Today is our birthday! How the heck are we still here?
Somehow, 17 years ago, SideQuesting was born and has persisted. How? Well, because we don’t make any money off of it and instead are buried in massive debt related to running it. But who cares, we’re having a lot of fun!
For the uninitiated, this is our story:
Back in art college in the 90s I created my first web page, I think it was Fortune City or Geocities or something. Who knows! I was a dumb teenage boy finding my way, making mistakes, shit-stirring about games, and then realizing and growing from all of those mistakes very quickly before I graduated. Adulthood hits you hard! I had been goofing around with HTML for a minute, and around 2001 I was asked to help make a website for a Detroit-based Macedonian social club I was a part of. That website kind of exploded in popularity as a community (it helps that I brought a bunch of my art and design and comedic antics to the group) and I was off and running on web stuff in the area.
When podcasts started to become a thing, a couple buddies and I launched the first Car Design focused podcast and blog. RIP CarDesignFetish (I swear it’ll be back soon). I’d been a “gamer” my whole life, and soon gravitated towards websites and podcasts that focused on the subject. Joystiq.com and The Joystiq Show was arguabley my favorite, and I eventually joined the podcast’s fan group on Facebook. That expanded the itch to include writing about games, so I started a WordPress blog to get in some practice. I had always wanted to go to E3 (also RIP), so I secretly amped up my writing and purchased a web domain for a potential website. That domain was GoGamingGiant.com, which I ended up launching around January 2009. Things moved VERY fast on the site, too fast for me, tbh; I didn’t want to run and post to a website full time, but G3’s explosive growth kind of needed someone too. I ended up transfering it over to someone else to take over.
But I still had that itch.
So, I contacted a couple of the amazing friends I had made in the Joystiq fan group about starting up a new website that was more in our speed. We didn’t want writing and podcast to be our main thing, just a side thing — a side quest, if you will.
SideQuesting.com was hence launched on April 5, 2009.
And here we still are! Still goofing, still making friends, and still attending PAX East as if we belong there or anywhere else in the industry. Just a constantly growing group of friends who put their words on podcasts or in text, hang out, and play games together.
Until I sell it for $40 Million that is. My ass wants to retire.
Happy 17th Birthday, SQ!
The First Post: https://www.sidequesting.com/2009/04/and-here-we-are/
Photo by mineral mintsz: https://www.pexels.com/photo/celebratory-17th-birthday-cake-with-candles-30815726/
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