I'm Stephen, and this blog is an attempt to get a piece of writing out about games once a week during 2020, sometimes serious, sometimes more whimsical. I do not plan on limiting this to a certain subset of games, but personal tendencies in what I play is likely to do that to some extent. So let's start with some basic background details about myself and my history with games. Not to prove any 'nerd credentials,' but because taking into account what perspective someone is coming from matters since that can inform what they're likely to notice, and what they're likely to miss.
I have been playing both video games and board games for as long as I remember, as well as enjoying watching game shows. My earliest video game related memory is being beaten at one of the biplane levels in Combat 2600 by a family friend who was using a custom controller that allowed her to control using head movements. My earliest home gaming aside from that would have been on the family 2600 and c64, then a mega drive. I was mostly console gaming during the 16-bit era, transitioning to mainly PC gaming during Gen 5 where I fell in love with management sims, before back to console gaming just before the release of the PS2. Since then I've transitioned back and forth between the two, and am currently mostly playing video games on the Switch.
While most of the board games I played as a child are the usual sort of mass-market family fare, along with Hare and Tortoise, which while it was rarely the game I'd have listed as my #1 at the time, was consistently a game I enjoyed to the point I now consider it my childhood favourite board game. My first 'hobby' game aside from that was while I was still mainly playing mass-market games was Reiner Knizia's Lord of the Rings title. It wasn't until a few years after that that I started to explore hobby gaming properly, starting off with games like Catan and Ticket to Ride with my parents, and in the 15 years or so since then, have been exposed to light war games, solo games, heavy economic games, lighter fare than I started with such as party games, along with heavier Euros, and enjoyed most styles of tabletop games I have tried. I haven't had much opportunity to play tabletop roleplaying games, and most of my roleplay experience is from IRC freeform and MUSHes, and even there it's been slim.
I was obsessed with watching game shows as a child. Not just shows that sound like they'd have an appeal to children such as Knightmare, Gladiators, The Crystal Maze and so forth, but also more traditional, straight, quizzes such as University Challenge. Not just watching them, either, I distinctly remember playing out elaborate game shows with my stuffed animals - or even wooden bricks - as the contestants and all manner of board game components involved in that.
A couple of notes that specifically colour how I experience games, and entertainment as a whole:
I am autistic. When playing board and card games with others, I find them a useful communication aid - They provide an ability to socialize with someone without having to worry about small talk vs special interest dumping, lessons expectations to maintain eye contact since everyone's looking at their cards and the board, and so forth. I sometimes find myself spending longer with video games than I intend because of executive dysfunction, making it harder for me to stop doing things I'm in the middle of, but also because I don't always notice the passage of time, but equally I sometimes want to play a game - solo tabletop or video game - but struggle to transition to a position allowing me to do so from whatever I was doing beforehand. When playing games with cosmetic factors and encouragement by the game to play as yourself, I often find myself dressing in ways that I would like to dress in real life, but my sensory processing issues prevent me from doing and said same sensory processing issues cause me to have problems processing spoken dialogue without subtitles.
I am bisexual and demi-romantic. This doesn't tend to impact how I engage with games on a mechanical level, but it sure as hell impacts what things I notice about games, and what theming engages me. Most of my board gaming is with my husband regularly, who I met doing text commentary on the UK version of Deal or No Deal. We then formed an online friendship, which after many years started to shift into a mutual romantic attraction.