Just wanted to put this somewhere where LOAF could see it:
Back when I was a kid, 10 11 or so, I went to the alt.games Wing Commander forum in the pre-CIC days and posted a question about Prophecy's ending, which I hadn't played. I was absolutely incredulous to learn about Blair, and I just had to ask about it. Course back then I had no idea what spoilers were, and I put my question in the title of the post so... long story short I ended up making quite a lot of people angry and got some very fun death threats which I'm pretty sure violated the AOL TOS :-p. Also got some much more moderate chastisement from CReid and Loaf for that and some other silly things I did.
Later on I was around when the CIC was formed, used to drop into IRC periodically, was active in various Wing Commander RPG communities (AOL games, Aces, Red Horizon MUSH, etc). Basically I've known -of- and been anonymously acquainted with Bandit LOAF for about 15 years now.
Will be honest, me and my friends have poked fun at him sometimes for his hardcore "Wing Commanderism" and feelings on Freespace 2. And yea in the spirit of old times we'll name our ships in Star Citizen after Freespace references and maybe one of these days ask Loaf to talk about it on a livestream ;-). But it's all in good fun!
While I was watching all you dudes on the livestream earlier doing the countdown it occurred to me that, while as a backer of SC I'm obviously thrilled that we got $6.2 mil, I'm also just very happy for Loaf. Because I remember when Loaf was a kid, not -that- much older than me, and all the trips to the various conventions and the photos from the WC movie premier... and being such a major part of running the CIC for over a decade, which I know wasn't always easy because for many years it looked like the Wingnut community was doomed to ever increasing irrelevance as Origin went lights out, space sims stopped being viable, and more and more of us grew up and got busy with RL. In fact I specifically remember Loaf making postings a few years ago where he was feeling pretty down about things himself.
So seeing Ben up on the livestream next to CHRIS MFing ROBERTS, actively working on the creation of the successor of Wing Commander and Privateer, made me feel so damn happy for the guy because I know that's gotta feel good. It's a vindication of all those years of keeping the lights up on the CIC. Game Dev isn't my chosen career, I'm a prelaw student these days and working in public service, but I remember being 9 years old and booting up WC1 on the SNES to see "A Chris Roberts Game". Working or even contributing with RSI would've been a dream come true back then. But there's really no greater Wing Commander fan in the country than Loaf, and it's awesome that he's got the opportunity now to work, and create, and share the militant "fanboyism", which is just another word for passion, we teased him mercilessly over with a new generation of gamers.
So my question for Loaf is: How's it feel yo?
-Anjelus on the RSI forums