I love sharing things I think are cool with the world, so linking to the new Xbox summer indie game Bastion would be a no-brainer because it is TRULY awesome.  It has all the great qualities of a throwback Nintendo game with the artistry of more recent indie hits like Braid and Limbo.  It’s an easy entry game to the non-gamer, and challenging, fun ride for the more experienced.  Truly it’s just QUALITY. (And no one paid me or asked me to say/write that, haha).

But WHY I’m linking it in detail here is a story that goes back to when I was 12.  Sit down children for a, er, relatively long blog tale.  😀

Quick summary, I was homeschooled as a kid and didn’t have a ton of friends because we moved around a lot due to my dad’s military training, so I was on the internet (or what we CALLED the internet back then) when I was VERY young.  BBSs, Compuserve, anything I could reach other people with technology with, my parents let me and I took it.  So when a new service called Prodigy came out, where you could mail messages to friends and post on “forums” with a “handle” (!!!!), it was the greatest thing of my life!

On that service, I joined a forum called the Ultima Dragons, and there I formed amazing friendships with many people I never ever met that filled me days with geek joy.  We loved video games and we shared that with each other (and really bad fan-fic if I remember too, haha).

Some of these friends were particularly close, and we would form private mailboxes JUST to send each other messages that popped up more instantaneously (because the lag on the actual mail was HORRENDOUS).  One of these people was named Greg Kasavin (@kasavin on Twitter).  At like 12 and 14 respectively I think, we would send pen-pal notes back and forth about the Ultima games we loved, books we read, and inadvertently our dreams about adulthood:  I wanted to be an actress, he wanted to create video games.

We lost touch during college, and never actually met until we were adults, I discovered his name on a GameSpot blog post and reached out.  Later, he went to work for EA while I was in LA trying to be an actor.  We would email occasionally, catching up, and when he emailed me last year and told me he was going indie and I was so proud of him, but aware of the huge risk he was taking making a company, writing a game and creating IP from scratch, especially with a family to support.  But the fact that he was following that dream to be a game CREATOR, reminded me of those notes we sent back and forth when I was 12, and I knew in my heart he was doing what all of us should be doing: Following a dream.

Well, a year later, that game Bastion is releasing tomorrow on Xbox, and it’s won TONS of awards, you can see on their website SuperGiantGames.  I am so SO excited for him and his team!

I hope Greg isn’t shuddering at this blog entry, but I wanted to share this awesome story with you guys about how proud of him I am, and how great his game is.  Bottom line, life goals DO come true.  And Bastion rocks. 🙂