^^^ He's also trouble this one... Watch out
OK, let me do this then. The name's Dave. Saracen is the name of my cat, Saracen's are within one of my favourite time periods of History, and a favourite Rugby Team, I once owned a Saracen Bike, and drunk in a pub named the Saracen's head. Mostly coincidental, but that's how the name came about.
I've been Strategy gaming since 1992. I've been mostly active within the Command & Conquer community having made friends with developers of the past and have had the opportunity to go to community summits in LA to meet them and get drunk at 4am in the morning with EA's German Community manager... anyway. Those opportunities have come about due to my extensive gaming career and previously running fansites... which I'm too old to care for nowadays.
I have always dabbled in 4X, playing Civilization, Imperium Galactica 1 & 2, Galactic Civ 1 & 2, Sword of the Stars etc... But only in the last few years has the sub-genre really taken hold and I now consider it, along with grand strategy in general, to be my favourite type of Strategy.
These days, I don't have time for AAA rubbish that gets plastered over magazines every year with how great the next annual update is. I am very much Indie development supportive, and I prefer the ideas, concepts and innovations that come with being involved in that support. I guess it brings me back to the old days of the C64 and Spektrum games where the bedroom programmer was king... They were good old days, and it's great to see that there's a nice large market for such a powerful development arc in the industry to return in earnest.
That makes gaming a very exciting prospect once more, especially with smaller teams taking on big projects such as this!