[Johnny_Prime]

Hi folks!

The following is a great article from the folks at Gamers with Jobs. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post others' content this way, so please edit/correct/delete if necessary, Jump.

The Article.

The first snow of the year has fallen, along with the temperatures, and that can mean only one thing. It’s cold, and I’m an idiot for living in Minnesota. But, if it meant two things, it would also mean that gaming season has begun. As the bluster of winter’s chill beats frigid against our double paned window and poorly applied weather stripping, I plan to settle myself in front of digital entertainment at sixty frames per second.

I say that as though I have been avoiding games for the sun and surf the past few months, which would be a lie so transparent that light might actually accelerate through it; yes, a lie so significant as to render Einsteinian physics befuddled. So, then, it’s a pretty damn good thing I’m not offering it. No, in fact, I’ve been playing games with an enthusiasm I haven’t enjoyed since I tanked my first semester at college. That’s probably not a good trend for a guy trying to start his own business.

Why the game lust? Well, that’s easy. It’s a direct response to my former profession. Last November not only couldn’t I muster any interest in playing games; I’d actually begun to resent them. As I hauled my tired ass into the mall every morning, with my liter of Mountain Dew in one hand, a bag lunch in the other, and dragging my pride behind me as a mule would drag a plow through muddy topsoil, the pleasures of a gaming lifestyle seemed dim as the faint light from distant galaxies as seen through a hazy Wednesday afternoon sky while holding a halogen spotlight in front of one eye. Like an impotent gynecologist, I could no more go home after a long day of slingin’ software to anxiously pop the latest PS2 title onto the television, than I could lick my own elbow.

Go on. Try it.

I can wait.

And as I think back on those miserable mornings, and afternoons, and occasionally evenings, and ugh lunchtimes, oh and the openings, and the closings too, and don’t even get me started about the brunch crowd – I’m sorry, what was I saying? Anyway, this time last year, on the verge of extended shopping hours, and mandatory six day work weeks, gaming held as much excitement for me as watching Spanish language broadcasts of CSPAN2. In many ways it’s really quite remarkable that Certis and Pyro didn’t end up being right in their prediction that I would leave the site. I know without question, had I not left EB when I did, I would have done just that by now.

I say that not to exaggerate, or to try and paint EB as some evil soul-sucking environment of hopelessness no matter how true that actually is. I say it so that you understand the weight that lifted from my chest when I carried my empty bottle of Mountain Dew, my half-eaten ham sandwich, and my mortally stricken pride out that door for the last time.
And then, bright as a sunrise on a clear morning, gaming became fun again. And, oh how I’ve indulged these intervening months, like a blind man gifted again and met immediate with the sight of a Pink Floyd concert, I reveled in the excess, dazzled at the pretty lights, and basked in the glorious extravagance of it all.

Most of the oldest and crustiest of us gamers have, at some point, had that moment upon having endured a long gaming drought, where you suddenly find that the fun erupts back to the surface and you remember why you got involved in all this nonsense to begin with. It is an epiphany, an endorphin rush, a tantalizing taste of something too long forbidden, visceral as a kick in the crotch. But in a good way. You know, a happy, fun kick in the crotch.

The months since have been filled with World of Warcraft, Civilization IV, World of Warcraft, We Heart Katamari, Burnout Revenge, World of Warcraft, F.E.A.R., Half-Life 2, and some other game about Orcs, Humans, and Elves. And now, with the Xbox 360 on the horizon, and a long cold winter literally at my doorstep, and no personal reason to dread the day after Thanksgiving, I prepare myself.

Let the winter of gaming begin.

- Elysium

http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/20205

[Argyris]

Nice read

[Pyrophred]

kewl whats EB?

[Johnny_Prime]

Electronics Boutique.

[Nohbody]

EB

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[Mickey_D]

Heh, another fool that lives in the frozen wasteland that is Minnesota!!!