About Us
Hey all, you might be wondering what Through Gamer Goggles is all about. The short answer is this: balancing gaming life with real life. The short answer doesn’t delve into what this is really about though. The long answer is that this blog is about everything that can affect your gaming world.
Our ultimate goal is to keep you up to date on releases and to share m experiences as a gamer, judge, father, husband, coordinator, blogger, self-proclaimed chef, martial artist, and Christian. More importantly, it is about how we (all gamers) might have to do things to balance our time between our real lives and our games.
That being said, we might talk about religion, good study habits, recipes, and even game design. If there is a topic you as a reader would like to read about, and you don’t have the time to research it, let me know – maybe I can help or write it and post it here!
Who Am I
Matt Lemke
I have a wife, Lisa, and 3 children, Joshua, David, and Deborah, and they’re a huge part of why I do what I do. Which began many years ago when my older brother introduced me to Dungeons and Dragons. I was in third grade, really too young to get hooked, but I was. By the time sixth grade rolled around, I had created my very own role-playing game. I called it Time Warp. I thought it was the bomb. Looking back I know it was crap. As I matured, I continued to explore the gaming world, mostly RPGs, until the mid 90’s when I was introduced to Magic the Gathering.
Magic the Gathering was very influential to me as a gamer; not because I love it, but because even though I was already gaming for nearly 15 years, Magic opened my eyes. It was because of MtG that I went to my first game convention – Origins Game Fair. I haven’t missed one since, and I don’t want to miss one ever. Magic also called me out. In the 90’s there weren’t a lot of local tournament spots in our town, so I started hosting tournaments. It wasn’t long before I had as many as forty players in my house playing Magic until the wee hours of morning. A few years later, we opened GameQuest, our retail hobby shop.
At GameQuest I continued to serve by investing my time in several games. I became a judge for as many games as I could run events for.
- Magic the Gathering
- Mechwarrior Dark Age
- Mage Knight
- HeroClix
- Dragonball Z
- Yu Gi Oh
- BattleTech
- World Of Warcraft
- Dungeons and Dragons
- And more!
As a store owner, we (Lisa and I) ran events like a well oiled machine. Many of our events were very memorable, like the 30th anniversary for D&D. We registered around 90 new players into the DCI (RPGA) and at one point we had 30 players in the same event. I have had so many good judging experiences I can’t possibly list them all, but they include Grand Prix, world championships, prereleases, PTQs and countless game days.
In 2003 we had to close the doors of GameQuest. Ever since we have been volunteers at local conventions, mostly as GMs. That is until a few years ago (May 2011), when a good friend of mine, Ryan Hale, dared me to start a blog about gaming. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was his way at getting back at me for intoxicating him with Rifts and addicting him to RPGs. It wasn’t long before he dropped the idea for me to do interviews at a local con. Since then I’ve gone from just writing to audio and YouTube, and it’s been growing faster every month. I currently average about 150 self published video productions a year plus several videos for manufacturers. Then I post lots of news posts and written reviews.
It’s your support that will help me take Through Gamer Goggles beyond the pages of my blog or YouTube and meet you in strange places where we can roll the dice!
