Like clockwork, MLB The Show's arrival each spring always brings a familiar face. Ramone Russell has been there front and center to tell us what is new in each edition of this annualized series. Ramone is Sony Interactive Entertainment's product development communications and brand strategist, but I've always jokingly called him "the face of The Show."
In the years I've interviewed Ramone about The Show, I've learned he has an inspiring story to tell. People always ask me "How do I get into the video game industry?" and there's no easy answer to that. Everyone's journey will be different, but it always requires patience and a drive to make it. That drive is the backbone of Ramone's story. He knew he wanted to get into video games and sacrificed everything numerous times to get there. I recently talked to him about his path from working as a police officer to becoming a staple in PlayStation's communications.
Take me back to the first day you thought you might want to work in video games. What was your first experience with games in that capacity?
My best friend from childhood is someone named Herman Richardson. We lived in Mobile, Alabama, and he had a Super Nintendo with Street Fighter II and True Lies. He lived about five miles away. I didn’t necessarily live in the safest neighborhood, but I would walk to his house almost every day after school to play video games. We also played basketball in his front yard. I was horrible at basketball and okay at video games.
How old were you at this time?
We were in middle school, like seventh or eighth grade. Sometimes his mom would drive me back, and I would be like, “Wow, this is really a long walk, because it would take 10 to 15 minutes to drive back home.” It would take me like an hour to walk there. I eventually got a bike, and that made the trek easier. I think that’s where the genesis of my love of gaming came from – those walks and being so excited to play True Lies and Street Fighter II.
Ramone at age six.
How into games were you? What was your first machine?
Back in 1986, my mother was able to buy me the Nintendo Entertainment System when I was like six or seven years old. She knew someone at a department store, and back then, layaway was a thing. Someone didn’t pick up their Nintendo, and they sold it to her for $99. I didn’t have a lot of games, though. Fast forward four or five years, and the Super Nintendo was released. I never had one of those, which is what led to me walking to my friend's house to play games on SNES during middle school.
We didn’t have a lot growing up, but somehow my mom made those sacrifices and purchased that first Nintendo for me. I eventually had a Nintendo 64 and the original PlayStation. My love for gaming started around eight or nine years old, but it really exploded after the Nintendo 64 and PlayStation 2 came out.
What was your favorite game back then?
Perfect Dark. When GoldenEye popped, it was the best four-player, split-screen game on any console. We played a ton of that and Madden. And then Perfect Dark came out, and I told everyone, “It’s like GoldenEye, but better!” It’s all we played. The neighborhoods I grew up in weren’t super safe, so we would go outside and play seldomly, but we mostly stayed inside and played games and listened to music.
Some other games that I loved were Super Mario 64, Turok, Resident Evil 2, F-Zero, Blast Corps, Zelda Majora’s Mask, Grand Theft Auto, Tekken, Midnight Club 3, Vagrant Story, just to name a few.
But my dad hated video games and didn’t want me playing a bunch, so I would have to hide my systems. When he went to sleep, I would sneak into the living room, hook up my system, and play quietly. When he saw me playing Ken Griffey Major League Baseball, he eventually started to let us play more. He talked about how Ken was his favorite player, and how wild it was to see him in video game and be able to control him. He talked about his love for sports, and we bonded in that moment. From then on, I could play video games on the living-room TV. But only after homework and only after he finished watching golf or his shows. SOCOM 2 and SOCOM 3 were also game-changers for me. I remember you had to buy that network adaptor to play online, which I couldn’t find for a while. But I eventually did, and spent countless hours playing those games online, doing clan wars until the sun came up. I have so many great memories of SOCOM.
You could die as soon as the match started, because someone threw a grenade across the map into your spawn area.
When you made it to high school and started looking at career prospects, what path did you think you would take?
I was a mess! (laughs) I had no idea what I wanted to do when I was in high school. I didn’t apply myself, but graduated and went to junior college. I flunked out of that. I went to Troy State for one semester. I didn’t take it seriously. When we had to come back to school for the next semester, it was like, “You owe $15,000 to come back to school,” and they brought out all of the student loan paperwork. I was sitting there by myself, and I said, “Let me think about this.” I went back to my dorm and my good friend Walker was getting ready to graduate and had gotten his final bill for student loans. It was like $190,000 or something, I saw that and didn’t know if I wanted to sign myself up for that type of debt. So I went home to try and figure that out.