Hey-ooo!!
Welcome to my brand new website. My name is Jim Butterworth, otherwise known as hosp. I have been blogging for the past year under this pseudonym and finally decided to make the jump to something a little more to my liking and, dare I say it, professional. My main aim is to entertain you the reader with various weekly articles. Starting with a long form blog post every Friday that talks about a variety of ideas and issues in the world of video games. It’s deliberately lengthy as that last afternoon of the week is generally damn boring so hopefully it will help you get through work or school ready for the weekend!
With this change comes some new features such as a short weekly news round up, detailing the various stories that you may have missed. There is a new storytelling series of my gaming exploits beginning with a Football Manager adventure with Burnley. Though this won’t be every single week, I will release a run of each games journey with a break between titles.
Those are the features that are happening now, I also have some other ideas to come at some point in the future. My big aim is to eventually do a series of interviews with people working within the industry. With this i want to showcase some of the work being done by the brilliant designers, programmers, producers and testers out there and to give you a bit more insight into how it all works.
There may also be some videos and podcast versions of the blogs, keep an eye out if this is your cup of tea! The blogs will always be about the games but in this first one I just want to tell you a little about myself, my passion and knowledge of games.
But first, a huge shout out to Ruth (Guaps) for the design work on the website and logo. The updated version looks amazing! And obviously to Sam (the editor a.k.a Shifty) for his constant patience with the thousands of words and hundreds of questions I send him. Things would be way worse without either of them! Oh and of course all my friends and siblings who offer advice, support and occasional criticism to help keep me going. Thank you all! So for this one time only I am going to talk all about me and my gaming history to show where all these ideas come from.
History
I cannot remember a time when I have not been gaming. Fortunately I have at all times had some form of PC, handheld and console to play games on. 29 years since my original GameBoy is a long time and there have been some huge changes in technology and society. My earliest gaming memories are playing Sonic the Hedgehog on the Sega Mega Drive and Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden coins on the Game Boy. Both are arguably all time classics.
I’ve no idea how my mother afforded these things as we didn't have a whole lot of money when I was growing up but I consider myself very lucky as in hindsight it’s shaped my life considerably. Being a small child playing Sonic, you can imagine just how crap I was, constantly stuck at various points having no idea what to do. Whenever this happened my mother would play the game after I went to bed to get past these roadblocks and show me the next day. (Remember this was the early 90's and most games didn't have save points or even the internet to google how to do something).
Beautifully we have come full circle as my mother is still an avid gamer and whenever I visit her now i help her get past the hard bits on her games. So this is my way of repaying those long evenings spent on Castle of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse!
Grown Up Gaming
So a small confession now, after a great start, my gaming history get a little chequered as my next console was a second hand PSOne. Don’t get me wrong, this was a brilliant console and an absolute game changer but there were other major players I missed. I played the N64 a couple of times at friends whereas I never even touched a Dreamcast so my first Nintendo console had to wait until the Wii. This has meant I have missed out on some of the biggest series in gaming history and only now with some time and money have I even begun to catch up.
This website is great as it gives me an impetus to try things out I either missed or dismissed previously. It’s probably impossible to have played everything but I want to at least try. For my mother’s then new job we needed an actual computer, a classic Windows 95 monster. Well it was actually quite limited but did the job. Hooking this up to the phone line was always a pain but that dial up tone is still brilliant. (Google it kids) Fortunately I did have something, in my opinion that was even better, a best friend with a great PC. Thank you Shifty's dad! This was now the late 90s, in my opinion a golden age for PC gaming. I remember all those evenings playing Rollercoaster Tycoon, C&C Red Alert, Starcraft, Warcraft 2, Civilisation...... An era of classics.
Fast forward a few years I picked up a cheapish PS2 which I absolutely loved (Medal of Honour: Frontline an absolute standout) which had so many good games. GTA 2, Deus Ex, Time Splitters 2... Then for me probably the best console ever made (minus the red ring of death!) the Xbox 360. The sheer amount of standout titles on here is just breathtaking. Fallout 3, Elder Scrolls Skyrim, GTA V, Red Dead Redemption, Portal, Shadow of Mordor, Batman Arkham Asylum. It may be the best collection of games outside of Steam.
Career
As for work I spent about 3 years working for two different game companies. First off was at Sports Interactive (SI) working on Football Manager 11. It was a lot of fun though very long hours working through the crunch. Usually when working on a game you get your name added to the credits but they go one step further and add you into the game! Each season a new generation of youngsters with random names get added to the players game. In the first season part of this batch has all those working at SI added to. Names, birthdays and team supported are all correct though everything else is random. So somewhere out there 8 years ago a player will have gotten a wonderkid Jim Butterworth! (My brother managed to buy me for Burnley but I was as expected useless).
My other stint more recently was working at Sega as a Zero Hours tester. It was tough and the treatment of people there was pretty shoddy. Though I did make some fantastic friends there while working on various Football Manager titles and Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice. The latter a terrible game that Chris (C-Man) and I suffered many long nights in the summer of 2015. So many wasted evenings. Otherwise I had a couple of days on Saints Row IV and Dead Island 2. No longer in the industry as I wanted something more fulfilling with actual decent pay. Unfortunately Sega have decided to move all their QA department to Bulgaria at some point which is very shit for those who have put many years of their life into the company.
Current Tastes
Much of my current gaming habits were forged in my teens. I still love PC gaming, particularly on Football Manager and any number of RTS’ like StarCraft 2. (See ‘This Week’ below) Even hosp comes from the PC game Theme Hospital, ‘Hospital Administrator Is Cheating’ used to be announced as I threw money at my account. Halo is still my favourite FPS, with Shifty and I currently doing a run on Halo Reach. I bought the original Xbox purely for the first game. The library on Legendary setting in Co-op is one of the best experiences out there. There were so many good titles on there, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic brought my love of RPGs and Bioware.
My true loves are Indie games, titles produced by small teams or singular creators without the huge budgets of most titles. They have much more scope to try new things and experiment with different genres. I know the graphics are often limited (particularly the brilliant Minute) but you need to look beyond this. Games should not be measured on pixel count alone. They bring some of the best gaming experiences you can have. My love came from the Xbox 360 and its Indie showcase, particularly Super Meat Boy and Limbo. Both brilliant 2D platformers with very different looks and pacing. I would regard this time as the beginning of the current indie explosion, now with hundreds of titles released every year. Thankfully the Nintendo Switch seems to be picking up most of these allowing them to be played on my travels.
I definitely own far too many games and I know I won't finish them all but I will never be bored again. So much comes out every week it’s incredibly hard to keep up, I often make the most of game sales. As for this year I will be looking to try out some of the genre I have either avoided or passed me by, I really enjoy trying something new.
I need your help!
Now to you dear reader. Your assistance is required. Not only to read what I write and hopefully enjoy it. But to comment and criticise when necessary. Request things! I am sure there are tonnes of ideas out there that I am not doing that you guys would love so tell me. I am doing this website as I love writing and I love video games. But most of all to give you something to read that interests you and gives you something new. Whether a new game or genre. So please do give me a shout. It will be much appreciated.
On top of that if you know anyone, whether friends or family that would even take a mild interest in my writings please pass this on to them. I am writing purely to entertain people and to try and tell them something new about games. Hopefully that is interesting so please use word of mouth!
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