Personnel Files – Kirsten



Editor ‒ Ready Up

Name: Kirsten Kearney

Age: 36

Current Location: Glasgow, Scotland.

First gaming memory: Playing Pong on Christmas day in the living room, sitting on the floor. I remember the teak effect on the console and the little controllers and the rounded glassy front of the television, which was probably tiny. I must have been about eight. This means I’m not quite old enough for the wood veneer Atari 2600 to have been new. I suspect my Mum got it out of Paddy’s Market.

Longest gaming session: Unlike most people I can give an exact time, which is 24 hours exactly. I’ve set two Guinness World Records playing 24-hour marathons for games. The first was on Rainbow Six Vegas 2 with the Frag Dolls and the second on Burnout Paradise with Ready Up. I remember the events fondly but the reality is that these kinda things take months to set up properly and by the end of the actual session you feel like you’re going to die.

Least favourite genre: Football games. I don’t understand football at all. Its appeal as a sport and a game is completely beyond me.

Favourite gaming snack: I was going to say crisps but that’s just because I love crisps and hasn’t anything to do with gaming. I think in terms of being tasty and specifically good for gaming I’d go for something like Jelly Tots; small, sweet and infinitely nom-ible.

Reaction to dying in-game: Terrible. My behaviour is absolutely disgraceful; I’m so ashamed just thinking about it. My reaction has evolved, though. I used to shout and scream, then it became a sort of touretic exclamation accompanied by the thigh slap. Now it’s a sort of beseeching to the developers out loud as to why they would do such a thing as to have this difficulty spike / sudden change in game mechanics / break in the flow of the story. I berate them for not thoroughly testing the game or for including enemy moves that appear to be one hit kills. I shake my head and say that this sort of thing will lose them points in reviews, that they aren’t tuned in to the audience’s needs or the modern gaming world. Of course if every game was seamless and I never missed a step I’d say they were boring, diluted and too formulaic. You can’t win with me.

Favourite game character: For so long it was Lara. She was just so awesome and her movement when controlling her felt so sophisticated and I think that’s where the bond with her comes from. The rest of the gaming world, though, has long since caught up. Without her gaming wouldn’t have had an incredible benchmark to live up to so all the characters that I now love are born of her brilliance so I suppose my answer is still Lara Croft but John Marston, Altair, GLaDOS, Big Daddy and of course my own Shepard are all brilliant.

Most hated game character: This isn’t going to go down well… Nathan Drake. I’m sorry but the Uncharted games are just slightly inferior Tomb Raider games with a character that moves like a constipated bear while swearing and grunting. I am genuinely shocked by how seldom Tomb Raider is mentioned when people talk about Uncharted. It’s like they recreated Tomb Raider (in some levels almost exactly), swapped out a strong, smart British woman for a smart mouthed, boorish American dick, added boring and excessive combat and then everyone pretended they’d never heard of Tomb Raider. Fuck Nathan Drake.

Favourite game EVER! Tomb Raider 2, no explanation required.

Anthony asks: What surprises you most about the Ready Up community?

Kirsten: How little our differences matter to one another.

Ben asks: Can you review a Marshmallow in 50 words?

Kirsten: The ultimate campsite snack, the humble marshmallow offers us a pink gooey pillow of sweet delight. Whilst not as popular as it once was this traditional foam-textured candy has found a new home bobbing along the surface of hot chocolate drinks in popular café chains across the land.

7/10

Celeste asks: What’s the most embarrassing thing you’ve ever done for money?

Kirsten: I did this DVD for Stuff Magazine… or maybe T3 I can’t remember, I’ve blocked it out of my mind. Anyway, I was talking through the various current-gen consoles, which were new at the time. My hair was a fucking state and I kept pulling up the waistband of my jeans because they were a bit big. This was on a DVD that also had those Amazonian models on it, holding a gadget while wearing a bikini and shoving the latest mobile phone up their pie or whatever. I just looked like this little… hobbit creature. I phoned my manager and asked how many copies went out with the magazine and if I could buy them all. He said “Umm… like three million or something?” I just wanted to crawl under a rock and die.

Oh yeah, there was that time I had to talk about masturbation on telly… but my hair looked fine in that so that wasn’t too bad.