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

Coldstream wrote:
Bodun wrote:

Thanks;) Btw, i found allot of russian funny pictures posted by Prederick.(like 50% or so of all his threads), tho his english is perfect, hence he must be russian hard-trained spy or something i suppose. So I'd like to greet my compatriot: Well done hanging out there unnoticed, friend, well done.;)

My jealousy at your mastery of Russian is an almost palpable force in the room. I want to speak Russian fluently, but I live in the centre of a nation (and indeed, continent) that is almost hostile to foreign languages. How, I ask you, am I supposed to work under these conditions? Of course, mastery of English is a gift I'll hold to my chest and fend off all takers with blazing eyes, but acquiring Russian would be a lovely addition.

You live in the middle of a nation that is hostile to the English language, never mind foreign ones. :p

MrDeVil909 wrote:
Coldstream wrote:
Bodun wrote:

Thanks;) Btw, i found allot of russian funny pictures posted by Prederick.(like 50% or so of all his threads), tho his english is perfect, hence he must be russian hard-trained spy or something i suppose. So I'd like to greet my compatriot: Well done hanging out there unnoticed, friend, well done.;)

My jealousy at your mastery of Russian is an almost palpable force in the room. I want to speak Russian fluently, but I live in the centre of a nation (and indeed, continent) that is almost hostile to foreign languages. How, I ask you, am I supposed to work under these conditions? Of course, mastery of English is a gift I'll hold to my chest and fend off all takers with blazing eyes, but acquiring Russian would be a lovely addition.

You live in the middle of a nation that is hostile to the English language, never mind foreign ones. :p

It's a more regional issue than many would believe. Mexican resort towns are more than open to other languages. Lots of folks who work in Cancun don't even speak Spanish. While there are certainly parts of North America that don't appreciate other languages (or even other accents), many areas look favorably on the multilingual.

And while some abuse English, the language certainly has defenders native to this continent.

Julian,
I have been listening to the Podcast for a couple of months now, and I must thank you and the crew for offering intelligent conversation about one of my few hobbies, Gaming.
In this article, you have captured a balance that I struggle for eternally.

I work in a very demanding and intense environment. And unfortunately I have the dreaded inclination of being a work-a-holic (Hey, admitting it is the most important step.). Add that to the fact that I live in Japan with a full family (Wife, Son, and Newest Son), I have a PS3, am an avid PC gamer, and enjoy extreme hiking in the Japanese Alps. (Not family friendly) While my wife and I have worked very hard to find balance in our lives I still find myself stumbling up to bed at 0100 just in time to wake my wife up for the middle of the night baby feeding, and due to work, waking up at 0530 wash, rinse, and repeat.

As I said earlier, my job is demanding… but very fulfilling and sometimes takes my to far away places in the world, but all of that means that working into 1900 is not an uncommon phenomenon, and my ultimate goal is to get home in time to put my 4 year old to bed at 2000.

My biggest struggle, as I try to rationalize that extra hour of Fallout 3, is; by what metric do I measure my success or failure of finding balance with my gaming, work, and my family.

Cheers,
Josh

Josh,

I totally feel for you. It's particularly rough when the kids are youngest, and as you've discovered, sleep tends to be the thing that goes out the window first. For me, I had to really alter my expectations, focus on family, health and job first (in that order), and recognize that when I had real babes in arms, "success" was simply having Saturday morning roll around with enough peace to read the paper, or getting everyone to Church on Sunday.

As a gamer, those earliest years were dominated by handhelds, not only for the size, but for the type of gameplay they represented. The only GTA I really enjoyed was Liberty City Stories for that reason, and if I'd had Oblivion on the PSP my life would have been grand indeed. Also would have been nice to have it a year or two sooner!

One thing for sure was it wasn't a time of MMOs and long PCRPGs.

jperry13 wrote:

...I have been listening to the Podcast for a couple of months now, and I must thank you and the crew for offering intelligent conversation about one of my few hobbies, Gaming. In this article, you have captured a balance that I struggle for eternally....My biggest struggle, as I try to rationalize that extra hour of Fallout 3, is; by what metric do I measure my success or failure of finding balance with my gaming, work, and my family.

rabbit wrote:

...It's particularly rough when the kids are youngest, and as you've discovered, sleep tends to be the thing that goes out the window first. For me, I had to really alter my expectations, focus on family, health and job first (in that order), and recognize that when I had real babes in arms, "success" was simply having Saturday morning roll around with enough peace to read the paper, or getting everyone to Church on Sunday...

As a new father with a 2 year old and a 5 month old at home, it can be difficult to find the time to game. I have a 9 to 5, so that helps, but still, I usually do not get a chance to get some gaming in till late in the evening. Thus, I always have the internal argument...sleep or game, sleep or game? I have given up on sleep. I have always been a night owl anyway. Problem is, I have to get my ass out of bed in the morning; even on weekends. Several cups of coffee throughout the day have become my best friends.

Gamebian. We so need gamebian.