabinet Minister) and Chris Ward (professional surfer/frosted hair-tips enthusiast).

This particular Chris Ward — our Chris Ward — makes considerably less money as the ex-writer for Wizard Magazine’s long-running “Magic Words” letter column, Geek Monthly, ToplessRobot.com, Boom! Studios’ “What Were They Thinking?” comic series with Keith Giffen, Toyfare’s “Twisted Toyfare Theatre” (which Cartoon Network’s “Robot Chicken” apes weekly in a convenient “non-hilarious” format), as well as Lifestyle Editor for “Swollen Tits Digest: A Monthly Panegyric To Swollen Tits.” Currently, he often dreams of becoming the walking eyeball from Quake III, Sega Dreamcast edition.

In his years as an infotainment gadfly, Ward also caused Jennifer Garner to hang up on him, Crispin Glover to leave frightening messages on his home answering machine, and Rivers Cuomo to puss out when challenged with Ward’s mystifying Guitar Hero skills. He also has Mr. T’s home phone number (at press time).

In his spare time, Ward is one of the foremost Pac-Man Memorabilia collectors, owning a staggering and unhealthy assortment of Pac-Man tattoos, quilts, sports jackets, rare candles, figurines, posters, belt buckles and much, much more. His proudest moment was buying a Coney Island, Japanese arcade bootleg of Pac-Man for his rec-room, called “Hangly Man”: named as such because the Japanese bootleggers couldn’t pronounce “Hungry Man.” This would be racist if it weren’t totally fucking true.