Why I Built WAD: Games Are Better With Good People

If you look around the website or our Discord, you’ll notice a lot of the community branding revolves around the WAD Phoenix, while my personal content sits under the blue Wolf banner of Gamerthyrst. That visual split is highly intentional.

I didn't build WAD Gaming to be a monument to myself. I built it because I realised a long time ago that I enjoy playing games infinitely more when I’m playing them with people I actually like being around.

When you spend enough time in online gaming, you inevitably run into the toxic servers, the sweaty gatekeepers, and the massive communities where you feel like nothing more than a number on a roster. I found myself wanting something different. I wanted a sense of actual community. I wanted a place where people felt like they had somewhere to belong: a place they could log into after a terrible day at work and just feel at home.

So, I stepped up to build it.

I’m Chris, also known as Gamerthyrst. During the day, I work in IT as a support analyst, but my real full-time job is being a dad and a partner. If you want to know why WAD has such a strict "real life comes first" rule, it's because my own gaming squad is usually under my own roof.

You’ll often see my fiancée Kayleigh (Gamertali) in the Discord, keeping us all alive as our amazing quartermaster in 7 Days to Die or running her Black Mage in FFXIV. My son John Lilthyrst) is usually building something massive in Minecraft, dropping into Fortnite, or running Pokémon TCG tournaments with me. And my youngest, Theo, is just getting into games; though right now his primary skills are deleting my Pokémon GO inventory and beating down baddies in Lego Star Wars!

Because I’m based down in Cornwall, my offline life is just as busy. When I’m not playing on my PC or Switch, we are usually playing board games, catching a series, heading to concerts and the cinema, or just spending the day out on the beach.

Over the last decade and a bit, steering the WAD ship has been one of the most rewarding things I've ever done. The truth is, the games we play are just vehicles. Whether we are surviving a Day 49 horde, digging massive holes, or wiping on a boss, the game itself is secondary to the people in the voice call.

Because of WAD, I have met some of my absolute best friends. What started as a frustrated idea in an MMO over a decade ago has become a daily part of my life.

I run the Gamerthyrst channels to share my own personal gaming journey, but WAD is ours. It’s a space carved out specifically so you never have to play your favourite games with randoms unless you want to.