SAM'S PROFILE

It was a game where me andmy best friend got sucked into a game I was making, and the hero and villain of the game got brought into our, real, world. The villain then started editing the game while we were trapped inside.

I'm going to chip in with my two pennies here (because I'm British, and we don't use cents). Every line you ever hear about love finding you the second you stop looking for it, is true.

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I'll cut to the present before I delve into the past - because I like to keep things on a happier note for as long as possible. I met my girlfriend by accident, and I'm extremely glad I did.

I went to a convention in London with some friends and expected to just have four days away from home, drink some beers, play some games - good times. One of my mates invited two friends she talks to on MSN but had never actually met to stay with us and help lower the price of the apartment we were staying in. (More people = less to pay each) One of those two people was Jo.

So she sits down with us, and we immediately welcome her into the group and get chatting. Most of my mates, bar one couple, said they were going to Namco Arcade & Diner - now, I had bills coming out the end of the week and I'd set myself a souvenier and beer budget for the weekend so I opted out. I'm terrible in an arcade, I'd have spent all my spending money and then some.

Me, Jo, and my two other friends, Jen and Jason, sit round and have a few drinks and a chat, when Jen decides to drag Jason out of the room. This is when Jason yells...

"Alright, by the way Sam's got his arm round Jo, it looks like he's tryin' to pull anyway."

Yay subtlety. Anyways, Jo grabs my hand and I'm thinking, 'this is where she throws my arm away and walks off'... But instead she pulled my arm tighter around her, we talked for a bit more, went for a walk by the river, kissed... And the rest is history. We spent the entire four day weekend together, she'scoming down to visit for a week at the start of December, and again for New Year's. We're talking on the phone daily - and we're trying to make this long distance thing work. So far, succeeding.

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Now, for the fun part, the past. I'll only tell you my more memorable failures. We've not got all day.

In high school, I was a bit of a weird kid. Hung around with the metal heads - purely cause I liked guitars and, at the time, wrestling. And hey, it was a social circle that accepted me and were gamers.

Never had any luck with girls in high school at all. I was awkward, nervous, always trying to hard... Just did it all wrong. That's my first piece of advice. Stop trying so hard, act naturally and confidently (without being a dick), and never push anyone.

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Towards the end of high school, I was visitng my dad regularly, and by the time I moved into his for college, I'd 'fallen' for this girl called Amy. Tons of funny stories to that one. The main problem was that shortly after me and Amy started hanging out - my best friend starts to date her.

Naturally, I say "OK, I'm stepping down. Whatever."... But then she started turning up at my house, with her car, and telling me to hop in. No man alive would've said no and we started hanging out - going to the coast, going for food, and she eventually went and introduced herself to my family. Think she came round one day when the family were up - coincidence, yes, but that didn't stop them jumping to conclusions, and she never corrected them. As many times as I said "We're just friends." my relatives just winked at me and said "Suuuure, just friends. Riiiight."

I remember one such example of us hanging out, being when we arranged to go bowling (her idea, but I was paying, get used to that). Anyway, I wait for her outside the bowling alley (which was also the local arcade, and they had a place to eat inside too, so all the teenagers hung out there), and I'm in my usual clothes, tshirt with some kind of TV or gaming logo on it, jeans, trainers, etc. She turns up, and it's immediately obvious she's made an effort. She's wearing make up, clothes I'd not seen her in before, that were a different social tone to her usual stuff... You get the idea.

So, we go in, grab some food, and start bowling. It's at this point I see my best friend come in with a group of our other friends - again, this was, as far as I'm aware, a complete coincidence. So, Amy dives under our seats and tells me not to say hi to them - just as I'm waving away to my best mate. He gives me a puzzled look, comes over, and spots Amy, his girlfriend, hiding under my chair, waving nervously at him...

Anyway, New Year's comes round and we're at my best friend's house for a party. Amy turns around to me and says she wants to grab some space hoppers from her's - but there's two of them to carry. She asks me to go and I figure her place is round the corner - no one will care if we slip out for two minutes. Especially if we're bringing back space hoppers.

She's feeling lazy, so we take the car. True enough, we go to her's and get the space hoppers and load them into the boot (trunk for you Americans). It's at this point I realise we should be back at the party already. This is when she tells me she felt like taking the long route back, and I spot a sign for Cromer.

Now, she knows full well that one of my aunts has a caravan out in Cromer and is spending New Year's there - she even makes a point to tell me as much, disguising it as a question. This is when I realise that my best friend is once again going to want to kill me.

So, we say hi to my aunt, and we wind up spending New Year's looking over the sea in Cromer. It's at this point my best friend calls, asking whyme and his girlfriend have disappeared from his party, where we've gone, and what we're doing.

"If I told you, we were in Cromer, next to the sea -"
"I'd kill you."
"Well, it's a good thing I'm not telling you that then. Amy can - here's the phone Amy."

Me and my best friend didn't speak for a few weeks after that one.

Following on from that, a few weeks later, me and Amy bump into my aunt in the city, and my aunt says how great it was to see us in Cromer at New Year's, and Amy agrees, and mentions that Easter holidays are coming up. And that she's looking forward to the break from classes (I was in college, she was in sixth form - which is college, but in a high school). So, my aunt goes and offers me and Amy her caravan for a week over the break. Before I can say anything, Amy accepts and the deal is done.

Before I know it, she's at my house, my old man's helping her load the car, while nudging me in the shoulder and winking, and I'm awkwardly clambering into the passenger seat of the car. A bit of a drive later, and we're in Cromer. My aunt meets us there, shows us around the caravan (not that you need a tour of a caravan), fills in the paperwork for us to stay there (she needed to signsome stuff to say we have her permission to have the caravan for a week), and left.

That was it, a week, alone, in a caravan, with my best friend's girl. No internet, barely any phone signal - and we also forgot to take towels. It was a fun week, a really fun week, we went around the local town (and bought towels), played some Guitar Hero (at least I prepared in some way) and it was genuinely a great week.

That's until, about three quarters through the week, when my best friend calls me and asks where I've been. Says he called my place and my old man said I went on holiday with some girl - even gave me a "You sly dog". Then he says his week has sucked, that everyone's busy and Amy's not been about. That apparently she'd gone off somewhere too - and then he clicked.

He immediately wanted to talk to her... He was livid. Furious at her way more than me, because by that point he'd accepted my logic of "She's the one driving, I can't control the car from the passenger seat" without noting that I was being a complete arsehole by getting in the car - knowing what always happens when I do. And I was being an arsehole.

Shortly after that holiday, her and my best friend broke up. Feeling guilty I slowly lost contact with her too. Though I did ask her out after getting my best friend's permission. She shot me down.

The girl was completely out of my head, had managed to go eight months without even seeing her about town. Then I get an invite to my cousin's 18th birthday party. Family only, cheap bar, sounded like fun. So I go along, and Amy was there - at a family only event. Really hit me how far she'd infiltrated my life, and how much they'd accepted her as my girlfriend, even though we never went out. I was civil and friendly - I had nothing against her, and besides, I didn't wanna cause a scene on my cousin's birthday.

I didn't hear from her much again until recently, when she contacted me asking who Jo is and how long I've been going out with Jo. I'm being careful, but I figure Amy's got a new guy now that she's been with a while, I'm happily with Jo and we're both older and more mature. We can be friends.

Oh, and just as a very important footnote. I never touched Amy. I never did anything with her in THAT sense. I didn't even kiss her. At least that's one way in which I didn't screw my best friend over.

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The Summer following the caravan break was intersting, as it was when things happened with another girl called Amy, who I refer to as Ames, and my friends called The Second Coming. Basically, I worked with her at my weekend till monkey job and we casually flirted - nothing serious.

On the rebound of being shot down by the original Amy, I asked Ames out. Ames said she'd gotten with someone about a week beforehand, a guy she had a history with, but that she had been hoping I'd ask her out. I was simply too late in doing so.

About two weeks later, me and five friends went on holiday to Hemsby. The idea was we'd rent out a small holiday home for the week, and get really, really drunk. Which we did rather well. During said week, Ames calls me. She's very upset, her boyfriend's being an arse and doing everything that made her leave him the last time around.

I do the friend thing. Comfort her, talk her through it. By the end I somehow wound up being her new boyfriend. Still not sure how that happened. But I do remember that while we were talking, I was standing in one of the bedrooms, and my mates kept sliding notes under the door, like, "We Can Hear You, Y'Know", "Ask her if you can fuck her in the arse", juvenile, drunken dilinquent humour. But I found it funny.

So I get back home and I have work the day after I get back. She won't talk to me. She ignores me. Just starts being real weird. For three weeks, both inside and outside work, she avoids me. Eventually, I call her, ask what's going on. She says she needs some time, and gives me a wave of excuses that don't feel like they have any sincerity behind them. Really did feel like she was reading off a list of bullshit.

At any rate, I tell her I can't deal with all this 'will-they-won't-they' stuff. She says she doesn't like that people at work know. I ask what she has to be scared or embarassed about and she says, again, she doesn't want them knowing. By this point, I've had enough. I said if she's not comfortable enough with other people knowing we're an item, that she can't want to be with me, and I break it off. There and then.

It's at this point she says "Thank fuck. I met a guy when you came back... I didn't wanna tell you cause it'd hurt you. I was hoping you'd finish it so I wouldn't have to.", and I just bluntly said "So, you thought this would be better? That this way, would be less stressful and frustrating? I wish you'd have just been straight with me from the start." and hung up.

Turns out the guy she got with was the arsehole that she was so upset about when she rang me in Hemsby - the one she already had a history with. And suprise suprise, he broke her heart again. After that she got a new job, and every now and then I'll spot her in the city but we very rarely talk.

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Also, I should mention, quickly, before I move onto the grab finale, a girl called Kat, whom I went to College with. I was hanging out with her a lot while I was trying to distance myself from Amy (the first one), and failed spectacularly.

Kat was smart, also into games and art, we really got along. The problem was that she ran with different crowds to me, and she plain was never interested in me.

That didn't stop her milking a pink DS with Nintendogs, and an acoustic guitar out of me. Eventually, I stopped paying for everything and buying her stuff, so she tried to move on to a friend of mine who told her to take a hike. Now, I'll admit it was partly my fault for not putting my foot down sooner. She was great fun to hang out with.

During college she got wildly popular on YouTube (no, I'm not giving her name out, though I will give the hint, K17). Originally, she planned to do the same Games Art & Design course that I'm currently doing, but she claimed she'd been offered a job with the BBC and disappeared. I've had one e-mail from her since, asking how things are going. I replied and never got anything back after that.

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Finally, we have Georgie. Now, I'll make this very clear, now. This one wasmostly my own fault. I really should have stopped it, and I didn't. Me and her still hang outand are still friends, but it's not the same.

I joined the forums over at the Spriters Resource - I'm sure some of you are familiar with it. It used to be Pixeltendo but TSR broke off and made their own board within recent months. I listed myself as living in Norwich, and Dazz, who runs TSR, immediately pops me a PM on the boards saying "Holy shit! A spriter from Norwich, we should meet up!" and we did. No shit, I have photo evidence to back it up.

So anyway, he says he's going to London for a day to be in a music video with Kat Flint (a very good song called Go Faster Stripes, look it up on YouTube, you'll find the video with me in it). A few of his friends joined us as well, one of them being Georgie.

Had tons of fun in London, and got along with Georgie quite well. So, she gives me her number, MSN, and then says she's a drummer in a local band, that I should go see her play the week after. Gets me a free ticket. So, me, Dan and few others go along and that's when me and Georgie really started hanging out a lot.

Anyways, one night I go to visit her, at the time she lived in a small village near me. Going to see her usually meant staying the night and getting a seperate bus in the morning. So it's 1am, miles from home and with no mode of transport until morning, and I decide to ask her out.

This is when she tells me she's a lesbian. I'm serious.

Anyway, it's all cool. And we continue to hang out - but then weird things started creeping into the friendship. I'd moved out of my dad's by this point into the student house I live in now, and started Uni (well, art school, Uni, same thing). Georgie used to come stay here, and she'd sleep in the same bed as me. We'd have our armsround each other while watching movies, and we really started to mess with the defintion of 'just friends'.

Anyway, it creeps me out and I bring it up. She apologises and it all stops for a few weeks. But then it starts happening again. One night, we're laying in bed and I bring it up again. Stating that we both agreed this kinda thing would stop, and yet, here we are again.

She admits that she's been thinking about me and her as a couple, but that she's also got this part in the back of her head, screaming that she's gay. I tell her if she needs time to think, she should go think. And she does. She comes back saying she's really sorry, but she's just plain gay.

I said it was cool, and suggested some time apart. My housemates then arranged a trip to London to see Story of the Year play live, for my 19th birthday. That met with a resounding hell yeah, and off we went for three days to London. (I take a lot of breaks, huh?)

So, we come back and I notice that my housemates have been being a bit off with me, which is when they finally sit me down and tell me that Georgie now has a boyfriend, and has had since before we went to London. I was suprisingly OK with it. Figured I didn't expect anything to happen with me and her anyway. So long as she's happy, etc etc.

Then she breaks up with this guy and comes round to mine. She quite upset but I managed to tell her quite bluntly, without being mean, the reason she dumped her boyfriend. And she admitted I got it bang on the money. She remembered he had a penis. It was that simple.

However, at the same time, I couldn't offer her the comfort and sympathy she needed because I was afraid we'd fall back into the weird in-between we had going before, and besides, she dumped him. Not the other way around. I told her this as politely but firmly as I could and she seemed to understand, she was even a little appreciative, if I'm not mistaken.

Like I said, we still hang out, and we're still friends, but I daren't get too close, and there's still a slight, awkward air about things - which I can only hope will fade with time.

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Despite all that, when I was least expecting anything to happen, and when I wasn't even looking for love, Jo came along. It was a coincidence, things did happen very quickly, and it is a long distance relationship with a girl five years older than me. But I'll tell you now, it feels right, I've never been happier, and we both really want to make it work.

With Jo, it's easy, it's natural, neither of us felt like we have to try and impress the other, and we both feel we can relax around each other, that neither of us is judging the other.

In summary, a lot of fucked up shit can, and probably will, happen, but at the end of it all, you'll find someone when you least expect it - and it will be amazing.

Last time wedid it at 4pmGMT, which was 4 for me, 5 for Asa, and 11am for Nick

I used to have my own team, back in the day. Guys who'd help me out with graphics, sounds, etc.

Let's see, it used to be me, Old K, Aikado, Jyde (now known as Burak) and Kyle Katarn. Think we called ourselves Majin Games.

Well, Nick did say this cast wasn't bound to RMN and could branch out to GW etc.

I find GW have a weird attitude, it just depends if you're on their good side or not.