Hey now. I’m Matt Hawkins and I’m another Old Snake.
My first claim to fame was as lead designer at a NYC-based Ubisoft studio that basically no one knows even existed. I’m still curious if my name appears in the end of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon for the PlayStation 2 & Xbox 1 (though it’s pretty terrible, so no one try and find out please). After the studio’s closure is when I transitioned to indie game development, for cell phones, back in the early 2000s, which means NO ONE ever played anything I made.
But at that point I transitioned to games journalism. Wrote for a TON of different outlets, including IC ver. 1. My fondest memories on that end was my time as editor at GameSetWatch, and the lowest point was actually NBC News, cuz that’s when I began to truly interact with various movers and shakers, in which I began to realize that perhaps I wasn’t fit for that world after all. Let’s just say that I am HAPPILY retired, though I’m still write about games via…
Began doing zines when it was still a relatively a fresh, hot new thing; it allowed me to both deal with the fact that most editors did not give a rats ass about my interest in video game culture & also how I missed putting together books (I original background was cartooning and making mini comics). Became pals with one of my distributors. That in turn led to me becoming part Attract Mode (am WAY more active on Twitter these days BTW/FYI); in addition to writing about game culture, I tried my hand at becoming a contributor by curating art shows, as well as helping to produce apparel.
Along the way I was the associate producer for a documentary on Garbage Pail Kids, began planting the seeds for my own doc about New York City cable access, and also joined Death By Audio Arcade, which was based out of a DIY music venue, until Vice Magazine bought the building and kicked everyone out (as hinted at earlier, I have zero love for the current journalism landscape, and that’s just another reason why). But they recently opened a bar, called Wonderville, and there I show movies. I even run my own movie club, but I think I’ve rambled on too much, sorry…