[JPAG Week] Hi, my name is Ben Pack

Hi, my name is Ben Pack and I owe everything I have today to the JPAG.

Is that an exaggeration? Definitely, but hey it’s a hell of a way to start an article for the JPAG Appreciation Week. That being said I do owe them — the JPAG — quite a bit. If you’re reading this you either have no idea who I am (if that’s the case DM me and I can link you to my OKCupid profile), you know me from the JPAG, or you might know me as the world’s tallest Giant Bomb intern.

I started at Giant Bomb in the summer of 2011 and will return next summer, and hopefully it will lead to an eventual full-time career in this industry. But I guarantee that without the JPAG I wouldn’t be here.

Flash back to 2008. I was a recent high school graduate with a little interest in journalism and a passion for movies and video games. It was around this time that my friend Evan showed me two websites: 1up.com and Joystiq.com. I never even knew sites like these — focusing on games journalism — existed, nor would I have even considered a career in the trade.

I soon fell in love with the sites (as well as Giant Bomb) but that’s where my interest stopped. I was never a fan of traditional forums because I didn’t like that dudes could just be dicks to each other without any consequences, and so I didn’t participate. I decided to give the Joystiq Podcast Appreciation Group a try because it was tied to my Facebook account and forced us to show our real names. So, people couldn’t be so jerky to each other… unless you were Ryan Gan.

What blossomed there for me were several relationships that grew to great online friendships. Hundreds of discussion threads, dozens of photochops, hours of podcasts, a D&D campaign and even three fundraisers were just some of the activities I participated in over the few years that I was in the JPAG. It even went so far as the opportunity to meet a bunch of the JPAG guys (and even Justin McElroy and Chris Grant) at PAX 2010, or very recently getting drunk with JPAG celebrity alcoholic Michael Parikh.

One of the most important things for me that happened through the JPAG was meeting and working with Mike Suszek. Mike had a podcast I listened to for his website The Wiire, and after seeing he was an active member of the JPAG I convinced him to let me write for him. While that dream was short lived it gave me the taste for this industry that I would eventually parlay into an internship with one of my favorite gaming sites.

So here I am, more than 3 years later, even though it feels like it’s been no time at all. And, while the JPAG may not exist in the same way it once did, I formed some great memories and solid relationships with people (like with Michael Bachmann and Russ Walsh, who started the podcast A Fistful of Pixels that you should all be listening to) that I will continue to value for the next couple of weeks at the minimum.

Thank you JPAG.

You can reach Ben Pack on Twitter, causing all manner of devious events.