Phil Parent

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Philippe Parent is a controversial Quebecois multidisciplinarian whose range of activities extend from professional wrestling & game programming to theatre authoring & politics. He is most famous for his fictitious "Phil Raven" wrestling character, which he used to bring foreign online attention to the then-anonymous Montréal pro wrestling scene in the early 2000's, for being the founder of wrestling simulator data standard RaveX and for his work on pro wrestling simulators under the direction of Adam Ryland.

1 Background
2 Hobby Programming, RaveX Games & GDS
3 The Phil Raven Controversy
4 Other Interests
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] Background

Phil Parent attended ESBG high school in Sorel-Tracy and was considered a bad student early on, his lack of interest being perceived as a lack of smarts. Allegedly, he was told by his 3rd year High School English teacher he would never amount to anything. Now motivated, he would go on to finish his last three years of high school in the next 4 months, winning two end-of-the-year academic awards. He would then attend CEGEP Sorel Tracy and McGill University, graduating in Journalism.

Phil Parent also played hockey in the QMJHL and in University, but doing so in Concordia University as the McGill University hockey program was full. He was an ordinary player, playing stay-at-home defense effectively but being limited in skills.

[edit] Hobby Programming, RaveX Games & GDS

Between 1998 and mid-2000, Phil Parent was a prolific hobbyist role-playing game programmer in the online circles. He released 3 games, all of which were well received by fellow hobbyists. He left the scene after he discovered wrestling simulators.

In March 2001, Parent released the first ever "RaveX Update", a data set aiming at updating the then-popular Promotion Wars. Using an aggressive updating schedule, and after recruiting fellow data worker Jeff Cartwright, RaveX became the top data provider in the wrestling simulator community. Over 20 data sets were released for Promotion Wars by Parent & Cartwright. After the cancellation of the long delayed Promotion Wars 2 by creator Adam Jennings, the RaveX duo sought their fortunes elsewhere and found them with Adam Ryland's Extreme Warfare series, starting with EWR in 2002.

Over 40 updates were made for EWR, which was arguably RaveX Games' brightest moment. They enjoyed a complete monopoly on wrestling simulator data and set the standard by which data is sometimes still judged by today.

At the height of its success, the RaveX Updates were used by thousands of people.

Parent followed Adam Ryland as he turned his gaming series commercial; however, that has also spelled the end for RaveX as less than 15 updates have been released for all 3 of Ryland's commercial games, combined. Today, he is a stalwart on Ryland's creative team, where he has done admittedly good work, including adapting George Polti's "52 Basic Plots" to wrestling simulators to create a solid "Storyline Mode" in TEW 2005, and bringing a Sport League environment to wrestling simulators in the upcoming Wrestling Spirit 2.

His future in the hobby programming world is in the air. He has been notably silent since the release of Wrestling Spirit 2, leading many to believe he might have left Grey Dog Software.

[edit] The Phil Raven Controversy

A lifelong professional wrestling fan and something of a wrestling encyclopedia in his own right, Phil Parent didn't like the fact that the once glorious and respected Montréal wrestling territory was now ignored, unknown to most wrestling fans outside of the Province Of Quebec, mocked by the media and in more ways than one, self-depreciating. In 2001, he took it upon himself to use his newlyfound relative online popularity in wrestling circles to introduce many of modern Montréal wrestling's biggest names to a wide audience. However, in a way to sugarcoat the fact that the Montréal wrestling scene was quite poor outside of those names, he created several characters to act as fictional fodder to the real wrestlers. One of them was named Phil Raven. At sometime in 2002, a fan of the RaveX Updates asked Parent if he was Phil Raven. Somewhat running out of inspiration on how to book the fictional FLI, a wrestling promotion he had created out of thin air based loosely on Jacques Rougeau's Lutte Internationale 2000, but mostly on an idealistic vision of what he figured Quebec wrestling should be, Parent got the idea to assume the identity of "Phil Raven" and claimed he was, too, a wrestler.

He kept the same story and maintained vehemently he was a wrestler until 2004, when, ironically, Quebecois wrestlers started getting booked outside the province. Although he didn't think he had anything to do with it, Parent considered his character and all the other fake characters created to sugarcoat the Montréal scene to be no longer necessary as Montréal wrestling was somewhat blossoming again and could stand by its own merits. He faded most of the fakes out in time, but the character of Phil Raven stuck to his skin like a disease. Phil Raven disappeared from Phil Parent's simulator updates in 2005 without much of an explanation and he somewhat came clean about the whole ordeal in May 2006, on the central wrestling board of the Montréal independent scene. The reason for doing it he gave there however was every bit as bogus as the Phil Raven character itself. On the boards of the now defunct 514wrestling.com, Parent claimed it was a need for personal attention that pushed him to do it, and invented a sob story to go along with it. He thought people would never believe he did it to bring the spotlight on the Montréal scene, and that a fictional reasoning for a fictional character was better anyway.

Critics attack the obvious lie and the fact that Parent intentionally fooled many people, including co-workers Ryland and Cartwright. Some people however say that Parent did do a good job to popularize Montréal wrestling in the wrestling sim circle as he made the scene more palatable than it was in reality all the while exposing the good talents the area got and hiding some bad apples.

Allegedly, a Montreal wrestling promoter and Parent worked on a plan to bring this story to life but plans fell through when not enough suitable talent was found to play the various characters accurately.

[edit] Other Interests

Phil Parent has written a rock-opera called "Stardust" dealing with the progressive fall to insanity of an introvert who digs deeper and deeper into illusions to hide from life. The act was played for the first time on December 27th 2004 as a fundraiser for his old high-school and caused controversy locally as it was deemed overly violent and included references to deviant sexual behavior, drug use, severe mental disorders and had scenes of rape and murder.

He also has an interest for politics. Debating the virtues of Quebec ethnocentrism^{[citation needed]} with known Canadian activist Howard Galganov on numerous occasions, he has made friends and enemies alike, some people appreciating his honesty in expressing his controversial views, while others simply couldn't stomach his views. He's a convinced Quebecois Rights activist, an advocate of Quebec sovereignty, and was one of the members of the think tank of Quebec party Quebec Solidaire. He also helped write the left's rebuttal to the "For a clear-eyed vision of Quebec" manifesto (better known in French as "Pour un Québec lucide"), by participating in several meetings leading to the publication of "Pour Un Quebec Solidaire." He is still involved in the political arena, now in a non-partisan fashion.

He has expressed interest in running for election at the provincial level in his home county of Richelieu.