Very inspirational. Those words make me feel in tears.

I'm just here for the frogs.

I'm here for Narto. But I originally came for DBZ back in da day.

Well, since no one else is going to give a serious answer:

I originally came upon BYOND as a referral from a old friend of mine, whom played Naruto GOA and some other Naruto games(most of which were rips), had only been 12 years old when introduced, Naruto was a big thing for me. When I learned that people were actively 'coding' these games, I wanted to learn how to do so. Roughly six months after playing BYOND games whenever I was at my friends, I got a computer at home and made my own BYOND key. I spent more time on these games, growing increasingly frustrated with the administration of the games I had come to enjoy, where as(in most cases) they all decide they need to use their 'code-given powers' to take a mass advantage in the game.

Eventually, after about a year of this, I started a computer programming class(which was always intended in high school for myself), which I only got about two weeks of actual learning in(boy, I can make a hell of a stop watch/calculator in java). I decided, since they weren't satisfying my needs in learning to program; I'd download some sources of the games I enjoyed when I was a tad younger and start trying to make them fun for me again, without the people that make things so unfair for all the average players.

This, now linking into my 'how did you learn to program?' post.

I now have a full-time job and responsibilities outside of BYOND, so I can't afford to sink near as much time developing here; without a paycheck first.

I've been gaming since before I knew how to tie my shoes.

In 2005, a friend told me about a site where I could make games, so I came here, played games for a few weeks and then dived right into the Zilal tutorials. I spent the next 8 years making games ( only finished a handful ). One thing I noticed early on is how much I disliked programming. I hate programming. It's not that it's difficult, it's just boring and tedious, especially when there's that one bug that takes all night to find, and then even then you still don't find it and then the next morning when you reopen the project you locate the bug immediately and feel like a retard.

When I was smaller, I would always tell my Mom when I was starting a project. Since I probably started over a hundred different projects, you can imagine how many times I ran to my Mom saying "Come look at this new game I'm working on!" Eventually one day she just told me "You start a lot of projects but barely finish any of them. I don't think you're good at making games, you're just good at coming up with ideas for games." Which, it didn't really sink it at the time, I was still young and thought my calling was programming ( something I hated ).

When I got to high school, I started getting a lot of attention for my writing. In 2007 I was heavily into rap music and began writing songs during class. Me and this asian guy we called "Wolfy" spent a lot of time writing raps, giving each other feedback on our songs, I even got like a few phone numbers after I let some girls listen to my music. I was also getting As on all my essays and book reports to the point where the teachers would just use my essays as examples. My AP English teacher would stand in front of the class, read my essay aloud and at the end say "THAT's how you write an essay." After that, people would crowd around my desk asking me questions on how to write this and how to word that and I even began writing entire essays for some of my buddies ( including the Wolfy guy, in exchange for him to do my Algebra 2 homework because I sucked at math ).

I've also always been told my writing is funny. One time we had a substitute teacher and she gave us a cool assignment. We were supposed to write a mock cover letter to a place we'd like to work. I figured since it was a substitute, I'd get away with goofing off this time around and so I did. Instead of writing a serious letter I wrote a bunch of ridiculous crap like "I'm confident that my shoe shining expertise qualifies me for your available Brain Surgeon position" and "I prefer to have interviews in dark, abandoned warehouses" and turned it in. Later on that day during lunchtime, like a dozen students ( most of which I didn't even know ) were walking toward me laughing, and one of them said "You're Cameron, right? The sub read your cover letter out loud, it was hilarious."

I think that was around the time I started realizing what I was good at and what I sucked at. My interest in making games started dying off and I became more interested in just the story aspect of them. Which, I'll always love video games, it's just that I'll probably not have anything to do with games outside of writing the stories for them and perhaps some design work. I'm currently working with a manga artist who doesn't even want payment ( she's just doing the work for the sake of building her portfolio ) and she's in the process of designing the protagonist of the story. I also just got hired at B&N so I'm surrounded by a bunch of book enthusiasts who can give me feedback, and the managers love me so far so when it comes time for me to ask them if I can promote my book their the answer will probably be yes. As a matter of fact a cute chick just had a book event today down on the first floor. I really wanted to go down and meet her but I was busy as all hell today. We had a line waiting outside the store before we opened up so you can imagine how today went.

I'm not sure why I'm still here. Perhaps it's because after being here for almost a decade, you kind of feel an obligation to be apart of the site. I was on BYOND before I was even a teenager, and now I'm a grown man. I grew up with this site, met people, made money, and learned a lot. Even though I never created a game, I'm glad I got all of that out of my system rather than going into adulthood thinking that making games is what I was best suited for. My failures here helped me realize what my strengths and weaknesses were so now I can spend my 20s making better decisions as opposed to being confused and spending 4-years in college for something I'm not even interested in and being buried in debt ( like the mass majority of my generation ).

My goal is to either have a novel finished or almost finished, a one-shot ( 60-page condensed version of a manga ) finished, or a kinetic novel finished by this time next year, and after that, I'd like to set up a Kickstarter, and push for the novel/one-shot/kinetic novel to be made into a full-length animation film, or a full manga or anime series.

Outside of wanting to buy my Mom a house and my Dad a Chevy Tahoe, I'd say the reason I want to do all this is not even the money, but rather the satisfaction of knowing that some little kid somewhere will one day read my book or watch the animation based on my story and experience the same joy I did growing up playing games and watching anime on Toonami. I'd also like to inspire people as well to not be afraid to believe in themselves and take a risk. A large part of me tells me I'm not going to succeed - that I'm going to quit somewhere along the way just like I quit my games. The problem is, I think the reason I have failed for so long is because I've always listened to that as opposed to the voice telling me I have what it takes. I've doubted myself for almost 10 years and it's gotten me nowhere, so this time around I'm ignoring the enormous chance of failure, and the boatloads of competition, and the shit talkers who tell me to stick to my day job, and I'm not going to surrender to the fear of failing ever again.

Now bow your heads and say "amen".