ezagor

lore reel

The lore reel.

Eight stations in the life of Atakan Özalan, whose online name is Ezagor. The name dates from 2007, the second station; the first station, 2002, is his first computer, before the name existed.

  1. 2002
  2. 2007
  3. 2012
  4. 2015
  5. 2020
  6. 2021
  7. 2022
  8. 2023
  1. A four-year-old child at a chunky beige CRT computer playing Warcraft III. Late-90s family bedroom, monochrome cinematic.
    STATION I

    2002

    The First Worlds

    Four years old. He's at the family CRT alone, completely absorbed in Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. The handle isn't named yet, but the instincts are: navigate the worlds before learning to navigate the words.

  2. A teenage hooded silhouette in a dim cyber café, surrounded by CRTs showing pixel-art MMO cities.
    STATION II

    2007

    The First Server

    Primary school. A self-hosted Metin 2 PvP server runs out of a bedroom. The handle finds its first players. Its first farewells. Its first ban list.

  3. A hooded teenage gamer at a single CRT showing a competitive leaderboard at 3am, headphones on, intense focus.
    STATION III

    2012

    The Autonomous Years

    Years inside the worlds. Metin 2, Wolfteam, Ikariam, Darkorbit, Counter-Strike, League of Legends: ranked play, leaderboards climbed, tournaments entered. He learned alone and won alone. The chat rooms followed the wins, not the other way around.

  4. Parchment scrolls covered in handwritten AIML XML, suspended in a dark void with a faint hooded silhouette.
    STATION IV

    2015

    The Machine That Listened Back

    Turkcell BiP Messenger chatbot flows. AIML rules whispered in XML. <category><pattern>HELLO</pattern></category>. The first machine that listened back.

  5. A vast dark mining warehouse: racks of GPUs, a hooded operator in the foreground holding a laptop showing testnet dashboards.
    STATION V

    2020

    Into the Chain

    Nodes across testnets. Mining rigs humming in the dark. Wallets stacked. Discord channels paid attention to. Communities pilled with patience.

  6. A hooded young man's profile wearing Google Glass 2, the prism the only light source.
    STATION VI

    2021

    Glass on the Face

    An AR marketplace on Google Glass 2, built as his university project. A monk with a relic strapped to his right eye. The future arrived early and on the wrong device.

  7. A darkroom with a wide-format printer extruding monochrome AI-generated prints; a hooded curator examines them.
    STATION VII

    2022

    The Studio in the Wallet

    Diffusion before diffusion was a household word. AI portraits printed in batches at 3am. Generative drops curated like a record label.

  8. A hooded figure paused at a threshold: behind, binary rain; ahead, faint daylight.
    STATION VIII

    2023

    The Surfacing

    GOGOGO LLC is founded. The handle stays. The mask stays. The work goes public, almost. The other stage opens; this one keeps the lights low.