My History

BarrysWorld
23rd Nov 1998 - 14th April 2000 (Voluntary),
14th April 2000 - 31st January 2001 (Full Time)
Electronics Boutique (Now GAME Digital Ltd) 
19th March 2001 - 21st March 2002 (Full Time)

I'm currently working within management, but now actively seeking a new writing / games industry role.

Why guides?

I started to create guides to help bridge the game between users and what they were trying to use. For example - if someone first installs outlook express they won't have a clue on how to use it and will spend days playing with it to learn its functions, however they'll run into problems along the way.

With games comes a bigger problem. Online gaming was shrouded in mystery and this left new gamers having, in the past, to search for information, and finding things out for themselves (the hard way), before they could even consider playing their chosen game. And expert gamers sometimes get sick of answering the same questions - however much we may have an urge to help countless calls of "what does this do" can make any sane gamer insane.

It seemed to me like madness not to have a online gaming guide, and this started me on the track of creating detailed guides that give the gamer exactly what he/she wants, and which are easy to follow.

Game on...

After the creation of my first two guides I was asked to join BarrysWorld (voluntary at the time) so I could grow my guides site. To cut a long story short the guides web site soon became known as the "BarrysWorld Guides" and with BarrysWorld receiving funding I was employed full time to carry on my guiding work (as well as other duties: content writing, support, news, community development, service/game tester).

Sadly the .com bubble burst and BarrysWorld future was made uncertain. Luckily Electronic Boutique (EB) bought BarrysWorld and my work on the guides continued, until late march 2002 where due to company restructuring (EB is now GAME DIGITAL LTD) my position was no longer needed and I took redundancy...

After some time out (I'd not had a holiday in over 2 years!) I found a new job which is sadly not gaming related, but allowed me to work in areas I've wanted to take a crack at, in this case management. Although I'm growing restless and I'm now actively looking at getting back into writing / the games industry. While I do that the FreddysHouse guides are here where I plan to expand on the success of the BarrysWorld guides.

The guides themselves

The guides I create try to ease the gamer in slowly, answering all the questions I know they will ask. I also ask the gamers themselves to pitch in. By sharing their tactics on the guides they not only helped fellow gamers, but also shape the guide to reflect the community it represents.

Now after countless guides and manual work (including the writing of the Counter Strike manual) I'm here on the new look guides site pumping out new fresh guides, with my main goal to making online gaming as simple as possible.

I hope it helps.

- Scott "SAS" Grenney

You can contact me via the FreddysHouse Forums here.
OR email me at SAS@freddyshouse.com