PC Gaming Academy

My name is Eric Rogers. I love video games, computers, and teaching. These loves lead me to build PC Gaming Academy, starting with my love of video games.

Love of Video Games

I have been a gamer for practically all my life. I remember going to my grandmother's house and sneaking into the back room to play on her Atari 2600. I also had a friend who first had a Nintendo Entertainment System and then a Super Nintendo. I loved going over to his house and playing with him.

As I moved into junior high and high school, I started playing more on the computer. I played adventure games like King's Quest, platformers like Commander Keen, and first-person shooters like Wolfenstein and Heretic.

Love of Computers

Those years playing PC games turned out to be pivotal in who I am now pushing 40.

You see, back then PC games could be very finicky. Between the different graphics cards, which were pretty new and changing all the time, different sound cards, and such, a person might spend as much time messing with configuration files and boot files to get a game working as they did actually playing the game. While this could be frustrating, it was through this process that I realized I loved messing around with computers.

When my senior year of high school rolled around, it was time for me to take a computer class. There were several different ones to choose from but the one that caught my eye was "Computer Science". This was basically an intro to programming using the Pascal language. It did not take long for me to figure out that I had found my passion. I love programming. This realization led to me going to college and getting a computer science degree and I have been a professional programmer ever since.

Love of Teaching

My love of teaching came later in life.

I have always had a hunger for learning. When I get in to something, I deep dive to find out as much as I can about that subject.

As I got older, I started to figure out that turning around and sharing that information brought a new and special kind of joy.

The Birth of PC Gaming Academy

My love for these three things melded in the summer of 2015. My wife received an email from another homeschooling mom wondering if there was anyone who knew about PC gaming and was willing to teach her 14 year-old son. I jumped at the chance.

That summer I taught a 3 hour afternoon class on PC gaming to 4 kids. We looked at the parts of my PC, talked about PC gaming online stores like Steam, and dipped our toes in video game development.

It. Was. Awesome!

Getting to teach something I love to kids who were just as interested was amazing! I knew I had to find a way to do it more. And thus, PC Gaming Academy was born.