Drawing the Line

Bismillah, In the name of God.

I’m so grateful to be connected to people who stand in support of efforts, actions, and endeavors that uplift, protect, and heal communities and society at large. People who understand the immense value of human life. These are people who I have been blessed to be able to call family, companions, friends, partners, and more.

There is a sense of pride and thankfulness that I carry in knowing I’ve been able to form and maintain positive relationships with those who are passionate, intentional, and grounded in their purpose. Even though we may not always agree, what is most important is that we are able find common ground on what matters most, such as the sacredness of life, community, and dignity.

I value those who are committed to living a life with integrity, who are striving to build something meaningful for themselves, for their families, for our communities, and for others—especially the youth and the younger generations. These are the people that I choose to walk alongside.

But let me be very clear about something. I have a line, one that is rooted in my faith, my values, and my love for humanity.

I see complete and total opposition in:

• Regimes and systems that justify or excuse the killing of babies, children, and innocent people

• The erasure, displacement, or oppression of people

• Policies that reduce life to profit margins

If you align yourself with any of those things, please understand this is absolutely unacceptable to me, and that this is a non-negotiable value. I will not be aligned, directly or indirectly, with anyone who supports or is indifferent to genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, or the systemic destruction of communities for profit and power. This includes gentrification that displaces inner-city families, or foreign policies that devastate entire regions—from Gaza, to Sudan, to Congo, and beyond.

And if you support or defend the complicity of the administration in these global injustices, then understand that this is a fundamental point of disagreement between us, one that I will not overlook or brush aside. If my stance troubles you, if it feels like too much, then please, by all means, unfriend me, unfollow me, or block me. Do what you feel you need to do. Because I will not compromise on this.

I don’t expect perfection from anyone. I am not perfect, and none of us are. But I do believe we should expect the best from ourselves and from each other. At the very least, I expect the people I align myself with—whether in friendship, partnership, or community—to adhere to universal values that honor life, dignity, and compassion.

Right now, I feel moved to make this plain. I want to create an environment around myself and for the people I love, that is rooted in truth, in growth, and in the nourishment of the soul. An environment that encourages positive self-development, healing, and justice, especially for our youth and the next generations.

I speak as someone who comes from Cleveland’s inner city. As someone who loves and advocates for Black people, people of color, and for oppressed people everywhere. These are my roots. This is who I am. I see our struggles echoed across the world, in the pain of families crushed under violence and displacement, and in the apathy of those who value dollars more than lives. That’s why I say what I say here. Because I find it disturbing. I find it disappointing. And honestly, I find it tremendously heartbreaking.

We live in a society where so many people just don’t care. This isn’t new. But it still stings every time I see it. People chasing their next come-up, whether it's money, status, or temporary high. Without a second thought about the world burning around them, there’s a staggering lack of empathy and compassion. That truth has haunted me for years, but I will not allow myself to become numb to it.

I am guided by my heroes: the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him), my father, Isaiah, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, and others who have shown me what it means not to shy away from truth. They stood on values. They taught the importance of protecting life, honoring family, and resisting systems of oppression with strength and clarity. To live with faith, courage, and unwavering commitment to justice. Their teachings about the right to life, the right to thrive, the duty to protect our families and our communities resonate at my core. The value they placed on human life is the value I carry within me.

So as a Muslim, as a man, and as a Black American—I draw my line with that clarity.

That line is determined by my faith, my values, and my love for people. And I will stand firm on that.

Chapter 2 — Growing Up in Games Culture, and The Birth of Leadership

During middle and high school, gaming was no longer just something I did as a hobby—it was something that I became a part of, something I started curating and organizing. I had begun paying very close attention to every instance of gaming that I saw all over the city, joining in with friends to build new gatherings of gamers, shaping my understanding of what gaming culture meant beyond just the games themselves.

Cleveland has always had a unique games culture. One of the most fascinating things about it is that it exists in places where gaming isn’t necessarily the focus, yet in almost all of the spaces where it’s found, it thrives. Games culture was—and still is—a social lifeline. It’s how friendships are built, rivalries are made, and skills are tested.

These various spaces shaped my understanding of gaming as a social activity through the repeat gatherings where Cleveland's gamers came together. In these spaces, you could never know exactly who would be there or who you might meet that day. In some ways, these spaces were like sports venues: there was your "home turf" that you frequented, and then there were other places, farther away, where you were the visitor. Some gamers were nomadic, traveling regularly between different spots, while others preferred to stick to one place. Game stores, in particular, became key gathering points, where you’d run into fellow gamers, and through the 2000's, midnight launch events for big game releases were especially important in fostering that sense of community.

I was a bit more of the nomadic type myself, always on the move, searching across Cleveland for new arcade cabinets, gaming stores, and comic book shops. A quick aside: in recent years, particularly since 2020, GamerHaven has emerged as the premier hub for Cleveland’s games culture, keeping the community alive with regular game nights, food, and an ever-growing collection of games. Today, INFINITEQUE has partnered with GamerHaven to share its extensive collection of video games, gaming magazines, and strategy guides, enriching the experience for all who attend.

While dedicated arcades started fading away in the late '90s and early 2000s, Cleveland’s gaming scene didn’t disappear—it evolved. Video games continued to be part of the fabric of the city, though they often hid in plain sight, waiting to be discovered.

The last bastions of the beloved arcade era existed within Cleveland’s malls, at least in the ones that were still open as some began to shut down, taking their arcades with them. Each time this happened, it was a crushing blow to those who cherished these places. But it was here that serious competition held on. Randall Park Mall, Great Northern Mall, and Parmatown Mall were some of the last places where you could find arcade gaming communities. The fighting game, rhythm game, and racing game communities were some of the most popular and consistent in these spaces. Games like SVC Chaos, Dance Dance Revolution SuperNova, and Wangan Midnight: Maximum Tune 2 were the last ones standing before the mall arcades vanished—although there is one that exists today having opened in 2018! Round One at Great Lakes Mall just outside of Cleveland, in Mentor, Ohio stands like a beacon of hope.

Sometimes, you would find the most amazing arcade games out in the wild. For example, bowling alleys and skating rinks often featured random collections of games. I have vivid memories of going to a skating rink at Ridge Road and Denison Avenue in Cleveland. This was a hotspot where people from both the east and west sides of Cleveland would clash, making for some of the most competitive battles you’d see. It was one of the few places that I ever found in the whole city that featured a wide variety of fighting games ranging from Killer Instinct to Street Fighter II, and one of the most hyped arcade fighters there, Mortal Kombat II.

Like the skating rink, there was another place that was held in the highest regard among fighting game fans, and that was the Powerhouse on the west bank of the Flats, an area just outside of downtown Cleveland. For me, this was the arena for the pinnacle of fighting game enthusiasts. Though I rarely got a chance to go there, I heard many stories of the epic battles in Marvel vs. Capcom 2 and many more.

Laundromats, believe it or not, were places where you’d also find some incredible games, which made sense since there were lots of quarters floating about. In fact, it was a laundromat that introduced me to two incredible games in one cabinet: an SNK Neo Geo machine with World Heroes 2 Jet and WindJammers. In corner stores, you might stumble across rare gems like Street Fighter Alpha or Samurai Shodown. Some gas stations even featured an arcade cabinet or two, and a good friend of mine regularly told me about one that had Killer Instinct 2, a game that I wouldn’t get to play until almost two decades later! Pizza shops, gyro shops, and other inner-city fast-food places also featured arcade games—Die Hard Arcade and Mega Man Power Battles come to mind. The thing is, if a place had a waiting area, chances were it had a game machine tucked in a corner.

But beyond arcade machines, game consoles would also make appearances in public places. I remember seeing people play Madden Football in a barbershop, and trust me when I tell you, the trash talk was outrageous. On one occasion, I even saw a girl playing Tetris Attack on a Super Nintendo inside a nail salon while my mother got her nails done.

Speaking of game consoles, there was a time during middle school when my friends and I decided that instead of just talking about our favorite games daily at school, we should bring them and play on one of the televisions on a cart in an empty classroom. And that’s precisely what we did after convincing one of the cooler, more laid-back teachers who seemed to take a liking to our group. I remember playing fighting games on the SNES for the first time in school, with my best friends in that basement classroom, where we had skipped class and had full reign to play in secret! It was like our own arcade that we created and controlled. I got so excited that I threw the controller when I lost one time, which I never did normally.

Then, as we all moved onto high school, the tradition continued and evolved. We brought different consoles over time to different schools and played together. I remember when we snuck a Sega Dreamcast into an art classroom, where I played a copy of Soulcalibur for the first time, burned on a CD-R at home. Later, due to my newfound skills with learning computers and networking, I figured out how to upload games to the high school server—making them accessible from any computer in the building. From middle school to high school, what started as a small group of underground gamers eventually became a movement.

Beyond the arcades and in addition to gaming on consoles at home or elsewhere, game stores were just as important to Cleveland’s games culture as anything else. Arguably, no store was bigger than Software Etc.—which would later become GameStop—inside Tower City Center. Tower City was the crossroads of Cleveland. It wasn’t just a mall; it was a meeting place. Located directly above the RTA rapid transit train station, Tower City was where people from the east and west sides of Cleveland converged. It featured all the necessary components of games culture: two stores that sold video games, a movie theater with a few arcade machines, and a food court. Tower City became a cultural hub for Cleveland’s gamers.

Inside Software Etc., you could learn about the latest news in gaming with magazines like GamePro and Electronic Gaming Monthly, meet and network with top arcade players and casual gamers alike, argue about which game consoles were superior, and watch and play demos of the latest games on the store’s kiosks. Some of the best players and most serious gamers in the city hung out there, and from time to time, you might even meet a celebrity or athlete who stopped by to grab a new game or console.

Tower City was truly a hub and a gem in Cleveland’s games culture history.

At some point, during these years, my role shifted from player to organizer. I, along with my friends, coordinated meetups at different places, like an anime store in a nearby suburb, bringing players from different parts of the city together. Together, we started organizing more and more meet-ups, from one person’s place to another.

By the end of high school, I wasn’t just gaming, I was building spaces for others to game. Cleveland’s games culture had shaped me, and I was shaping it back.

This was just the beginning.

By the early 2000s, gaming events were becoming larger than life, with gaming companies finally bringing experiences directly to the public. So when the Nintendo Fusion Tour came to Cleveland, my friends and I were beyond excited. This was Nintendo, the biggest name in gaming, hosting a massive event in our city. It was like stepping into a gaming magazine come to life, featuring demo stations showcasing upcoming Nintendo games, competitive challenges, merchandise, posters, and Nintendo-themed giveaways.

But something felt off.

I couldn’t help but notice and thought to myself, “Where was Cleveland’s gaming community?” Why weren’t the people we gamed with every day at school, in arcades, and in the neighborhoods here? The event was held downtown, but it was clear that it wasn’t marketed to Cleveland’s majority-Black and inner-city communities. Even though Nintendo was the biggest gaming company in the world, their outreach ignored an entire segment of the community that had been dedicated to their games for years. It was another moment where I saw who gaming spaces were being created for and who was being left out.

Still, we had an incredible time—competing, exploring new games, and being surrounded by Nintendo’s world. But in the back of my mind, I kept thinking, “Gaming is supposed to bring people together… so why aren’t more of us here?”

The Nintendo Fusion Tour experience was a big step in my awakening. I realized that if gaming spaces weren’t being built for us, we’d have to build them ourselves.

This realization led directly into my experiences at an anime convention’s game room. Here, I would finally take full control of a gaming space and create something that belonged to the community. It was time to turn everything I had learned—from arcades to underground gaming networks—into something bigger than just playing games. It was time to build something lasting.

This was the beginning of my true leadership role in games culture.

Chapter 1 — The Evolution of a Gamer

When I was around the age of 11 years old, after moving into a bigger house in a better inner-city Cleveland neighborhood, our gaming experience leveled up dramatically. At first, our consoles were set up in the attic, but a few years later, we moved everything to my father’s basement lounge. This would become a space that would shape my entire approach to technology, sound, and video fidelity.

My father was a skilled tradesman—a journeyman welder, carpenter, and gardener. He built his own stereo system from scratch, designing wooden enclosures for massive speakers and wiring them for balanced highs, mids, and lows. It was here, in this basement lounge, that I had my first exposure to audiovisual technology. This began with understanding video signals, as we moved from RF coaxial cables to RCA composite cables with our game consoles.

I was amazed by the fact that just changing the way we connected each system with different cables made the picture dramatically sharper, eliminating the fuzzy static interference we had accepted for years. Terrance led this project, taking notes from the way that some of his friends had their consoles connected in their home. He then showed me how he hooked up the game consoles directly to my father’s stereo system instead of the TV, with the red and white cables, which was left and right audio. This made the game’s music and sound effects boom with clarity and depth. I watched and listened in awe.

Terrance's role in these early stages of my games culture journey was definitely more of a mentor. He introduced me to so many things, from comic books and music to television shows, anime, and video games. As my older brother, with his nine-year advantage, he always had a deeper understanding of many things. His guidance laid the groundwork for how I would interact with youth in the future, something that would come full circle later in my life. His mentorship, along with my father’s later influence, helped shape how I learned, explored, and ultimately shared and taught others. These experiences, from the technical insights to the cultural lessons, have shaped my approach to life. Between my older brother and my father, so much of what I cherish today was born from their guidance.

These weren’t just minor upgrades, they completely transformed how I experienced gaming. It was my first step toward understanding technology not just as a tool, but as an art.

One of the greatest days in our gaming lives is what I now call “The Super Nintendo Christmas.” Anyone who was there to experience the jump from the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System to the 16-bit Super Nintendo Entertainment System knows that this moment was nothing short of revolutionary. This is what I imagined it must have felt like going from black-and-white television to full color, from mono audio to stereo sound.

Nintendo’s marketing slogan at the time was:
“Now you’re playing with power… SUPER power!”
And they weren’t lying.

On Christmas Eve, Terrance and I went to bed early, buzzing with excitement for what was waiting under the tree. We had been looking at the photos of SNES games in magazines, heard all kinds of rumors about what it would be like, and I had even seen one playing in real-time at Woolworth’s store in downtown Cleveland. We knew our mother had gotten the Super Nintendo because we had discovered it hidden away before Christmas, but she wouldn’t openly admit it, nor would she let us stay up until midnight to open it. So, our plan was to go to bed early, so that we could wake up as early as possible to play it.

But when we woke up and rushed to the Christmas tree to open it, it was gone! We were completely bewildered but immediately went to search around the house, only to find that our sisters had already beaten us to the punch! They had unwrapped the SNES before we even got out of bed, but ironically and hilariously, they had no idea how to hook it up. We all laughed about it before my brother and I took over, setting up the system with precision and excitement, ready to experience what was promised to be the next level of gaming.

That Christmas, we received four unforgettable games that redefined everything we knew about gaming and showcased the SNES’s technical advancements. It began with Super Mario World, the perfect showcase game, proving this wasn’t just a better Nintendo, but that it was a new generation. Followed by U.N. Squadron, a cinematic, side-scrolling shooter with thrilling music, deep mechanics, and pulse-pounding gameplay. Alongside that was Gradius III, a fast-paced, high-intensity space shooter that introduced us to sprite scaling and parallax scrolling. And then, there was Super Castlevania IV. A game with a soundtrack so incredible that we spent hours just listening to its orchestral compositions in Sound Test mode. Each one of these titles, two of which were arcade games prior, completely immersed us into games culture even further as our appreciation for games continued to grow. But the single most important Super Nintendo game for us—the one that would utterly revolutionize our understanding of storytelling in games—was Final Fantasy VI.

Final Fantasy VI wasn’t just a game for us, it was an epic, a novel, a work of art.

Everything about Dragon Warrior that had captured my imagination as a child was expanded, refined, and elevated to new heights. The story was gripping. Every character had depth, emotions, and struggles that felt real. The villain, Kefka, remains one of gaming’s greatest antagonists. And the game's music was emotionally stirring. Nobuo Uematsu’s compositions weren’t just background tracks, they were an integral part of the storytelling.

Unlike Dragon Warrior, where Terrance narrated every moment for me, we played Final Fantasy VI together as equals: We analyzed the plot twists, debating character motivations. We strategized our party compositions, experimenting with the best setups. Whenever we encountered a word in the game that we didn’t know, we tried to pronounce it and figure it out together. Even our sister Jocelyn, who rarely played games, watched along with us, captivated by the story and characters.

Final Fantasy VI changed how we viewed video games forever. It wasn’t just interactive entertainment, it was a cultural artifact, an intellectual experience, a shared moment of discovery. That realization would stay with me for life.

The emotional impact of the "Super Nintendo Christmas" sparked a larger interest in sharing gaming experiences with others. It became a primary method of bonding with friends, when we could share our experiences and feelings when playing games separately, with one another in school or in the neighborhood. These bonds would become even more powerful when we experienced games together, and there is no doubt that this formed a major part of my identity and I believe many others' as well.

At 14 years old, my gaming experience expanded beyond consoles. I started living with my father in another Cleveland neighborhood, where I gained new skills that were not just limited to gaming, but in electronics, technology, and craftsmanship. He saw my passion for computers and one day took me to buy my first personal computer with Windows 95. It changed everything.

At the store where we purchased the computer in Berea, Ohio, just outside of Cleveland’s west side, the man in the store talked to us about all the different custom-built PCs that we could buy. He explained everything, and this is where I first began learning about motherboards, central processing units, random access memory, sound cards, and graphics accelerators. We decided on a computer that fit within our budget and brought it home. Within that first year, I began experimenting with all the things that could be done with computers, from basic graphic design as I learned to make pixel art, coding with BASIC and Visual BASIC, audio recording with the microphone tools, and of course, stepping into the world of the internet. Within the next four years, I had already built a second computer after buying the parts online and having them mailed to our home. I had taught myself HTML and basic web design, installed new operating systems, and began to play computer games online with the rest of the world.

The shift from consoles to PCs was nothing short of an enlightening experience. I was connecting with games culture globally, in real-time. No longer did we have to wait for games to be translated and localized, I could play and experience a game in its native language when it was originally released. Additionally, the wait for information through mediums like gaming magazines began to vanish, as information on all of gaming was available to read via the internet. And then, being able to communicate with gamers not just outside of Cleveland, but gamers from other states, countries, and continents became possible, in an instant. The game that brought all of these things together, was Phantasy Star Online (PSO). PSO would become the next game in my life, following Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy VI, to shape my understanding of what was possible through gaming. PSO was the first major console action role-playing game (RPG) that was online. I was able to play with the friends I had made all over Cleveland, over the internet while we were all at home. I was able to play with new friends that I made online, and some of those friends would be in Mexico, Brazil, or Japan. PSO itself was also a masterpiece of a game from both a technical and experiential perspective. It was a Sega Dreamcast game, and this console was like a bridge between console and PC gaming for me, featuring the highest resolution graphics I had ever seen from any console, ever. The game featured so much amazing artwork, character design that allowed the player to customize their own character that they played online with, and an absolutely amazing soundtrack featuring tunes that were orchestral and yet electronic with synthesized sounds that were beautifully composed. From a gameplay standpoint, it was absolutely so engaging and fun that I am not ashamed to admit that I have played it for well over a thousand hours, which is typical for most who experienced PSO in all its glory.

These experiences, from mastering AV technology to building my first computers, were all laying the foundation for something bigger:

The birth of INFINITEQUE.

Prologue — A Story Begins with Play

The blinking glow of our family’s only television reflected off the laminated map that was spread out on the living room floor, while an overworld theme filled the room. A single Nintendo Entertainment System controller lay beside it, as two brothers—one teenage and the other a young child—studied the map, then looked up at the television. On the screen, a pixelated world filled with landscapes, towns, monsters, and a hero awaited our input.

Gaming wasn’t simply just something happening in front of us. It was something we interacted with and an experience that we had a hand in creating.

I sat cross-legged on the floor, watching as my older brother, Terrance, picked up the controller and played through Dragon Warrior, an epic adventure unlike anything we had played before. But what made this experience so special wasn’t just the gameplay. It was the way my brother narrated the game’s events, much like he did when reading comic books or acting out superhero battles in our room. His voice brought life to the dialogue and decisions, sometimes even giving characters their own unique voices. If he disliked a character, he never hesitated to make it known and his commentary was always hilarious and expressive. He transformed the game into something more. It was an interactive story, a lesson in problem-solving, and a test of perseverance and imagination

And then there was the music.

The dungeon theme in Dragon Warrior was unforgettable. The game had an incredibly simple yet effective way of building tension: as the player descended deeper into the dungeon’s eight levels, the music slowed down, becoming lower, darker, more foreboding. And the deeper Terrance ventured, the more my anxiety rose. The tune, already eerie at the first level, became even slower and heavier with each descent. I sat there, glued to the screen, watching as Terrance explored and fought enemies, sometimes low on health and supplies, desperately trying to escape. As he climbed back toward the surface, the music would gradually speed up and rise in pitch, relieving some of the tension. Sometimes he didn’t make it out, falling to powerful enemies. Other times, he triumphed, emerging from the dungeon victorious. But in both victory and failure, the journey itself was what mattered.

Looking back, this was my first lesson in games culture. Video games weren’t just gameplay—they were shared experiences, stories, art, learning tools, and social bridges.

That realization would shape the rest of my life.

“I’m not okay with them telling my story, so I will tell it myself.”

Greetings. It’s been quite some time since I last began and maintained a blog of any sort, but it’s something that I have wanted to get back to for a long time.

My name is Tristan, and I welcome you to the first entry in a series of posts where I will share some of my thoughts and ideas around the topic of games culture. One of the first things that I plan on sharing with you all, is the story of my journey through games culture, and I invite you all to share your stories here as well. Within the coming weeks, I plan on launching a new initiative here at infiniteque.com that will allow users to share their stories. The details for submissions will be coming soon, so please stay tuned to learn more about that.

Rather than writing a long introduction telling you who I am, I’ll be starting this blog off with the beginning of my games culture story for you to read. Please stay tuned as I will share more and more of this over time.

Thanks for reading. Peace.

-Tristan