Fedaykin98

I once knew Fedaykin98 as a hard-hittin', game playin', P&C dwellin', forum postin' fool. Now I just know him as the guy who put a Peter Cetera in my head for twelve hours, and I hate him with the fury of the wild Jovian winds for it. You'll see.

If you feel like Fedaykin98 is everywhere you go at GWJ, then you're not wrong. From Gears and Beers to World of Warcraft; from Everything Else to Politics and Controversy; from the pile of shame to, well, the Employee Profiles you just can't escape him. We don't want to say Fedaykin98 is a staple of Gamers With Jobs, but perhaps we could call him a classic accessory, like a nice handbag or a really snazzy fedora.

IMAGE(http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/files/images/fed_and_duffman1.thumbnail.jpg)

Fedaykin's on the left, and Duffman, who appears to be sad about getting drunk with Fed, on the right. Without further ado, here's Fedora ... I mean Fedaykin98!

1)Who the devil are you?

I am a man who will fight for your honor. I'll be the hero you're dreaming of.

2) What are you supposed to be doing during the day when you're reading GWJ?

You know, I work all day to get you money, to buy you things. And it's worth it just to hear you say you're gonna give me everything.

3) How about family? Kids? Pets? Particularly meaningful inanimate objects?

I married a hot night elf chick back in February. She's a hunter, so she has a pet owl named Cupcake. Also, I have a brother who who has played Gears of War with the GWJ crew a couple times; his handle is Joshua SQ3 03, although his name is not Joshua. What?

4) What was your favorite game over the last year or so? Why?

If we're talking about games that came out in the last year, then it's definitely Gears of War - anyone who hasn't been violated by a drunken Gumbie both before and after they're downed just hasn't lived. An honorable mention should probably be given to the Wii Bait-and-Switch game, also known as the "Great System / Oops No Games LOL!" game. I got pwned on that one a bit more badly than Gears, though.

And if we're talking about games that didn't release last year, I've currently gotten back on the WoW. No, I don't know what I was thinking, either, but I seem to be having a good time. Once again I'm more concerned with making money through enchanting and disreputable use of the Auction House than actually levelling up. Sometimes I engage in Auction House arbitrage. Okay, you got me, I really just wanted to use the word "arbitrage". My work here is done.

5) Which game are you looking forward to most?

Either Unreal Tournament 3 (or whatever they're calling it) or Age of Conan. I have always loved the fast-action FPS games like Quake and Unreal Tournament, particularly in CTF or other team based objective gametypes. I had a great time with UT2k4, but at the time, I hadn't found GWJ yet, so I don't think I quite maxed out its fun potential. I'm eagerly anticipating experiencing the genre that was my first multiplayer love in the full glory of the Goodjer experience.

Age of Conan because I'm a fan of the movies, the comics, and the original Robert E. Howard stories. By the way, he was from Texas, and we do indeed all have a thing about Texas. Can't be helped; we get all this outside reinforcement from people like John Steinbeck and AC/DC. But I digress...I'm hoping that Conan will bring the gritty flavor of that world and more realistic art to my MMO experience. The idea of action-based combat seems likely to increase my satisfaction with smacking thousands of mobs with my sword. I like that the races are not divided up between factions, so if my friend really wants to play a Stygian, we can still quest together. The PvP with guild-built cities sounds very interesting. When the whole enterprise collapses after a couple of months, I'll probably shrug and return to my attempts to conquer the financial district of Ironforge.

6) What is your fondest gaming memory?

Either the original Wing Commander or Quake 1 with the Threewave CTF mod. Way back when I didn't have a computer at all, I used to browse the PC games section just to torment myself with what I was missing; the games seemed so much more complex than my console games. The top of my wish list was Wing Commander. When we finally got a computer, I bought the game, but couldn't run it because I had no "Expanded memory", which is far different than "Extended memory". Far different unless you whisper to your computer, in a way it wants to hear, that they're secretly the same thing. This led to me returning the game and waiting another six months before buying it again, my confusion alleviated and the panacea of emm386.sys having been discovered.

It was fantastic - the first game that I had ever played that really was that cinematic experience, with me as the main character. Nevermind that it slowed down to 1 FPS during a heavy firefight near a capital ship. Forget that I didn't even have a sound card - the game was totally compelling even in its PC speaker bleeps and bloops. Soundtrack? I made my own soundtrack. I'd recently gotten Guns 'N' Roses' Use Your Illusion albums, so I made an entire, dual-sided mixtape that just alternated "You Could Be Mine" with "Don't Cry". You'd be amazed how well the intro to the former fits with the animated scramble sequence at the beginning of missions - probably got me keyed up better than the real music would have. And "Don't Cry" provided a poignant counterpoint to all of the violence going on around my ship (by the time it came on, I was usually in the sh*t); it brought home the deep pathos of this unhopeful interstellar conflict.

It was an awesome experience. When I finished Wing Commander, I felt like I had blown up the Death Star.

Quake 1 CTF was the yang to Wing Commander's yin. When Wing Commander came out, the idea of multiplayer combat was nearly unheard of. Fast forward through Wolfenstein and Doom, the latter of which introduced me to the joys of "online" multiplayer by way of 3am one-on-one matches over the modem. Quake 1 was ugly. There were no fancy 3D accelerator cards when it released, and the only colors in the game were brown and red. You might think there was yellow in there somewhere, but it was a brownish yellow. If Romero hadn't been so obsessed with blood and satanic imagery, they probably wouldn't have bothered with red either.

One look at Quake and I was ready to go back to Duke Nukem, which had replaced Doom 2 as my modem game of choice. Enter TheWalt, who wanted to get together over Christmas break for a LAN party. Good idea? Sure, fine, whatever. Let me know. What? Everyone else already bought a network card? (Who owned a network card back then?) TODAY?!?!?! Alright, let's do it.

TheWalt was hot to trot with Quake as our network game of choice, but god, it was ugly, and had none of the fun items and weapons of Duke Nukem. Additionally, Jim had a particularly slow computer and kept pulling for the older games. We tried some Quake deathmatch, but it had no personality, and it had been beaten near to death by the ugly stick. TheWalt, ladies and gentlemen, would not be denied. I finally agreed that I would try this "Capture the Flag" mod that he had downloaded IF, and only IF, he personally installed it on all six computers while the rest of us were taking a pizza break.

Enter a new world of custom graphics, drawn with colors that id had apparently included but felt no desire to actually use. Custom maps. Custom items, gameplay mechanics, a grappling hook - and the flag actually shows up ON YOUR BACK when you have it? They can DO that?!?!? And my god, the revelation of teamplay...friends, I fell hard. Upon returning to college, I learned that you could play this game over a little thing called the Internet, which was just taking off. It did require you to be running Windows 95, so after years of keeping myself pure, I immediately sold out and downgraded into Bill Gates' master plan, because the thought of Quake CTF whenever I wanted it was too good to be true. And you know, it was that good, for as long as it lasted. Did I mention id Software is in Texas?

7) Finally, why do you play games at all? Why haven't you outgrown them?

I can't thing of a funny answer or a song quote that goes here. Seriously, I just never stopped. I think that as more and more people who play video games reach adulthood, it will be more and more normal. Any stigma attached to game playing will disappear because everyone will have played them at some point, with lots of people never having quit.

8) Thanks for taking the time to answer our hard hitting questions! Any last words?

LESS QQ MOAR PEW PEW!

Comments

Great to see Fed on the front page. I had the pleasure of meeting him and his lovely wife at the Dallas S&T, and it was most enjoyable conversing with the both of them.

Good to meet you, Fed.

Peter Cetera FTW!!!11!!

Hi, Fed! See you at PAX, right?

I for one welcome our new desert overlords.

The spice is life!

Now his ego will never fit through the door.

Congrats man! Now put down the sundae spoon and go and play some Gears this weekend.

woah, that was weird. I don't think I've ever pulled up a web page with my picture on it when I wasn't expecting it. At first I was like..."Hey, who's that good lookin' guy on the right..."

And yes, drinking with Fedaykin is usually a pretty gloomy experience.

Also Fed, mad props to you for the use of arbitrage.....too bad you couldn't work in contango and backwardation as well.

Fed, you coming to PAX? Hope to run into you if so.

Fed's the meaning in my life. He's the inspiration.

Fed, We're gonna live forever, knowing together that we did it all for the glory of Texas.

I'm definitely coming to PAX along with the lovely and talented Sigsbee - we've got a hotel, plane tickets, the whole nine yards. My anticipation is off the charts.

Duffman wrote:

And yes, drinking with Fedaykin is usually a pretty gloomy experience.

I knew you were lying when you said you weren't mad about me spilling my drink on your carpet!

Hemidal wrote:

Now put down the sundae spoon and go and play some Gears this weekend. :)

What, so you can pwninate me some more like you did last Friday?

Fedaykin98 wrote:
Duffman wrote:

And yes, drinking with Fedaykin is usually a pretty gloomy experience.

I knew you were lying when you said you weren't mad about me spilling my drink on your carpet! :sad:

So, you spill on his carpet and that other guy's poker table? Man, we need an alcohol abuse intervention, and not because you drink too much.

Hemidal wrote:

So, you spill on his carpet and that other guy's poker table? Man, we need an alcohol abuse intervention, and not because you drink too much. :wink:

No lie, I have the same drinking problem as the protagonist from Airplane.

Dammit, now I heard that Cetera song while on hold with my cable company. It's following me!

Fedaykin98 wrote:

No lie, I have the same drinking problem as the protagonist from Airplane.

IMAGE(http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z221/crouton_bucket/striker.jpg)

Fedaykin98 wrote:

I'm definitely coming to PAX along with the lovely and talented Sigsbee - we've got a hotel, plane tickets, the whole nine yards. My anticipation is off the charts. :smile:

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!

I can't make it this year, I'm hoping to go next year though.

Ah well, at least my somewhat-twin is now among the hallowed halls of the official GWJ Employee list!

I just wanted to add that this man is hard as nails. Look, not one but three bikinitini's in front of him.

Elysium wrote:

Dammit, now I heard that Cetera song while on hold with my cable company. It's following me!

If it leaves you know, it'll take away the biggest part of you.

BabaGanoush wrote:

I just wanted to add that this man is hard as nails. Look, not one but 3 bikinitini's in front of him.

I'm so getting him trashed at PAX.

wordsmythe wrote:
BabaGanoush wrote:

I just wanted to add that this man is hard as nails. Look, not one but 3 bikinitini's in front of him.

I'm so getting him trashed at PAX.

2 words: Malibu & Coke

Duffman wrote:

2 words: Malibu & Coke

That's all it took to douse a poker table.

Fed, I'm bringing rotgut whiskey. This is gonna be fun.

You like 10 High?

Not one damn mention of the w00d clan and all the havoc we brought to the '96 Texas A&M LAN throw-down? I'm disappointed. That might be the highlight of my gaming life - either that or earning the nickname "Boat Anchor" from complete strangers while playing Gears of War. Yes, its definitely one of those two.

See you at PAX - at least I think I will.

Oh, and thats how most of us look when being forced to hang-out with Bryan. We know no good can come of it, and the alcohol helps to kill the pain of the awkward silence.

Well thats unfortunate, I didn't see that it had already started with the "girly drink" insults.

I'm late to a party that is usually thrown by me. Thats a little unnerving.

BabaGanoush wrote:

I just wanted to add that this man is hard as nails. Look, not one but three bikinitini's in front of him.

I'm not known for consuming the manliest of beverages, but I have been known to consume enough unmanly beverages for it to be all the same in the end.

As Mudderfudder points out, we (me, him, my brother, TheWalt, and another friend) entered a 5-man Quake 1 Threewave CTF tournament at Texas A&M during my time there. We got absolutely annihilated.

And if anyone hasn't played Gears with a cocky Certis, he hung the name "Boat Anchor" on Mudderfudder the one night that he stayed at my place and played on my team via split-screen.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

cocky Certis

For some reason, this phrase fills me with terror.

hehehe... now I know what he looks like. All the pieces of my plan begin to come together...

Indeed that was Fedaykin and Duffman on the front page. How did I miss out on the whole Fedaykin-only-drinks-girly-drinks thing?

Fletch_101 wrote:

Indeed that was Fedaykin and Duffman on the front page. How did I miss out on the whole Fedaykin-only-drinks-girly-drinks thing?

I know. I'm getting slow in my old age.

Sup Fedaykin

Threewave CTF is my fondest multiplayer memory, followed closely by, well, nothing. It was my psychic ability that allowed me to predict the trajectory the other players despite the 1500ms lag over the 28.8 modem that everyone was running off. Quake 1, before Quakeworld, had no movement interpolation, but it allowed for no packet loss, either, which allowed everyone to see things exactly as they were 2 seconds ago at any point in time.

There was nothing quite like shooting a rocket at a space which I knew was most likely to be occupied by an enemy team member in the next 2 seconds, and then have the loud kaboom with bloody chunks flying high up in the air ... in a way, Quake 1 was the first Gun Kata .

Fey, you kind of look like a smaller, nicer Dirk Nowitzki