Hello, everyone! I'm Derek, the latest hire for the Community Team. A bunch of you know me already and a bunch of you don't know me at all, so I'm here to fill everyone in on me.

As a '90s (ish) kid, I was more or less growing up right when Guitar Hero hit it big literally everywhere. So of course, I missed the boat entirely. But when Rock Band came around, I was on top of that, thanks to Game Informer coverage I obsessively reread. My sister and I went halfsies on a Rock Band bundle, and (needless to say at this point) I stuck with it a bit more than she did, so I really came out ahead with that purchase. I sat around for far too much that year, plinking on guitar or smacking the very quiet RB1 drumkit (my first love, at odds with my present skill) to nothing but the disc songs. I was 14, I didn't have money for DLC that often!

When Rock Band 2 rolled around, I finally joined the community proper and made an account on the Rock Band forums. I started absorbing information like a sponge, I got DLC news as text tweets on my flip phone. Even I feel old discussing this far back. Finally, I was old enough to work, so I got a job and went right to the obvious first thing you do with money, buying all the Rock Band DLC. I kept playing, and maybe it's even passed Pokemon in hours I've sunk in over my life.

For the last year and a half or so, I wrote at RockBandAide (swell people, swell site). I did some event coverage, got some exclusives, struggled to be up in the AM hours for DLC reveals, the whole shebang. It was really great to be able to jump in on that, and I'm forever grateful to the people there.

Now, you may be wondering, "Why is he only talking about Rock Band?" Well, the rest of my life was dull. I was a teenager in Minnesota during this story. There was nothing interesting there. I went to high school AND graduated. I worked RETAIL JOBS. It's really lacking oomph. I started traveling from boredom once I was old enough to manage it. I went to some PAXes, went to E3 without a pass once, Toronto a few times. Met a lot of new and old HMX people along the way, which helped lead me to incredible opportunity. I rushed on out of Minnesota, moving an entire week after landing the job, and now here I am in a proper city!

So that's more or less how I got here. As part of Comm Team, I will be helping out on social channels, participating in community events, and you may have already seen me on Twitch! I'm looking forward to meeting you if I haven't already, and I'll be doing my best to make this a good holiday season for all of us!