Here’s a summary of where I’m at academically:

• Mass Communications major, Marketing minor (switched from Journalism last year)
• 3.66 GPA
• Enrolled in Honors Program (and have satisfied all Honors requirements except Capstone)
• Satisfied all general studies requirements

However, where I am focusing my energies on is instead networking, projects, and other non-academic goals.

• Worked on Program Board as an executive programmer and webmaster since my first year. This year I am the graphic designer as well. I’ve hosted dozens of events on campus while providing flyers, advertising, and website updates for the rest of the board.
• Worked on A-Team over the summer. A-Team is a peer leadership group that is involved in making a smooth transition into college life for first year students. We advise, give support, and provide a quality role model while leading them through a two-day orientation.
• Worked as a Resident Assistant for a semester (more on that later). I hosted some of the largest events and provided a positive role model for a diverse and unique floor of residents.
• Ran for Student Body President my Freshman and Sophomore year. I plan on running again the next two years. I lost to my now-roommate / partner-in-crime Anthony Bellismo.
• I’ve been involved in the Student Government Association, Technology Oversight Committee, Honors Program Board, and the Student Life Council.
• Recognized at Student Recognition Day as a Freshman and Sophomore. 
• I’ve was the webmaster for Student Affairs and Intramurals briefly.
• Started up a now-defunct movie review blog with a few fellow students.

It’s been a pretty good ride, however over the summer and the beginning of this semester have seen a series of events that have taken the turn for the better. That is awfully vague. Allow me to explain:

Over the summer, it became apparent that my help was needed at QuakeCon 2010 with my internet broadcasting organization, Quake Live TV. The issue with this was that it directly conflicted with my Resident Assistant training. I explain my situation in detail, offered to do all the coordination with my staff and do extra work to make up my time off. Unfortunately, they still were unable to keep me onboard and I lost my position as an RA.

However, QuakeCon was an amazing experience and I’m completely glad I went. I met the majority of my staff on Quake Live TV, as well as bonded with a lot of QuakeCon staff and volunteers. On top of that, was able to spend a bit of face time with Bethesda, Splash Damage, and id Software developers and executives. It was a great personal and professional experience, and we did great work while we were there. See our coverage at our QuakeCon site.

I was also laid off of my Webmaster Advisor job for Student Affairs (they essentially combined two positions into one and I got the short stick), so I lost two jobs when I came back to campus. However, I’m still the Graphic Designer for Program Board, and also Rachael (my boss) hired me as the Webmaster for Student Activities, which means I’m charge of making some really cool website stuff. I’m pretty excited.

In another unfortunate twist, my good friend Jon Haar lost his federal aid and wasn’t able to go to Shepherd. However, this let me take his place and room with Anthony Bellismo, Nick Frendzel, and Justin McKenzie. This collection of gamers, filmmakers, and digital artists is truly a great place to be, and already we’ve kicked off and done some fun, unique projects. I’ll be posting some of the videos and films we produce while we’re here shortly, already we’ve done a lot. I’m also rooming right next door to all the ladies I was very close with first year—Stephanie Singleton, Becky Van Wagoner, Ashtyn Lake, Hannah Pebbles, Abbie McMullen, and the “new kid” Heather. They’re a great group of friends and it’s exciting to have them next door.

There has been some ups and downs, yes, but at the end this is looking to be a great year for my personal, professional, and academic growth. Woot!

As some of you know, I’m the founder, webmaster, graphic designer, and guest shoutcaster over at QuakeLive.tv. Quake Live TV runs very much like a business, but we’re all volunteers and our costs are paid for by donations (thanks to an awesome, supportive community).

So what is Quake Live TV? Well, it’s an organization that broadcasts live, competitive video game matches with some of the top professionals. While a lot of our coverage is of community-run events, a lot of our coverage is of the professionals competing in high-level tournaments. We’ve covered over 1,000 competitive matches in our one and half years of operation, with some of our more popular live broadcasts reaching thousands and thousands of live spectators simultaneously. In the past year, we’ve had over 400,000 visitors on our website.

To sum it up: we’re the #1 broadcasting organization in North America Quake Live coverage, and we’re slowly becoming one of the more reputable names in eSports.

While some people scoff at the idea of playing video games professionally, some do pretty well. For example, Anton "Cooller" Singov (who is coming to QuakeCon) has made more than $130,000 in his career. Sure, he’s not going to be able to retire on winnings from professional gaming, but it’s still a good chuck of cash. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Singov

For those of you that are curious as to what competitive gaming is all about, I wrote a four-page magazine article that details the ins-and-outs of the scene.

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Back to the big news:
Quake Live TV is going to be the exclusive broadcaster of QuakeCon 2010.

So, what is QuakeCon? What does this mean?

Here’s a snippet of the Press Release:

Quake Live TV, a community-run broadcasting organization, is set to provide exclusive video coverage of QuakeCon 2010. QuakeCon, the largest LAN party in North America, is hosted annually in Dallas, TX and is home to the Intel® QUAKE LIVE® Masters Championship. Known as one of the most prestigious gaming tournaments worldwide, this year boasts a prize pool of over $50,000. After three years of main-stage action QUAKE LIVE® remains a top choice for competitive gamers.

Check out the rest of the press release on GamesIndustry.biz. I actually wrote the majority of the press release.

Essentially, QuakeCon is a big deal. Biggest LAN in North America, biggest free LAN in the world, and it hosts thousands of gamers at the event with tens of thousands tuning into the coverage from around the world.

My company is going to be that coverage.

I’m really happy to go there and be working alongside my fellow founders Steve "GreasedScotsman" Huff and Ben "FishStix" Goldhaber. These guys are legit. Also along with our promotion to the official coverage team means we get comped rooms, VIP passes, interviews with Bethesda and id Software execs, and a lot more really cool things.

In fact, if anyone has any questions for id Software, Bethesda Game Studios, Splash Damage, Respawn Entertainment (the founders of Infinity Ward, the guys who made call of Duty), Arkane Studios, or any of the pro gamers… let me know!

Anyway, I’m super excited about this and just wanted to share it. Hopefully you guys tune and I have your support!

Matt "Mattc0m" Richards
www.quakelive.tv

Check out this slick video. I think you’ll enjoy it — it’s just over a minute long!

The film was created by a team of people (everyone is acting), and every person in the film I had to cast and direct. I acted as the director, sound designer, film editor, and essentially put the entire production together. Sadly, the ending nor beginning was every fully finished. Watch it now:

Tell me what you think!

YouTube Description:
This is a remastered version of a Battlefield 2 action movie I created in 2006 and published in 2007.

Note that this movie contains scenes 3-6. Scenes 1, 2, and 7 were never completed, and thus there’s not a real solid beginning nor end to it. The ending, especially, is very abrupt.

The video was originally created in Windows Movie Maker, with the first remastering using Vegas 7.0. The current version was edited in Vegas 8.0. Music is from the Blackhawk Down Soundtrack.

Some of the footage was recorded with low resolution, so some of the visual are a bit pixelated. This is not my fault as I cannot re-render the original footage, so just bare with it.

To download the crisper (but less visually exciting) original video, use the following link: http://www.fileden.com/files/2/mashtu…

If you enjoyed this film, remember to subscribe!

Thanks,
Mattc0m
www.mattc0m.com

An intense frag video that features fast paced, ultra action packed footage of Team Deathmatch gameplay in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Features a fast paced, in your face soundtrack.

Programs Used:
* Sony Vegas
* FRAPS

Songs Used:
* What You Want (version 2) http://incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/
* Omen by The Prodigy

Play with Mattc0m and a shitton of other really cool gamers at FPS Gaming Community.

• KOTOR 2
  I’m super excited to get my hands on this one, because I’ve been wanting to try out the Restoration Mod for ages. Now I get to! I’m installing it right now, actually. Woo!
• Mercenaries 2
  The first Mercenaries was one of my favorite console games of all time. The destructible environments, the ability to hijack anything, the warzone environment, a huge arsenal of airstrikes, artillery, and bombing runs. the ability to drop vehicles anyway. There was simply a massive amount of carnage and a very cool sandbox approach to it that just worked. Sadly, that was the first one. While the second one promised all the same things, and more, it got crummy reviews, so I did not get it. However, on sale I picked it up for really cheap. and it’s turned out to be not so bad! I’ve made it a bit over half way through, and it’s pretty damn intense. However, it’s a bit buggy, the graphics are so/so, and the storyline is horrid. But, coming into this game with very low expectations, I was pleasantly surprised!
  Score: 7/10
  
• Company of Heroes
  I’ve been replaying this classic with a friend. Mainly, we’ve been digging into the LAN skirmishes and battles. Whether it’s a 2v2 versus computers, 1v1 matches, or any other sort of arrangement – we’ve been having a blast. I only had really focused on the single player when I played a couple years ago, and replaying with a focus on the multiplayer aspects has been fun. What a classic RTS! It’s really made me want to pick up World in Conflict, though. The macro-heavy, tactical RTS games have really gotten so much better, thanks to games like CoH and WiC!
  Score: 9/10

View some cool trailers of upcoming games by reading more.

I’ve been really looking forward to Dragon Age, Borderlands, Halo 3 ODST, Bad Company 2, Modern Warfare 2, Left 4 Dead 2, Assassin’s Creed 2, Brutal Legend, and more. The thing is, I’ve got to narrow it down to pick only a few. It’s so difficult! Here’s some cool, recent trailers.

Left 4 Dead 2

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Dragon Age: Origins

It’s a pretty good time to be a gamer. However, It’s not a good time to be a poor college student.

This is an artistic vision of the popular Battlefield 2 modification, Project Reality. I went in and recorded all the action, in a single-player battle against bots. I then went in with the Battle Recorder, and took a ton of screenshots from a variety of angles.

The next step was utilizing Adobe Photoshop to construct a unique theme to the images. I went in, constructed an HDR profile of each image, then applied various lighting and coloring techniques to try to tie everything together.

Then I applied the images to the graphic novel pages, using a variety of overlays and lighting styles to blend everything together. The goal was to sharpen certain elements – like facial features and the weaponry, whilst blurring out the background. I then applied various artistic filters and blended them into the images.

The final step was adding text. I had constructed the plot before hand, so I knew exactly what was happening throughout the graphic novel. Then, I applied an action that darkened the edges and added a slight film grain throughout the page.

Whilst not the perfect graphic novel (in fact, it’s “to be continued”), I felt it had a very unique, interesting visual style. Especially since the base material was, in fact, a video game. It’s fun to read, even more fun to look at, despite the rather bland plot.

I’ve considered buying a replacement for it. As I mentioned, it’s a fantastic headset. It featured superb sound quality, amazing comfort, good voice quality, and it just rocked for gaming. It was pretty much the perfect headset. So why didn’t I just spring and buy another one? Well: the price tag of $100 was a bit of a turn off. Plus, I wanted to try something new. And thus my adventure began.

So I turned to Sennheiser, knowing they’ve got some great sounding headphones. I wanted to turn away from gaming headsets and towards more professional headsets. Don’t get me wrong, I’m mainly going to be using them for gaming, and gaming headsets are great quality. But it was part of a larger picture. My eyes fell on one particular model that stood out: Sennheiser HD-280. I ended up getting a pair for $70, which is a great deal in my opinion.

I also got a stand-alone microphone. The Logitech Desktop Microphone has actually got some really good reviews, and since I’m only recording voice (namely for shoutcasting / podcasting work), it fits within my budget. My only concern is that it may pick up the sound of my computer fans / air conditioning. Mics on headsets generally have been better at canceling out background noise.

This was not a quick, easy selection for me. I spent about three to four hours digging into reviews, looking over all my different options, and eventually decided this was the best route. I was also thinking about the Creative Fatal1ty MK II (good noise cancellation + on sale), RAZER Carcharias (good bargain), and the RAZER Megalodon (7.1 surround sound in the headset).

The long term plan is eventually I want to get a turn condenser microphone, as well as a mixer board, and do some really professional audio work. But for now, I’m satisfied with this equipment. And in the end, I only spent $90. And once I do get them (in about a week), I’ll be sure to post my impressions.

Now, let’s not talk about the $50 I spent on buying 12 video games (there was some really good deals this week! Curse you, GoGamer!)

UPDATE:

Well. Guess it’s gonna be longer than a week!

Dear Buy.com Customer,

We apologize for the inconvenience, but at this time we are not able to fulfill your order.
Order #48813615 has been cancelled because you have a PayPal UnVerified Account or you are shipping to a PayPal Unconfirmed Address.

NOOO!