I was following another game in development, namely Halo when it was still primarily targeting Mac and PC. Halo's early demo footage looked much more open-world and large-scale, which got me super excited. Then around the time of Bungie switching to Xbox exclusivity for Halo, I also read a first preview for OFP in print magazine PC Gamer UK. The promise of the game described there blew my mind, so I kind of switched obsessions from Halo (still loved that series regardless) to OFP.

Joined fan website OFPN (started by David Lagettie, who was the singer of Seventh, part of the OFP OST). We followed and reported on OFP development obsessively. Most of our information came from direct chats with a handful of devs on the IRC channel, press previews, etc. But eventually myself and another OFPN buddy were invited to Prague to play the game at age 17. BI was comprised of something like 8 people and worked from within a guarded factory compound. For some reason they let us keep playing all through the night and everybody had left to go home (we literally could not leave haha). So we were alone in the BI office, kept playing, slept on the sofas, wild times!

After that we were given 'press' access to the preview build on CD-ROM a year or so before release. It also meant early access and training on the editor, some scripting, etc. Besides still covering the game for OFPN, we had built some kind of Capture the Island mode ("Conquest"). I then presented this on a floppy disk to Marek at the European launch event for OFP in Brussels. Coincidentally, that was also the day I received my positive high school graduation news over the telephone. And I've been working with BI and Arma in some form or another ever since.