The Dumbest Kid in Gifted Class

by Dan Ryckert

  There was a Target nearby, so we walked there and made full use of the $200 daily expense allowance on our corporate card. We went up and down the aisles, tossing junk in our carts like the kids who won Toys ‘R’ Us shopping sprees on Nickelodeon. Pizza Rolls, Hot Pockets, cheese-filled soft pretzels, ice cream, candy, popcorn, beef jerky, and plenty more weighed down our plastic bags as we walked back to the hotel.

  We stayed up late and gorged on our bounty, keeping a revolving door of seemingly endless junk food cooking in the suite’s oven. Kiu had brought his PlayStation, and we worked through several hours of Final Fantasy VII while talking about how excited we were to visit the Game Informer office the next day. Both of us had grown up reading the magazine, and we couldn’t wait to meet the guys whose jobs we envied more than anything.

  At around three o’clock in the morning, we decided we should probably hit the hay. Our shoot wouldn’t be for a couple of days, so tomorrow was set to be an easy day of meeting the staff and discussing plans. Kiu retired to his room, and I did my best to catch some sleep, despite the toll that the night’s culinary endeavors were taking on my stomach.

  Our hotel was just over a block away from Game Informer. We got up and showered, then walked to the old Warehouse District building that housed the magazine. I have no idea what GameStop corporate told the Game Informer guys about our visit, because everyone seemed to be some shade of confused when we arrived.

  We were greeted at the office by Andy McNamara, Game Informer’s longtime editor-in-chief. I had been reading his reviews and his letters from the editor for a decade. He was always featured first in the “meet the editors” section that I loved, and one of my first issues featured him on the cover wearing a backward baseball cap and dunking a basketball. I’d come to learn years later that this cover was routinely mocked by the staff.

  “Nice to meet you,” he said as he let us in. “I’m Andy. So what are we doing here? They told me that a video guy would be coming by for a commercial, but that’s about all I know.”

  “I’m shooting an ad for GI that’s gonna air in GameStop locations. It should be easy—I just need someone to play Solid Snake and try to sneak in to steal a magazine from the building.”

  Andy brought it up to the writers’ room after introducing me to everyone. Most of them seemed to have zero interest, but an editor (and part-time pro wrestler) named Justin jumped at the opportunity. We spent a while going over the script, scouting locations around the office, and making sure that Justin would fit into the outfit that I had purchased.

  This entire time, I was doing all I could to not geek out over everything around me. It was exactly what I had always pictured a video game magazine’s office to be. One editor sat in the corner, cussing as he played through a terrible Aquaman game. Another was getting annoyed at a Game Boy Advance game that used actual solar panels, forcing him to regularly step outside of the office. Promotional items, action figures, and other toys were scattered across every desk. A giant stack of envelope art that readers had sent in towered over one work station. Most importantly, you couldn’t look anywhere without seeing tons of video games, many of which hadn’t been released yet. I was in heaven.

  Justin was game for everything and the suit fit him fine. We’d need to shoot the following day, since the staff was trying to finish up some articles before the next issue’s deadline. It was still early in the afternoon, so Kiu and I would have to find something to fill the time before we returned to the office the next day. We had saved round two of junk food and Final Fantasy for later in the night, so we decided to run around the city until then. The Twins were a couple of innings into a game against the Royals that day, so we bought tickets from a scalper outside the Metrodome and headed in. When the game let out, there was plenty of time left for whatever we wanted to do.

  Minneapolis is a gorgeous town, so it’s a shame that its best-known tourist attraction is the dreadful Mall of America. Not knowing any better, Kiu and I made it our destination. A cab dropped us off at this monstrous assortment of shops, and we wandered around for an hour. Even with so many options, we spent most of our time looking at games in one of the mall’s several GameStop stores.

  We did find one nongaming store that caught our eye. Halloween was still two months away, but a large costume store had already opened in a corner of the mall. After looking at a variety of costumes, I found one that I loved. It was a big, stupid shark outfit. When worn, it looked like the shark was staring straight up with its mouth agape. Something about it cracked me up and I had to have it.

  GameStop suggested we spend our $200 daily allowance on food and cabs, but no one said we were required to use it for that. There was still plenty of junk food in our suite’s refrigerator and we already had lunch with the Game Informer guys, so we had barely put a dent in the funds. The only rational thing to do was to use the GameStop corporate card to buy the shark suit.

  Nothing at the mall was going to interest us more than the shark suit, so we bought it and then jumped in a cab back to the hotel. On the way there, I saw a familiar sight. Members of the Westboro Baptist Church were protesting on a sidewalk downtown, holding their usual assortment of bright “GOD HATES FAGS” signs. There was some kind of evangelical convention in town, which had made national news due to the presence and acceptance of an openly gay minister. Naturally, this showed up on Fred Phelps’ “something gay is happening somewhere” radar, and he dragged his family of sociopaths up to Minneapolis. I was finally far away from their frequent protests in Kansas, and yet they had made the trip north with me.

  Kiu and I looked out the window for a moment at the screaming church members, and I suddenly had an idea.

  “Excuse me,” I said to the driver. “We can just get out here.”

  I paid for the ride and we got out. Kiu could already tell what I had in mind as I grabbed the plastic bag from the costume store and ran behind a tree. When I emerged, I was wearing the full-body shark suit and sprinting straight toward the Westboro protesters.

  They were used to counter-protesters standing across the street with signs promoting diversity and LGBT acceptance. The church members thrived on it, as they loved screaming hateful gospel verses at people promoting equality. They seemed significantly less prepared to deal with a man dressed as a shark frantically running circles around them. A couple of them seemed to think I was on their side. Most just seemed perplexed.

  While I was doing this, the group of counter-protesters across the street were laughing. Some even started a “Shark! Shark! Shark!” chant. When I heard this, I gestured toward them with my shark fins like a pro wrestler pointing toward a crowd to rile them up. They cheered, and I sprinted over to their side and hugged everyone. I’m not sure if any of that meant anything or made any kind of statement, but I loved confusing the Westboro people as a shark, only to betray them and ally myself with the tolerant side of the street.

  Later in the week, I’d wear the shark suit to Game Informer for some reason. This led to the staff asking if I’d be all right with a picture of it being included in the next issue. Each month, a “GI Spy” section showcased a handful of photos from the office and gaming industry events. I’d always enjoyed the section, and was thrilled at the offer. They took a picture of me in the suit, sitting at one of the editors’ desks while playing the Aquaman game. It ran in the October 2003 issue, with Jade Empire on the cover, and marked my first appearance in the magazine that I’d get hired at almost six years later.

  Getting hired was the end goal for all of this, so I made sure to spend plenty of time talking to all of the magazine’s editors. These conversations weren’t schmoozing or networking solely for that purpose, however. I was fascinated by what they did and couldn’t hear enough of it. I wanted to confirm that this line of work was indeed what I wanted to do with my life, and everything that they told me only reinforced my feelings.

  We wound up filming the two-minute spot without much issue. Justin had fun playing the spy and the la
ck of significant dialogue made it an easy shoot. Game Informer’s editors were incredibly kind to me during the visit, especially considering I was just some random kid who was bumming around the office.

  Kiu and I left Minneapolis thinking that things couldn’t have gone better. The shoot went well, the staff was great, and I was personally thrilled to learn that the job seemed to be everything I’d hoped for. This plan that seemed impossible had come together without a hitch.

  To this day, I’m not sure if the commercial ever actually ran in-store. GameStop received the finished product from me and requested a couple of minor changes, which I was happy to make. I sent in the new edit, they thanked me, and that was the end of our correspondence. By the time it would have run, I was back in Lawrence for my sophomore year of college and no longer working at the store. I’d check the televisions whenever I went in to pick up a game, but never wound up seeing it.

  It didn’t matter. My feelings on the experiment didn’t hinge in the slightest on whether my ad actually appeared on those televisions. I was more motivated than ever to direct my career path toward video games rather than film or television.

  A little over a year later, I got hired to write video game reviews for a local newspaper. It wasn’t a paying job, but it resulted in me getting every major video game for free throughout the rest of my time in Kansas. More importantly, it gave me a massive amount of experience.

  With legitimate press credentials, I was now eligible to attend the annual E3 trade show in Los Angeles. This weeklong event summoned everybody around the gaming industry, from developers to publishers to the media. In 2006, I started paying my own way to the event each year in an effort to play the newest games, meet people from the industry, and pitch my work. It was thrilling to meet game designers like Ed Boon, the co-creator of Mortal Kombat. These were the people responsible for some of my fondest childhood memories. While I was by no means their peer, I was at least allowed in the same building as them.

  Meeting these gaming industry personalities was a blast, but it was the Game Informer editors that I was really keeping an eye out for. They’d surely remember me thanks to the unique nature of my visit, and I wanted to let them know that I was absolutely gunning for a job with them. During one of the days on the show floor, I saw Andy McNamara and executive editor Andrew Reiner outside the convention center’s cafeteria.

  Despite my entire E3 plan being “FIND THESE GUYS AND BOTHER THEM UNTIL I GET A JOB,” I didn’t want to egregiously impose or take up too much of their time. They seemed to be killing time in between appointments, so I approached them.

  “Andy and Reiner!” I said. “I don’t know if you remember me, but I’m Dan Ryckert. I’m that kid that ran around your office in a shark suit a few years ago.”

  That costume wound up being a good purchase, as they didn’t seem to have any trouble recalling “the shark suit kid.” We briefly caught up, and I mentioned that I had been reviewing video games for a newspaper for over a year. In that time, I had written over a hundred reviews. I told them that my primary career goal was to write for Game Informer, and that I’d love to send some sample reviews along if they had any openings. They didn’t, but Andy told me that I should keep bugging him about it in the future.

  I used the same approach the following year with Andy, Reiner, and other Game Informer editors that I ran into.

  “I’ve done 250 reviews now,” I told them.

  In 2008, I did it again.

  “I’ve written over 400 reviews, and I’d love to send them your way.”

  During the time between E3s, I’d see occasional job openings at big video game sites like IGN and GameSpot. I’d always apply for them, even though I hadn’t met anyone on staff like I had at Game Informer. Sometimes this led to interviews. On many occasions, I’d think that an interview went great only to hear that they had decided to go with someone else. This was always disappointing, but it never discouraged me from continuing on this path. After all, none of those places were Game Informer.

  2009 would be the last year that I had to bug Andy. After the Nintendo press conference across from the Staples Center, I spotted the entire GI crew as they left. They stopped briefly in the courtyard as Andy and Reiner caught up with an industry friend. Not wanting to butt into the conversation, I sat on a ledge across the courtyard until I could tell that they were done. They said their goodbyes, and I sprang into action.

  “Hi, Andy!” I said as I walked up and shook his hand. “I’m…”

  “Yeah, I know,” he cut me off. “The shark suit kid. How are you?”

  We exchanged pleasantries and I went into my usual pitch. Over 600 reviews at this point, etc. I fully expected to hear his usual response about not having openings, but he surprised me.

  “E-mail me in a month. We might have some motion on our end by then.”

  This was the first time I had heard anything at all about potential job opportunities at the magazine, and I was thrilled. I e-mailed him a month to the day after that statement, and he requested a résumé, sample reviews, and some time to talk on the phone.

  Two months later, I was driving through Iowa on my way up to Minneapolis and my new job as an Associate Editor at Game Informer. I’d be writing for the magazine that I had read religiously from the age of nine. The road to my dream job wasn’t paved by any one particular thing, but I always wonder what my life would look like today had I not made a long-shot call to GameStop’s headquarters with a ridiculous offer at the age of 19.

  I’m sure that I would have still applied for (and landed) the reviewing position at the Lawrence Journal-World and Lawrence.com. I’m sure that I would have written just as many reviews with just as much enthusiasm. Hell, I was a college student who was getting every video game and console for free. Of course I was gonna stick with that gig for as long as I could ride it out.

  But without making that call when I was nineteen, I wonder if things would have been different. Would I still have been as confident with approaching Andy and the others at E3? Would I even have bit the financial bullet to fly out there every year if I didn’t have specific people in mind that I felt that I could talk to? There’s no way to know how things would have shaken out if I hadn’t made that call. All I know is that I’m damn glad that I did.

  Social Lubricant

  Most college students are content with one year living in the dorms, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had made a mistake when it came to my freshman choice of Hashinger Hall. I never quite fit in with the lifestyle there, even though I had a great time and it proved critically important to my social skills.

  By “lifestyle,” I really mean drugs. Pot, mushrooms, acid, and home remedies were rampant in Hashinger. Beer and whiskey were suiting me fine by this point, but drugs didn’t jibe well with my neurotic mind. In my first semester at Hashinger, I smoked pot maybe a dozen or so times and tried mushrooms twice. This always seemed to end with me becoming uncomfortably high. I’d wind up sitting on a staircase with my head in my hands, or laying in a bed thinking that I’d doomed myself to a lifetime of feeling that way.

  My classmates in Hashinger were so drug-focused that I felt like I needed a do-over. I always assumed that college was supposed to be far more drinky than druggy, so I started scouting other options for year two. Lewis Hall and Templin Hall were two possibilities, and I had experience with the former thanks to my summer orientation program. I ruled those out based on their reputation as the personality-deprived homes of business students. Hashinger was right out, as was Naismith, the private “rich kid” dorm.

  That left McCollum Hall. It was the largest dorm on the hill and it attracted a wide range of students. Most foreign students landed at McCollum and the domestic tenants tended to come from all walks of life. It housed artsy kids, rich kids, potheads, and business students without being solely made up of any group. The variety sounded promising and I was ready for a second round of the dorms.

  As I had seen at Hashinger, the first c
ouple of weeks in a new dorm are a whirlwind of learning names. Some of them are forgotten immediately or attached to people who never leave their rooms. With others, you shake their hands and learn their names and can never predict the amount of hours, beers, and laughs you’ll share with them going forward.

  It was hard to get a read on these seventh-floor McCollum characters. With Hashinger, 80% of them fit into the same pothead template. They might have differed when it came to “dreadlocks or no dreadlocks” or “Flaming Lips or String Cheese Incident” preference, but it was largely a cut-and-paste situation. During my early days in McCollum, I had no way of guessing which floormate was capable of putting turds in Pringles cans and which ones I’d want to kick in the testicles until they vomited (in Hashinger, the correct answer for both was “pretty much all of them”).

  McCollum was a full reset of my college social life, for all intents and purposes. I kept in contact with a few folks from Hashinger, but this might as well have been a complete mulligan of my first year. One exception from even further back was Bryan, my classmate from Olathe East and coworker from the movie theater. He was now my roommate. Most of Bryan’s behavior was unremarkable. He’d go to class, do his best to socialize, and play video games with others on the floor. The difficult part of living with him came whenever he’d be reminded of the existence of homosexuals and become inconsolably angry. Bryan was still years away from being the last person on the planet to realize that he was gay, so his confusing (and telling) outbursts were par for the course throughout the year.

  Within a couple of days at McCollum, I felt like I made the right choice. The people around me felt like a cross-section of the country instead of varying shades of the same future burnout—a large percentage of my Hashinger floormates did not stick around for a second year of college. I found a sense of humor and self-awareness all over McCollum that I rarely saw during my freshman year.