It’s 2022, and I’m the newly appointed news editor at PCGamesN. I’d been in the post for less than a month, then Gamescom rolled around. I’d never done live event coverage – I joined games media mid-pandemic – but I knew it was an opportunity for the ages. Cut to a month late; I’m running around Kolnmesse sweating, cutting through crowds to get to the Metal Hellsinger show with Trivium’s Matt Heafy and Arch Enemy’s Alissa White-Gluz. It was the best kind of chaos, and I’d never experienced anything like it. Sure, it was a trial by fire, but I felt like getting burned.

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