Just a man and his will to survive.
If you fancy yourself a fan of Halo 3's gameplay and mission design, there's a good chance
you've already
read Cocopjojo's
Hindsight: Halo 3 articles. If not, hit the link and head on over to Ascendant Justice to get familiar with the man's work. Cocopjojo's analysis is so sweet, even one of our own designers pitched in with some insight of his own. If you've already pored over Cocop's articles, scroll down for a short look at the man with the 20/20 hindsight.
Q. Who are you and what do you do?
A. When I'm not on the intertubes, I go by Jacob. I'm an audio engineer, which means that I mix sound for bands, hang speakers from ceilings, and explain to people why I can't “remove” the vocals from “Eye of the Tiger” so that they can sing it karaoke their wedding reception. Here in the real world, I'm known as Cocopjojo, and I help Vociferous and Jironimo manage Ascendant Justice.
Q. Your name is hard to pronounce. We get confused easily. Explain.
A. Okay, so, it is actually pronounced “coh-cop-joe-joe.” I used to work at a community center where we played Halo on a daily basis on four Xboxes that we had lanned together. Some kid created a profile named CocoPjojo, which I promptly claimed as my own on the basis that “coh-cop-joe-joe” was superior to his pronunciation of “coh-coh-pee-joe-joe.” A lot of folks just call me “Cocop,” for short.
Q. Cocop it is. If I wanted to call you out for stealing some poor little kid's gamertag, where's the best place to find you?
A. I used to post at
HBO, but I now spend the majority of my time at
GAF debating such things as which Halo game's pistol is the best, why CTF should be the only gametype in Matchmaking, and – of course – the classic AR vs. BR (although, it's pretty much been decided that the AR wins). Besides GAF, I've been a long-time fan of
High Impact Halo. I'm not good enough at the game to pull off the sorts of stuff that those guys do, but I definitely enjoy watching the videos they produce of mile-high blasts to the tops of Halo's various structures.
Q. What is it about gaming that draws you in?
A. With Halo 3, I play almost entirely for the social aspect; I rarely jump into Matchmaking by myself. There's such a variety of things to do within the game, I'm not surprised at all that I still play almost nightly, even here, a year after its release. For example, I typically enjoy driving a Warthog around and getting myself and my gunner killed while trying to make awesome jumps in Matchmaking games, but I'll also jump into Team Slayer every once in a while. I pretty much live for Team Objective and BTB with a full party of friends.
Q. What was the first Bungie title you played?
A. Halo was the first Bungie game I played, and I saw it at a friend's house who had an Xbox. We played through the campaign together, and I was dumbfounded by the variety of things that Bungie had managed to pull off with the gameplay. The quality of the environments, the vehicles, and the music I had never seen before together in one game. I spent most of my junior and senior years of high school playing daily 8v8s on Sidewinder at the aforementioned community center. Also, 16-player Rockets FFA on Chiron (no, I'm not kidding).
Q. Ever feel like you've just come out of a random teleporter when you think about your level of community involvement?
A. No, as far as Ascendant Justice, I attribute it mostly to the quality of the work that Voc puts out, and the overall vision that Jironimo has for the site. In all seriousness, when you're working with folks that love what they do (and are good at it, to boot), you kind of have to give it your all, or get left behind. And it's through my involvement with Ascendant Justice that I've met a lot of good guys, and it's with these peeps that I play the game every day.
Q. Anything you wanna add before you head off into the sunset?
A. Let me just say that I'm really looking forward to seeing what you guys do with ODST and the Mythic maps (is it true that it's Luke's fault that they're taking so long to release?). Also, I want to give a shout-out to my girl, Cocojpojo! And to my little brother, who has the best gamertag ever: xXMLGxGorillaXx. Lol.
That is a sweet tag. Could use a few more x's though.
Thanks for the words, Jacob - both here and at Ascendant Justice. And while something tells me you were pretty close to earning yourself an Editor's Note from L.M. Smith with your Mythic Map callout, we still love you. We're not
in love, mind you, but, well, you know what we mean.