Gekko here. I encountered Ur-Quan Masters in 2008 or so when I attended a DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) event in Oulu, Finland. One of the side programs was an UQM tournament, and it was love at first sight. After that I got the game, played through the main story (only Earth survived...), then joined the PVP community on #uqm-arena (now on the IRC network Libera, although almost everyone is in the Free Stars Discord).

That began the terror that people now know as Gekko as I slowly defeated tougher and tougher opponents until eventually I somehow ended up running the UQM PVP arena for some 10 years. During that time I organized many a tournament and even the forum campaign game. Recently I was invited to test the melee on the new game as the devs were looking for PVP experts. Even more recently I organized the 2026 summer tournament https://plantmonster.net/uqm-league-2026/

My website is https://jessekaukonen.net/