Here at Crispy Gamer, we kid because we love.
And we love Ryan Kuo.
Seriously, this guy has turned out to be an integral part of Team Crispy.
I personally didn't want to hire him. I know! He seemed kind of mopey during his interview. (Which I now realize is just one weapon in his toolbox of insidious charms.) And he went to Harvard, which only made me not want to hire him even more, because I think all Harvard people, once in their lifetimes, should not get at least one job they've applied for. And he didn't seem like much of a gamer. And...well, I could continue, but you get the idea.
Ryan has turned out to be awesome to work with. He puts on his headphones and slouches in his office chair and just makes shit happen. Sometimes he leaves the office and never tells us where he goes. But he always comes back. Always. Sometimes carrying a sandwich from a sandwich shop none of us have ever heard of before.
He originally was Vogel's sidekick/henchman, but he quickly outgrew that role and came into his own as a gamer, as an editor, and as a writer. No one gets more excited about obscure iPhone games than Ryan does. NO ONE. Follow him on Twitter; you'll see. (@twerkface)
The guy is passionate. No joke.
Which brings me to my "we kid because we love" sentiment. There are a couple of running jokes about Ryan in the office. (FYI: If we don't have any running jokes about you, it probably means we don't like you.) One running joke is that Ryan is a sucker for any indie-scented, indie-flavored game. One time we caught him in the office playing Blueberry Garden. Blueberry Garden! "I have to play this for a review, guys," he said while clicking away at his mouse. One other time we caught him playing something so obscure, none of us had even heard of the game he was playing.
Running joke number two is that Ryan loves all games for the first five minutes. Seriously. Pick any game, put the controller in his hand, and boom, watch that smile come out of his typically somber face like the sun on a cloudy day.
It's beautiful.
So when Teti and I were in Tokyo a few weeks back, staying at the minus-two-star-rated, nicotine-soaked Shinjuku Prince Hotel, I noticed the incredibly lengthy hallways outside our doors and snapped a picture. Teti and I agreed that the photo looked a lot like a screenshot for an indie game that Ryan would enjoy playing.
Our plan was to mock up the photo, pixellate it a bit, and then tell Ryan about this cool new indie game we saw at the Tokyo Game Show called "The Hallway."
But the more we thought about it, the more we decided that April 1st was too far off for us to get away with this, and that this joke might be too cruel, even by our normally cruel standards.
For once in our lives, Teti and I rose above our petty urges.
Instead, I have decided to turn "The Hallway" into a loving tribute to the wonderful Ryan Kuo.
Ryan: Keep on making our world go around, sir. And don't go back to med school. Don't even think about it.
Because between all the kidding and loving (and kidding) that we do, I'm pretty sure that Crispy Gamer would not be "Crispy Gamer" anymore without you.