How did you find GWJ?

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I'd like to hear about how you all found yourself a part of the community. For me it was fstarta who kept telling me to check out the site and join up, that I didn't know what I was missing. He was right and I am glad to have met all of you over this last year.

So who or what is responsible for you finding your way into the fold?

I think I read about the podcast hen someone posted about it on RPS. That lead me to read the forums for a while... The rest is history!

The first time I heard about GWJ, it was on Slashdot. Some little gaming site had broken a story about Valve having an issue with source code being linked. I read the article on /., couldn't read the article here and quickly forgot about it. I didn't start spending a lot of time on the site until I started lurking 3 years ago though, and didn't join until the spring after coming back from Afghanistan, or thereabouts.

AnimeJ wrote:

The first time I heard about GWJ, it was on Slashdot. Some little gaming site had broken a story about Valve having an issue with source code being linked. I read the article on /., couldn't read the article here and quickly forgot about it. I didn't start spending a lot of time on the site until I started lurking 3 years ago though, and didn't join until the spring after coming back from Afghanistan, or thereabouts.

This.

Minus the whole Afghanistan thing, and the lurking for 3 years, and not reading the article here, and

Ah, what the hell. I was among the herd of folks that showed up after Pyro broke the story on the HL2 source code theft. I lurked for about 3 months, then made a grand debut in the forums sometime in Dec. I was quickly overshadowed by another newcomer, Sanjuro, whom I quickly developed a man crush on. As did many others. Right?

Also, any wagers on how many posts before this gets "coughed"? That really needs a name. Or a definition.

"Cough": To give an online forum thread a hernia check.

I believe I first heard about GWJ on the GFW podcast, where they referenced GWJ as a gaming community with high standards. I lurked around for a while, and then joined in on threads that I felt I could contribute to.

Robear/Kiri... You can blame them.

I was brought here through an article linked by Penny Arcade (rabbit had gone to see Bioshock and Ken Levine). I was impressed by the quality of the work, and started lurking. Not too long later, Gorilla.800.lbs had an Employee Profile that basically encouraged lurkers to stop being lurkers and contribute to the community, so I signed up.

2 years and 24 weeks later, here we are.

Bill Harris had mentioned it on his blog on a couple of occasions.

There are also a few people that I know here that also frequent the Octopus Overlords board.

I also came here (a week earlier than kaostheory by the look of it) courtesy of Rabbit's Bioshock article.

kaostheory wrote:

I was brought here through an article linked by Penny Arcade (rabbit had gone to see Bioshock and Ken Levine). I was impressed by the quality of the work, and started lurking. Not too long later, Gorilla.800.lbs had an Employee Profile that basically encouraged lurkers to stop being lurkers and contribute to the community, so I signed up.

2 years and 24 weeks later, here we are.

That's pretty close to my story, actually -- it was the Conference Call episode 50, featuring Ken Levine just after the launch of BioShock, that got me hooked. I can't remember where I read about it exactly, but I'm guessing it must've been either Slashdot or Penny-Arcade. At the time I'd just bought a 360 (ostensibly to play BioShock), and I'd been looking for a friendly community to play with. Nearly two-and-a-half years later, I'm still playing Gears 'n' Beers

kaostheory wrote:

I was brought here through an article linked by Penny Arcade (rabbit had gone to see Bioshock and Ken Levine). I was impressed by the quality of the work, and started lurking. Not too long later, Gorilla.800.lbs had an Employee Profile that basically encouraged lurkers to stop being lurkers and contribute to the community, so I signed up.

2 years and 24 weeks later, here we are.

That is so close to my story it's nearly creepy, except I must have traveled through time because I'm at 2 years 28 weeks. And I lurked for way longer.

Came for rabbit, discovered the Conference Call and stayed for the community.

A friend of mine who listens to every gaming podcast in the known universe recommended it to me. Being an older (43) gamer I was told this community was mature and friendly.

Man, was I ever lied to.

Spoiler:

Ha, I kid the GWJ community. Great place!

I was searching for computer gaming podcasts on Google, and here I am... listened to the podcasts for many months before finally registering for the forum.

while playing l4d 1, i started playing with GWJ guys and eventually didn't play with anyone else. Figured i would start posting on the forums after meeting some good guys.

DonD wrote:

There are also a few people that I know here that also frequent the Octopus Overlords board.

Similar to this: For me, about a year ago I was checking for other well-aged gamers and the Octopus Overlords forum wasn't doing it for me - I really yearned for something like gonegold.com again, and some way or another I was led here. By whom, I can't remember. But, I can tell you that I won't be leaving until the zombie apocalypse happens and one of you guys close the safe house door before I get to it...

Ummmm, I don't really remember... I think I was doing a search for jobs in the gaming industry on a lark, and through the wonders of Google this was one of the hits. I know I lurked around for a good while before posting.

Dubious Quality brought me over.

Jeeze... thats a tough one. I started listening to the podcast and hanging out at the site about two years ago. But for the life of me I just can't remember what directed me here.

Scrolling through the gaming section of digg.com and clicking on related links. Somehow I ended up here.

Being a long term "vet" of places like battle.net, various gaming forums, MMO communities, online places in general the forums impressed me due to the lack of cursing, fairly good grammar and sentence structure, and lack of pedobear/orly owl/nasty 3rd party links/4chan memes/etc

Jeff-66 wrote:

Being an older (43) gamer I was told this community was mature and friendly.

Man, was I ever lied to.

No you're the poopface and you smell like one!!11!!

Hemidal wrote:

Dubious Quality brought me over.

Me too, I think around the time of the HL2 source code business. I lurked for a couple of years before jumping in with both feet. Man, been a member for 4 1/2 years, wow, time flies!

Without being too maudlin, playing online and in the FFL with Goodjers has really kept me sane through some not-so-great times the past couple of years. What Certis and Elysium (and Co.) have made here is pretty special, not something you see on the Internet very often. I really appreciate all the work they do and the people on this site a great deal. Even though I've never met anyone from the site in person, I do feel like I've made a couple of good friends here.

Jeff-66 wrote:
Spoiler:

Ha, I kid the GWJ community. Great place... for me to poop on!

FTFY.

Searching for gaming podcasts. Stuck around for the forum after a few months of lurking.

Bill Harris's column.

I fall into that "Google search for adult gamer mature gamer" way back when. Up popped "2 Old 4 This" and "Gamers With Jobs".

Searching google for "casual WoW guild" led me to the GWJ Blackhand alliance. I probably didn't leave the MMORPG section for 6 months. When I did wonder out in the Games and Platforms section I ended up with a 360 a few weeks later. Filthy enablers.

I am not sure how I found this site.

I think it was through another podcast that I listen to. Either Fear the Boot or The Podgecast.

The podcast I found through GFW Radio. I started lurking on the boards after the 1Up Community Boards emptied out and started to suck (suck worse) than they had been.

I followed Certis / Elysium from Evil Avatar, and lurked for about 2-3 months. Maybe more.

I bought an iPod to listen to stuff at work. My search in iTunes for gaming podcasts turned up, amongst many others, the CC. I listened for a few months, not really going to the site for anything. Then I bought TF2 and played the beta on pubs for a few days before hearing GWJ had their own TF2 community-ish thing going. Joined up here, got on the steam group (my first post on the site was requesting an invite to it) and hopped into Stan's Lounge for the first time. Took me a couple weeks to post anything else, but I stayed in the TF2 threads for a while. Then, I just branched out.

trueheart78 wrote:

I really yearned for something like gonegold.com again

I, too, was fairly active at gonegold (or at least a dedicated lurker) and went looking for a site of similar quality. This site had been mentioned a few times in those forums, and coming here I realized I'd found something better.

I was forced by Breander to listen to the podcasts. After the first one I loved listening to them and subscribed to them myself. Now we have discussions over them and always download the newest one for a long car ride.

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