Hello!
If you're here it means you want to know something 'bout me!
Well... I will not talk you about the story of my life because it's not that interesting and not even close to the purpose of this site. I'll just try to summarize my gaming-related experience (It'll be quite long and boring, lol!)
In short, I'm a countryman from Southern Italy, somewhere in Calabria region (and FAR from Catanzaro ) .
I live working as a farmer (as you may have seen from some of my posts on Youtube) on my family farm and, aside from crops, I've also always cultivated a strong passion for videogames and other nerdy stuff (perhaps one day I'll also make some videos about that other "stuff").
- First contact with the gaming world.
My first experience with videogames was with famiclones and, occasionally, the arcades. The turning point was the arrival at home of my first PC when I was 10, on which the technician installed the DooM's shareware. Nothing was the same anymore! I've talked about it in my DooM's video 2 years ago.
Time passed and I started to buy pc gaming magazines that always included a full game. The first time was Turok by chance (which always crashed while climbing a stair during the first levels and I never finished it ultil many years later with the remaster...) and later I bought for many years the historical Giochi Per Il Mio computer (we can consider it the italian PC Gamer, which was also exported and translated in Italian during the 90s), thanks to which i played masterpieces like Homeworld, Deus Ex and Gothic. Sometimes I show some issues of it in my videos to point out how I came into contact with the reviewed games (see Mistmare, for example).
During my teens I discovered forums (through the dedicated pages on respective magazines) and grew up frequenting, mainly, Gamesradar's forum, later renamed Gamesvillage for editorial reasons.
Through that forum I knew a lot of interesting people; and with a good portion of them I still have contacts through telegram's groups and the like.
Damn, it's really strange to think that I've known some people deeper and for longer that many IRL ones!
Now the majority of us frequent IGN Italy's forum... due to some curious happenings we ended up migrating there 10 years ago.
Anyway, let's talk now about how I came to envision the project "Bucolic Insights"!
- My first experiences as a (bad) reviewer
It can be considered a continuation of my precedent hobby as a amateurish reviewer for a long forgotten Website called VGNetwork.it.
How I became a reviewer was initially a personal project when, along with some dudes from a little forum, I had the strange idea of making a downloadable gaming magazine to be released at irregular intervals called TIME TO PLAY.
Well, I was just 16 and knew shit about how to make websites but, somehow (through some external help), I kinda managed to release the first issue which contained iirc 6 reviews and various articles about upcoming stuff like the imminent Nintendo Wii (written by an historical e-friend of mine)! Damn that was ages ago!
The cover game and main article was my review of Xenosaga Episode III: Also Sprach Zarathustra, which is also one of the best JRPGs I've ever played.
That project ended very early (right after the release of the first issue, lol) because I lost enthusiasm due to the many difficulties I had in the making.
Suddenly, one of my "collegues", came into contact with another nascent project called VGClub.it which had good people behind it who I befriended easilly.
So, I became a reviewer for that website, for which I used to write very long reviewers. I always loved to write down everything important about the game's mechanics and everything but, in hindsight, I wasn't that great writer (and still very young).
Due to some "troubles" VGClub.it was "abandoned" and another website was born: VGNetwork.it precisely (Let's call it VGN from now). We can consider VGN as the better version of the previous one in everything!
So, in VGN I continued writing long and boring retrospectives and later became head of the retrogaming section. Believe me, I was the worst pain in the ass imaginable! I always had something to say about everything, maybe I even pissed someone off because of my annoying opinions or because of some ratings that were considered too low/unfair (like the 6.5 I gave to Final Fantasy VIII LMAO).
However, during my early 20s, I lost much of my initial enthusiasm, also because of my hellish work.
After finishing highschool I became a freaking workaholic (but even before that I've always been one hell of a worker when schools were closed) and many times I was SO FUCKING TIRED at the end of the day that I lacked the energy to just stand in front of the monitor to follow some meetings on skype or to publish some articles online in time (I was scolded for that and I can’t blame them, to be honest).
Due to such circumstances I decided to left that website that now doesn’t exist anymore. It was a nice adventure and I remember the chief editor being quite upset for my departure.
For years I didn't write anything aside long-winded opinions in forum posts. Initially I even didn't like video reviews at all! I've always found written reviews much better until I started to follow some english youtubers that conquered my interest.
My problem is that, somehow, I find italian gaming content quite boring to listen to. I mean, There are absolutely good and respectable italian youtubers (!!!) but, for reasons, foreign content creators (I'll name just a few) like LGR, Mandalore Gaming, Civvie11, Gman Lives and that crazy lad of Sseth Tzeentach (I'm actually a member of the Merchants' Guild!) made me become their fan.
So, during my work I started fantasizing about my possible reviews in english and how to edit them in my own style. After some time (like 2 years, lol) of fantasies I finally took my decision to start this new little project.
- Bucolic Insights begins!
Originally the name of the channel should have been something banal like Countryside Gaming or The Bucolic Gamer and also have a more silly\comedic direction in which I played the funny character, but then I changed my mind and opted for a more serious tone, more in line with my real life persona.
The actual name of the channel, which is rather unusual (and maybe doesn't even recall anything gaming-related), came to my mind by chance. During the summer period, preceding my plan to start the channel in the winter, I had the chance to finally play Bloodborne (and The Last Guardian), for which I specifically bought a PS4 (and a bit later an additional new original controller because the one that came with it had the touch screen damaged and, after trying to repair it, it stopped working completely and I threw it against a wall...) and because of that game's mechanics and lore the term "insights" casually came to my mind... hence BUCOLIC INSIGHTS! Ingenious, right?!
I started working on my videos some months before creating the channel because I first wanted to learn how to edit properly, thus I created the first 6 videos which I would then gradually release during the first weeks. For my first video I decided to review Gothic because I wanted to analyze not only one of my favorite games of all time, but also a game with serious flaws that deserve to be explored and criticized. I thought it was a good way to demonstrate that I know how to criticize and explain why such a flawed game is also a historical production.
Making these video reviews is a really fun experience, and sometimes I'm very satisfied with the overall response in the comments! I originally expected some backlash for my terrible english (my speech from the first videos aged worse then milk, ngl!), but instead I received unexpected appreciations that seriously shocked and motivated me!
I hope to continue making video reviews in the coming years and, why not, gain lots of new subscribers!
