Other than those that work for Epic, few people spend as much time in and around the Gears Universe as Liam Ashley. As the founder and manager of GCON, Liam is usually either playing, writing about or taking video of Gears of War. Not only is he an accomplished Gears of War player, Liam has been a respected member of the Gears of War community for nearly 5 years. During that time he has posted tons of informational threads, helped Epic Games host their “Game with Developers” events, held tournaments, and most recently, held a Gears of War community meetup at E3 in LA.

Stacey: I will first ask a non Gears related question. Where are you from?

Liam: You just asked this to hear the funny sounding English name of my town didn’t you? I’m from a small town called Biggleswade in the east of England – trust me, it’s less interesting than the name sounds!

S: What was the first video game you ever played?

L: It was kind of a mixture of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday on the Sega Megadrive / Genesis. I remember Buck Rogers actually being pretty scary as a kid – in just one level, you’d get on a ship with a bunch of aliens, your team all get poisoned by an alluring plant if you are stupid enough to keep examining it (ahem..) and the ship counted down to self-destruction with a scary sounding voice. Sounds just like your Saturday morning cartoons growing up right?

S: What got you interested in video game journalism?

L: It’s never really been about game journalism per se – it was just about taking the stuff I was doing on the forum to the next level. As a fan, I want to know what other regular Gears fans think of the game rather than a journalist who has to play twenty games a year or whatever, and right down to the smallest detail. That’s something that hooked my interest in a big way, and made me want to fill that gap.

S: How did you find out about Gears of War?

L: I knew a little about it from brief tech demos that were shown in 2005 with an early version of the section of the game where Marcus pushes the car down the hill. I thought it looked cool, but E3 2006 was where it grabbed me – I don’t think a game has every felt more impressive and fresh to me on first sight than that demo. Falling tower blocks = insta-sale apparently. The graphical step up from that tech demo to E3 was just phenomenal.

S: What is your favorite part of the Gears of War Universe?

L: I don’t really have a favorite part in all honesty, I love all of it. The thing I like most about the Gears universe is the potential it has in both going back to the past, the current point of time we are at with the games, and the future. I don’t think I’ve seen a franchise that has so many different directions it can go now that this story arc is ending, and that’s definitely what excites me the most. I need to throw in a big shout out to Karen Traviss for her amazing books too, she’s added massively to the fiction of Gears.

S: What is your favorite Gears of War 2 weapon and why? Could you give some pointers how to use it?

L: Undoubtedly my favorite weapon is the Longshot – I’m a big fan of sniping in Gears, and whilst I was much better with it in the beta, I’m still pretty good with it in Gears 2 (I hope!). The main pointer I can give for the longshot is to learn when to use hard aiming and when to scope in – if you scope in all the time, you’ll miss a lot of headshots that could easily have been hit otherwise. Just practice getting good with both styles, learn when is best to use them, and you’ll start popping heads like crazy.

S: What was your favorite weapon in the Gears of War 3 Beta?

L: All of them really, even the returning weapons were awesome. My favorite new addition was definitely the Digger Launcher – I love that weapon because you have to play smart with it or you’ll really do no damage with it. The great part about that weapon is it has the secondary use of forcing people to displace from cover, making it useful to use for something other than killing. I’m very, very excited to see the future with that weapon, especially in the competitive gaming scene.

S: Did you enjoy the beta?

L: I loved playing the beta for sure, but seeing the feedback we gave make positive improvements to the final game has been the best part about it. The three minor gripes I had with the beta have all been addressed for the final game, and you can’t ask for more than that from a developer – either that or I’m psychic.

S: What is the most important thing to remember when you’re playing Gears of War?

L: Movement is the key to everything, and I’m not just talking wallbouncing – whenever I play the game, you should always be thinking about your movement above anything else. Learn when and where to move up close, combined with finding good firing angles to put some hurt on the enemy at range, and you’ll do just fine.

S: How did your trip to E3 come about?

L: At the very last minute! Somehow I managed to be able to get myself out there in the last two weeks thanks to some very fortunate circumstances, and so I spent the buildup time frantically organizing plans for what I’d do for GCON whilst I was out there.

S: Can you tell us a little about your E3 experience?

L: It was actually a strange experience for me – I ended up only playing two or three games the entire time I was there, with 90% of that being Gears. People will probably want to kill me reading that, but we had tons of Gears related work to do which is still trickling out on our blog today. Unfortunately, circumstances didn’t allow for quite as ambitious plans and schedules as I had planned for E3, but all the content I was hoping to achieve is still there.

The most memorable part for me was undoubtedly the GCON E3 Gears Fan Meetup. We had a great venue, a ton of amazing fans, a bunch of developers and the kind support of Microsoft and Epic throughout. I really will never forget putting that together, it was worth every second and every mini heart-attack that came with it hah!

S: What are your plans for the future?

L: For GCON, I want to provide some amazing and interesting stuff in the buildup for Gears of War 3 to keep people interested and engaged – I definitely feel every month leading up to the release of a new Gears game, and so I want to try and make that much easier for everyone (including myself!). As for my own ambitions, I am undoubtedly looking to break into the community side of the industry – I love meeting, talking and exciting Gears fans, and that’s a passion that I’ll never lose. Where I end up applying that passion, who knows, but it’s definitely something I love doing.

S: Liam, thank you for taking the time to talk to us!

L: Anytime. Thanks for everything you do Stacey.

You can follow Liam and GCON at:

http://www.gearscon.com/

http://www.justin.tv/hooligunn

What is GCON?

A team of individuals who are avid fans of the Gears of War franchise and want to add to and improve the community surrounding it. The GCON team is headed by Lead Manager Hooligunn (Liam Ashley), Manager Commander Rown (Dan Rowntree) and Simburgur (Josh Bishop). GCON now consists of over 40 people.

Liam shared his Gears of War gameplay tips with us, now you share yours. One lucky commenter will win a Gears of War 2 Remote Control Centaur Tank! Winner will be announced on Monday, June 27. 2011

[UPDATE] Congrats to Mark Foerster who won the Gears of War 2 Remote Control Centaur Tank!