Nina Alvarez

In Their Own Words

I'm the guild leader of life, and I'm only half kidding. I came up through MMOs, EverQuest, WoW, FFXIV, and somewhere along the way I realized the games weren't really the point. It was the people. The raid team that became your actual friend group. The guild chat at 2am when someone's going through hell and nobody logs off. The DPS check everyone failed for three hours and laughed about for years.

That's what I write about. The social side of gaming. MMO patches, community events, co-op and multiplayer stuff, and the human stories that happen when people connect through play. I think about this one time in our FFXIV free company, we had a member going through chemo, and we organized this whole in-game event for them. Like forty people showed up. I still get choked up about it. That's gaming to me.

And esports, because competitive gaming is electric if you know what you're watching. I try to make it click for people who've never seen a match while keeping it real for the veterans who've followed a scene for a decade. TJ Jackson and I split the Gaming beat and I love that I get to be the voice for that side of things.

I have opinions about toxicity. Strong ones. And I will always shout out the communities that get it right, the ones that make you want to log back in. Twenty years of guilds and raid teams and Discord servers have taught me one thing. You don't age out of gaming. You just find better parties.

What I Cover

Connections

• Works alongside TJ Jackson in Gaming