Gamers! With Jobs!

"Gamers with Jobs?"

Paul’s one of the Coffee Shop Mafia, a breed of Nonfat-Decaf-Latte kakhi that accumulates in the corners of "Sanctuary," the upscale caffeine station where I write 6 hours a day.

"Yeah, it’s a website I write for. Kind of a writers room for gamers with a community inside," I explain, failing.

He’s genuinely perplexed. "But don’t all gamers kind of have jobs unless they’re kids?"

I pause. "I guess you’re right. I didn’t name it, but I’ve always kind of figured it had two exclamation points. You know. Gamers! With Jobs!"

Paul goes back to his vague Italian beverage and his New York Times crossword puzzle. I go back under the chair-and-blanket kindergarten tent of the Internet.

So what distinguishes a gamer who has a job from Gamers! With Jobs!?

In a word: November

November 15th, 2008

1:20: Three hours of grinding in World of WarCraft has yielded me just one more level. But I’ve introduced Becca and Sway, I scored two good pieces of armor and I’m never going to have to back to StrangleThorn Vale again. Lamictal. Benadryl. Water. Sleep.

5:30: Wake up in cold sweat. Zombies. Shotgun out of ammo. Meditate to get back to sleep (Pon Pon Pata Pon).

7:15: Wake up in cold sweat. 4 year-old sitting on head.

7:17: Child ejected. iPhone. Twitter. FaceBook. Email.

7:25: Smell pits. Mental calculus. Shower. Dress.

7:35: Kids fed.

7:47: “Dad, I know the answer is probably no. But can we play just one level of Lego Indiana Jones before school?”

7:48: “No.”

8:00: Drop disappointed and sullen children at peace-making non-violent Montessori school.

8:02: Read back issue of Edge in the car. Can't wait to see the way they do the blood in Mad World. Looks just like Frank Miller.

8:15: Jessica and I check in to our table at Sanctuary. Coffee. Breakfast Burrito. One hour of intense reconnection begins: emails to clients, research, blogs, twitter, websites. A little writing.

9:00: Becca joins us. Work stops. We talk about WoW. My wife shakes her head regularly in disgust as she pores through page after page of edits.

9:15: I reconfigure Becca’s WoW client so she can manage her pet better.

9:45: I had to test it out. Really. It’s the only way to be sure. And you can’t test it out without actually, you know, killing things.

9:45 – 12:30: Sacred Writing Time. Ashley, our ever attendant and well-tipped waitress, refills coffee silently. During bathroom breaks, I sneak off to play GalCon. It's not like I can keep writing in that little tiny tile room.

12:30: John comes in for lunch, which makes four writers and four Macs at our small stool-height table. No room for plates. Lunch conversation centers on LittleBigPlanet, which I have recently convinced John to buy, after convincing him to buy a PS3 so he could play Rock Band. John's says "I'm not a gamer, dude, but man, LBP is cool." Inwardly, I do my best Dr. Horrible laugh. Practice. Practice.

1:00—3:00: Sacred Writing Time. Decaf.

3:15: Jessica drops me home from the coffee shop, and heads back out to pick up the kids for their overscheduled afternoon.

3:16: The PS3 is looking at me. I can hear it breathing. I can smell its black plastic miasma choking the productivity out of my sleep deprived ganglia. I resist, banishing myself to the basement.

4:00: An intense bout of productivity in the quiet of an empty house. Childhood smells mix with the caffeinated mustiness of the basement in a brew of creative, impulse-denial amphetamines. Seven hundred and fifty good words in 45 minutes.

4:45: Ammo management in Fallout 3 is a pain in the ass.

5:00: Ammo management in Left 4 Dead is awesome. Bottomless pistols are the best idea since the bottomless coffee at Sanctuary.

5:01: Must not think about bottomless chaps if I feel like eating. Ever.

5:10: Kids return home. Sacred Family Time begins.

6:00: “Yes, Jessica, playing LittleBigPlanet with Todd in San Francisco counts as sacred family time if I have the kids on the couch with me. Sackboy wrestling does not count as violence.”

6:15: Sackboy wrestling is pretty violent. Especially since Todd has a sword.

6:45: Article topic: “Montessori Pedagogy And Piaget’s Stages Of Cognitive Development In The Generative Play Of LittleBigPlanet.”

6:46: Salable article topic: “How To Make A Penis Level In LittleBigPlanet.”

6:47: Thinking about gin.

7:30: Kids asleep, I realize how much work I didn’t get done. I write, email, take notes, and edit.

10:00: Feeling like I’m almost done, I fire up World of Warcraft and get in cue. Make martini.

10:30: Done writing. 30 minutes left in cue.

11:15: Out of cue. I shut down the Xbox 360. Gears of War 2 is way more awesomer than i thought it would be.

1:00: Bleary eyed, I stumble upstairs. Before turning the light off in the kitchen, I check the pile of mail on the counter. DeadSpace has arrived from Cory in Seattle. Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise finally showed up from Gamefly.

November 15th was a light day. It was a day where I managed to find some semblance of balance between getting paid and getting play. Throughout most of the year, gaming is distraction and entertainment. November separates the proverbial patriarchs from their upstart offspring. In November, the Gamer! and the With Job! blur. I spend my ill-defined work hours thinking, talking and writing about games. And the time I'm playing games become a form of work - a struggle to keep up no less frenetic than that of the clock-manager in Metropolis.

Looking at DeadSpace and Viva Pinata on the counter, I console myself with the thought that there's always tomorrow.

Except, as the clockwork daemon on my shoulder reminds me with manic certainty, it already is.

Comments

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You always make me laugh. Does writing this count as Gamer! Or With Job!?

I don't get it. Ammo in Fallout 3 doesn't have any weight, so why is hard to manage?

Good article. I wish I could do without sleep this month. No matter how late I stay up playing, there's always the standing at the bus stop in the sub freezing cold with my son to provide the classical negative reinforcement. It's not working though.

Thanks, rabbit.

Montessori Pedagogy And Piaget’s Stages Of Cognitive Development In The Generative Play Of LittleBigPlanet

I have the same thoughts about Counterstrike when certain schools talk about "cooperative play." Does that make me a bad person?

Also:

10:00: Feeling like I’m almost done, I fire up World of Warcraft and get in cue. Make martini.

That's "queue."

Excellent read. Oddly enough it makes me wish my wife and I had kids. Still working on it though. Made me happy to read it. Thanks.

Yeah, ammo is *everywhere*. You just need to be methodical about your looting. Oh, and higher weapons skill == less ammo used.

psu_13 wrote:

That's "queue."

Cue n/ 4: A line of waiting people or vehicles; a queue.
(Ety: from Old French cue, coe, queue, from Latin cauda)

Welcome the Brittish/American English synonyms. On our next episode: Jumpers and Carrels.

It's like I have a legion of proofers lying in wait like ravenous hyenas.

I always thought "With Jobs" was a clever way of saying "Who Aren't Kids."

Wouldn't "Gamers! With Responsibilities Not Related With Gaming, Like Kids... and Stuff!" do?

LobsterMobster wrote:

I always thought "With Jobs" was a clever way of saying "Who Aren't Kids."

Exactly. No offense to the few well-mannered kids on the site.

rabbit wrote:

Inwardly, I do my best Dr. Horrible laugh. Practice. Practice.

It is about standards, after all.

LobsterMobster wrote:

I always thought "With Jobs" was a clever way of saying "Who Aren't Kids."

I second that.

GET OFF MY LAWN YOU KIDS!!

rabbit wrote:
psu_13 wrote:

That's "queue."

It's like I have a legion of proofers lying in wait like ravenous hyenas.

Not to jump on, but a queue has a whole word, 'queue', dedicated to representing it in the common vernacular. I take 'cue' at first blush to represent it's more common usage, a discriminative stimulus.

I am now prepared to be raged for trampling all over your creative license. Great article.

rabbit wrote:

Brittish

*Snicker*

I guess you’re right. I didn’t name it, but I’ve always kind of figured it had two exclamation points. You know. Gamers! With Jobs!"

Retcon alert!

Saleable article topic: “How To Make A Penis Levels In LittleBigPlanet.”

Is that including the bad grammar?

Great article, Rabbit. I really enjoyed reading it.

[edit]

rabbit wrote:
psu_13 wrote:

That's "queue."

Cue n/ 4: A line of waiting people or vehicles; a queue.
(Ety: from Old French cue, coe, queue, from Latin cauda)

Welcome the Brittish/American English synonyms. On our next episode: Jumpers and Carrels.

It's like I have a legion of proofers lying in wait like ravenous hyenas.

Wait? Now you yanks are changing words even more? Stop calling your language English! I sincerely doubt that when you were taught 'english' in school that this was a valid use of cue.

Duoae wrote:

Wait? Now you yanks are changing words even more? Stop calling your language English! I sincerely doubt that when you were taught 'english' in school that this was a valid use of cue.

It wasn't. But we were also taught to capitalize "english."

a breed of Nonfat-Decaf-Latte kakhi that

I liked that a lot.

I go back under the chair-and-blanket kindergarten tent of the Internet.

I really liked that too.

For me Gamerswithjobs has always been literal since I didn't find this site until I started my first real job as tech support for an internet provider. Before that I was a Gameratcollege and I wouldn't have been able to stop gaming long enough to post on a message board.

I count no less than ten games named. Are you sure this isn't Gamers without Jobs?

wordsmythe wrote:
Duoae wrote:

Wait? Now you yanks are changing words even more? Stop calling your language English! I sincerely doubt that when you were taught 'english' in school that this was a valid use of cue.

It wasn't. But we were also taught to capitalize "english."

How can it be capitalised when it's obviously not English? Hence why it was in apostrophes

Nerd :p

[edit] For me, GamerswithJobs.com represented a grown-up attitude towards our hobby. We associate a job with relative stability, income, responsibility and those things are commonly associated with being older and wiser. Just like meccano could be said to be a child's toy, there are grown-up activities that utilise the same mentality but without the added stigma of using a child's toy.
GWJ was, when i first encountered it, a place were i could debate finer points in gaming and get a thoughtful, educated response and, failing that, it would at least give me a chuckle - a far cry from 'who cares' or 'first!' in many other internet sites. I haven't found another community like this one and it's the reason why i've hung around so much. I practically live on this site and it's why i donate. GWJ is my home away from home, she's the soulmate to my hobby. You guys who run the site should be really proud of your accomplishments.

LobsterMobster wrote:

I always thought "With Jobs" was a clever way of saying "Who Aren't Kids."

This was what I thought it was too.

nihilo wrote:
LobsterMobster wrote:

I always thought "With Jobs" was a clever way of saying "Who Aren't Kids."

This was what I thought it was too.

So what about Doogie Houser?

My take on "Gamers With Jobs" is that we've transitioned from not having enough money for the games we want to play to not having enough time for the games we want to play.

My wife shakes her head regularly in disgust as she pours through page after page of edits.

I don't want to pile on with the hyena pack, but I couldn't help but note the irony in this particular sentence. ("...pores through page after page...")

beeporama wrote:

I don't want to pile on with the hyena pack, but I couldn't help but note the irony in this particular sentence. ("...pores through page after page...")

Ugh, I missed that one. Damn my eyes!

Figures. This always happens when I break my rule about correcting writers. But I still think I'm right.

LobsterMobster wrote:

I always thought "With Jobs" was a clever way of saying "Who Aren't Kids."

I always thought of it as "Gamers with jobs that aren't jobs at Gamestop, comic book stores, or 7-11, and who don't live with their parents".

With full offense intended to gamestop, comic book store, and 7-11 employees.

For me a "Gamer with a Job" is someone who doesn't have enough time to play as many, and as much, videogames as they want. I have fantasies about not having a job or family and being able to sit around all day, slightly inebriated, gorging myself on pizza, Chinese food, and videogames.

Sick and twisted? Yes. But then again, so is real life.

Damn, this is hilarious. I assume you're kidding about writing 750 words in 45 minutes? Good words? Good words? Are they all the same word? Because if you actually do that, I hate you a little.

beeporama wrote:

My take on "Gamers With Jobs" is that we've transitioned from not having enough money for the games we want to play to not having enough time for the games we want to play.

Indeed. I'd probably go as far as saying I'm an "Employee! With Games!".

Nyles wrote:

Damn, this is hilarious. I assume you're kidding about writing 750 words in 45 minutes? Good words? Good words? Are they all the same word? Because if you actually do that, I hate you a little.

Fits and starts. It's my process. I used to say I only got paid for 20 days a year, so by that token, I was really well paid. The other 200 days were sitting around waiting to figure out if it was going to be one of those days.

220 days? What are you doing the rest of the year?

Sleeping.

Ah, that's the secret. Being well rested.

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