Reports state that NBC Universal is finally fully pulling the plug on G4 at the end of this month. Yes, I know they canned the whole network two years ago now, airing reruns since. Yep, I also know many providers already dumped it, including mine about this time last year. Im sure Ill also get the normal posts blaming it for the death of TechTV, but oh well. In 2009, I wasnt sure what I wanted to do with my life anymore. Id left the wrestling world... and I was tiring of repairing and restoring old arcade games, especially since the economy was hitting that business bad at the time. I accepted the invitation to join the staff of a video game company and took it as I sought a new direction. Got an e-mail one day from someone at G4 that has left a hell of an imprint on the video game world more recently as the community manager of Respawn Entertainment Abbie Heppe. The idea was to bring Steve Wiebe onto live television during E3 to attempt the Donkey Kong world record. Took some fighting with my boss to get his approval to move on it, but once we did we were off. Well before the classic arcade community became an almost parody homage to an independent film, we made history by bringing the first-ever live world record attempt on a video game to television... and during the biggest video game event of the year to boot. They even shipped out my personal machine to join us there as we did this thing. Id never worked television on that level before that. Yeah, Id been on TV and did some television work at times in my wrestling days, but never anything like that. Something happened to me that day. Under the lights, under the pressure of live television, I worked that day as both the on-hand technician for the DK machine and a consulting producer for the event. The lights came on. That was the day where I learned what I wanted to do for the rest of my life and began planning and working to achieve those goals. Id change nothing about it, other than perhaps the fact that I should have run screaming from the company I was with at the time while I had the momentum, but as I announced last week... I got there anyway. A lot of people, when they think back to G4, are going to think of personalities like Adam Sessler, Olivia Munn and Morgan Webb... or they are going to think about the TechTV merger... or they are going to think about awesome early shows like Icons... and yeah, I will, too. But Ill also think about the opportunity and the moment that changed my life forever. The day the lights came on. Im forever grateful to have had the opportunity and grateful to G4 for providing it. Heres the highlights from this from event, which was, as noted, the first and only time theres ever been a live televised world record scoring attempt on a video game. youtu.be/slDHTtS6_T8
Posted on: Mon, 17 Nov 2014 20:04:07 +0000
Trending Topics
© 2015