Daniel Thompson, Published Video Game Critic and High School Student

Daniel Thompson sits in the Albany, Oregon Fred Meyer's Starbucks on May 28, 2016

Daniel Thompson, a West Albany High School student who turns 17 on June 1, 2016 is already an active entertainment critic online. Though he's in the Class of 2017, Thompson has been pursuing his goal for nearly 5 years.

"Through these endeavors, nobody really knew how old I was...I deleted a lot of my old videos. My voice was way too high." Thompson said.

Thompson began freelancing when he was 12, by producing video reviews in middle school and posting them to the ever popular video hosting website, YouTube.

"I grew up reading a lot of books, so going into writing my reviews was easy." said Thompson.

Thompson then rolled towards getting published in the most unexpected way.

"I got into an argument with this kid...he was asking me how to write reviews, and I said to just start doing it. I told him that just by Googling it, I could find applications for people looking for writers. So I did, and there was a lot of applications! So I decided to throw e-mails out there and see what happened." said Thompson.

KeenGamer snapped him up, and the rest is history. Thompson began writing for KeenGamer, then Playstation Insider.

With another year left in high school, he's itching to move on.

"When I go to school, I just think of it as seven to eight hours where I could be writing or working on videos...AP Comp takes precedence over writing about 'TV toys', but I was still up till 2 a.m. figuring out Twitch streaming last night." said Thompson.


At-A-Glance

Birthday: June, 1 1999
Age: 17
Family: Grandparents, Joan and Frank Thompson
High School: West Albany High School
Ideal College: Full Sail University

Daniel's YouTube Channels: 1  2