Hi, I’m Joe, and honestly, this has been a long time coming.
I started making videos on YouTube in 2020 under the name VGT (Video Game Therapy). There’s a story behind the name.
I’ve been playing games for as long as I can remember. Some of my earliest memories are tied to them sitting too close to the TV, getting stuck on levels for hours. I remember the first time I ever fully completed a video game. It was a game called Klonoa on the PS1. A copied version at that.
Back then, a bloke used to come round to my dad’s work with a list of games. He would bring the list home and I’d get to sit there and tick boxes. Five games a week I was allowed that cost a fiver! You’d be lucky to get a pint for that these days, but there I was in 1998, eight years of age, absolutely drowning in video games. That Klonoa disc actually ended up with a full shard chipped out of it and yet somehow it still worked!
Anyway, the name.
Fast forward to 2013. I was in my second year of university and life was tough. Fun, but tough nonetheless. Living on the breadline, paying for my rent with student loans and a nightclub flyering job. I remember one week waiting for my flyering invoice to clear with zero in the bank, I lived off a family-sized box of dry cereal. I couldn’t even afford milk. So when I got hungry, I would scoop a handful of Crunchy Nut out of the box and that would be my sustenance.
By the way, I’m not trying to get you to feel bad for me. Those were some of the best years of my life, and one of the big reasons for that was that no matter what, come rain or shine, just about every single day, me and my best mates would find time to sit down in front of the TV and get stuck into hours and hours of what we called VGT: Video Game Therapy.
What the hell am I doing?
Like I said at the start, this has been a long time coming. I have wanted to make a site like this for so long. I love writing about games, I love talking about games, I love playing games.
There is no better form of escapism on this earth than video games.
I often think to myself, as I’m sure many people who game regularly do, “What do people who don’t game even do with their time?” It’s so ingrained into who I am that I can’t imagine coming home after a long day’s graft and not escaping to whatever tantalising, galvanic, alluring, absorbing, hypnotic world is waiting for me on the other side of the screen.
I spend so much time thinking about games, talking about them, and sharing them with people that it just made sense to create a space of my own. Somewhere I can put those thoughts down properly. The way I want to say them.
This is a passion project. If nobody ever reads these words, it still feels cathartic for me in some way to release them from my mind.
So I guess that’s what the hell I’m doing!
What You’ll Find Here
At its core, Video Game Therapy is just me talking about games and gaming topics that I care about or at least that I have something to say about.
News: big stuff, little stuff, weird stuff.
Reviews: new stuff, old stuff, really old stuff. Indies to heavy hitters — I play the lot!
Oh, and lists — I bloody love a top 10 this or a top 5 that. So you can expect some of that too.
The Mission Statement
If you’re reading this, you’re right at the start of it — and that means a lot.
The world is a kind of heavy place right now. I honestly don’t remember the last time things just felt normal. Maybe 2015? Just before Boris Johnson and Trump: Season 1?
Anyway, everything we love is under attack right now. Even the games industry itself is in pretty bad shape. I’m not trying to bring the mood down, more just to remind you how important this medium is for us, the people. Real people who love nothing more than creating their own adventures and carving out their own destinies, even just for that fleeting moment at the end of the day before real life starts all over again.
That is real Video Game Therapy.
Cheers for giving it a chance.
— Joe