Shacknews Staff Select: Ozzie Mejia

Greetings, travelers. It's resident Hearthstone Legend, esports follower, and all-around good guy Senior Editor, Ozzie Mejia.

As Greg Burke ever-so-tactfully pointed out, I'm the longest-tenured member of the Shacknews staff. This is a fact that's still tough to wrap my head around, considering I got my start as a GameFly intern back in 2010. Working around some of the best in the business like Garnett Lee, Xav de Matos, and Andrew Yoon (RIP, my friend), it's still hard to fathom that I wound up the last person standing out of that crew. I was one of the few to make it through the transition from the GameFly sale to the Asif Khan regime and have been a part of the team ever since. (Well, except for that one year that I went to work for Yahoo, which I returned from with a new perspective on the growing world of esports.)

Arguably, that's probably the biggest difference between me now and when I first began. I attended my first SoCal Regionals back in 2012 and saw the appeal of competitive Street Fighter. Competitive gaming only grew from there, as I've gotten into the world of Overwatch, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Hearthstone, and Rocket League. My first love remains fighting games, primarily Street Fighter, but I do love Super Smash Bros. (both Melee and Smash 4), which has completely changed how I approach those games.

I am the Southern California Shacknews presence and I've had the pleasure to meet several members of our Chatty community. (Megara9, let's meet up whenever I go to NorCal!) I hope to meet more of you soon and take awesome pictures, like the time I met sparkly and his entourage. Enjoy yourselves, be good, and enjoy the Shacknews Select video above. Meet the rest of the staff on our YouTube channel.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?