FTW Q and A with The Game OverThinker

The Game OverThinker, otherwise known as MovieBob, otherwise known as just "Bob", has earned quite a reputation as one of the internet's finest quick tongued, snarky, pseudo video game journalists. A break out success on [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], Bob has been nominated for both a Webby and a ScrewAttack 1337 Award for "Best Gaming Show", and continually contributes movie reviews for [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. He is an enthusiast of many forms of entertainment, and will never miss an opportunity to exercise his First Amendment rights. Wielding "Big Words", big wit, and a Boston accent (only when he's angry, of course), Bob is ready to overthink gaming issues large and small.

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Gimic300: I'll start out with the essential first question for any gamer; what have you been playing recently?

Bob: "Recently" I'm lucky to get any time in for it at all. Work pileups and all that. Most of my day-to-day gaming is on the DS lately, since I can play it on break at work or mid-commute. Looking forward to Punch-Out, approaching Bionic Commando with some trepidation.


G: Growing up, what entertainment medium had the biggest impact on you?

Bob: Movies. I'm very much of "that generation" of geeks who grew up with a VCR in the living room and had E.T., Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Gremlins, Ghostbusters, etc. on a near-constant loop. Video games were definitely the dominant obsession for most of grade school, though, once the NES happened.

G: Have you ever considered a career involving the production of games, movies, or comic books?

Bob: That's the plan, actually. I spent most of my "when I grow up" days basically assuming I'd grow up to be a game designer - despite having absolutely ZERO talent for, say, programming or math which are somewhat essential to the process. I'd have piles and piles of these crayon drawings of game-worlds that'd look like the big stretched-out side-scroller level maps you'd see in Nintendo Power.

At some point around High School, though, my aim sort of rolled-over into film making and that's where it is right now as well. I am "that guy" working with my similarly-inclined best friends trying to get indie movies together and hoping to sell a screenplay - thats the goal, really.


G: What is the most enjoyable thing about creating MovieBob and Game OverThinker videos?

Bob: Attention


G: When you began blogging, what was your ultimate goal? Were the words “Webby nominee” and “The Escapist Show” swimming through your mind from the beginning?

Bob: Yes and no. I mean... I got in on "blogging" right when it was "the thing to do," but you hadn't yet had these stories of bloggers morphing into "real" journalists or whatever yet. My earliest YouTube movies were trailer parodies and gag stuff. The first "Game OverThinker" started out as mostly just a big "spew" of stuff that was on my mind at the time about gaming; but like any nerd worth his salt I'm always thinking "franchise! continuity!" so I numbered it "#1" and planned on doing at least a few more as the mood struck me. It must be an ego thing, but I tend to turn everything into a "treatise" of one kind or another. Doing them started to bleed over into other writing, so I did a few movie reviews in a similar style as well.

Of course, at that time "The Angry Nintendo Nerd" and "Zero Punctuation" were THE talk of the web world, and you were starting to see - in the gaming scene in particular - these instances of guys doing comedy-infused video reviews getting picked up for professional gigs. So I'd be a liar if I didn't say that having that to me wasn't the pie-in-the-sky fantasy aspect of it... but that it's actually started to tip in that direction for me? It honestly blows my mind. I'm not sure how I got here.


G: Where do you plan on taking Game OverThinker in the future?

Bob: Wherever it can go. It's involved in a video competition right now, so we'll see what happens there.