I know it has been a long time...

[Anonymous]

I know it has been a year since I've been on these forums. I don't want my controversy from this forum to continue to ridicule me if people find the controversial posts that I made in the past after I become a game developer. I just want to let you know that I am sorry for the previous posts I made.

I received my Oculus Rift a few months after launch, and my Oculus Touch controllers a day after launch. I may have overreacted a bit when making the "depression" posts, but I have my Oculus Rift and Touch controllers now they're really great, but I have a small office room, so I can't move around but, you get it..l.

I do not endorse hacking to gain bad information about people and then murdering them for it. When I do find conflicting information however, I will call the police and others based on the severity in the future. I got angry because back then, my life was very depressing in high school and before, because I had no friends during that time. In the past I was bullied a lot at school for having meltdowns and children called me "meltdown kid". I had to go to Special Education and take medication after my first meltdown. Until 5th Grade, I was in Special Education. After that, I got all A's, but my parents divorced after 5th Grade and this made me feel that my friendships back then were a waste of time. I never saw my friends from elementary school ever again. When 6th Grade happened I still did great, but I wasn't able to go into any classes I wanted to because somehow, I was still in Special Education because of my disability... Until high school they said...

This was when the depression hit me...

I still got more friends and still got A's but my grades were lowering a tiny bit. This was until I went to my first high school. My first classes were all required classes and the homework load at the beginning was pretty difficult. I missed a few assignments and one of my teachers pressured me into having a meltdown. I was moved to all non-credit Special Ed classes and that's when the depression hit the most and through the rest of high school, my work in 9th Grade did not count...

The depression built so hard that my counselor recommended I moved to a different high school. I lost all my friends from my first high school and was moved and placed in a program in the second high school that was still kind of Special Ed but you can get accommodations and help with your work. My previous classes at the first high school didn't matter, so I had to redo the classes later. However, even though I had six time slots for classes, even though the help center was supposed to be an optional place to get help or relax if needed to, it filled one of my time slots... I mostly had no electives during that time, so I had to complete the required classes, and do three years of the help center group on one of my time slots. This made me have little to no electives.

Before the last year of high school, I made the previous posts that were pretty controversial. Now, I am in college doing some required classes to transfer to UC Irvine, so I may want to work for Blizzard or Valve or in the Oculus idea department (Omni-Directional Treadmill idea) in the future. I apologize for the bad posts that I have made in the past. The police had actually arrived a few days after I made the previous posts and I was scarred by that event to go back to the Oculus Forums. It has been more than a year, and I feel sorry for not saying sorry for a very long time to you guys because I thought I was shadow-banned by Oculus themselves when trying to post an apology a few days later.

Other than that, I still want to be a revolutionary game developer in the future, and I hope you guys understand my apology.

Thank you.

Sincerely,
Alex Ashburn

P.S. I don't have meltdowns anymore. 😉

[cybereality]

Hi, Alex. Thank you so much for sharing and for your apology. Really there is no need to apologize, I think many of us have been through things in our lives and can sometimes make mistakes. I know personally I had some trouble in school, and it was a hard time but I somehow managed to graduate and make it to Oculus. I think you can do it. Also, you weren't banned or anything and of course you are welcome on the forum. Hope that helps.

[Squidoll]

Wishing you all the best I hope you'll be one of the best game developers and create an awesome game ever that will hit the market.

[kevinw729]

Great to see you back - and well done on being so magnanimous in accepting what happened. Understand that bullying in whatever form is abhorrent - and hope that you are feeling better.

I think its obvious to say that this forum did get a little confrontational and over agitated over certain posting styles, and that many of the original posters and community spirit was impacted by that.

Saying that, things have changed, and a lot of the hyperbole has been extracted from the discussions. We hope in this current climate that we can welcome back a lot more posts, and some stop just being lurkers and actually contribute.