First off, I offer my sincerest condolences to Ryan's wife, his family, and of course his closest friends.

I have rewritten this several times over trying to accurately capture the way I feel after the unfortunate news today. In my short nearly 30 years of life I've experienced loss of my own, namely the loss of my closest friend of 11 years almost 2 years ago. The confusion, despair, questions, and tears are all too familiar to me. Why am I telling you this? Well, today, upon first hearing news of Ryan's passing I was in disbelief. Then those feelings came back, the confusion, despair, questions, and yes the tears. I feel as though I've lost a close friend as well. Ryan and I never met or talked and he most likely wasn't even aware of my existence, but he played a large role in my life through our shared interests. From his first days at Gamespot until this day I enjoyed every bit of content he was a part of, I enjoyed watching him and the people around him grow. He became an everyday part of my life through the websites, podcasts and different permutations of social media. I have actively seeked out his perspective on the world for many years now, and in turn it help shape some of my world.

I believe there are many others here that feel the same way. Those of us that have never met the man, but have felt his influence, shared in his exuberance of wonderful nonsense and are now prepared to celebrate his life. He was a wonderful person whom a great many will miss.

Mike

I jumped into some Co-op in the Beta that went live ealier this evening and took some video of us shootin' some fools. I'll add the second part when youtube is done processing the HD encode.

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Well here we are. We've come together over, uh.. them. The site looks fantastic. Now let's put the place on the map. Short and sweet.