A Little Bit of Backstory

Ok, second blog.  Yay?  Anyway, the first was titled "Hello World" as an old programmer reference.  Not that it is very important, but I wanted to show that I was a nerd.

I was thinking this morning about what to write, and thought about how I tried to explain what this blog is about in that first post.  I should probably have written:  I want to write about games and being a father who games.  That would have been much easier to understand.  I tend to over-explain stuff.

Anyway, here is a bit of where I'm coming from.  About 5 years ago, I started working in a game retailer, which was a job I had been trying to get for several years before that.  My wife was a halfway through her first pregnancy, so I still had time to play games (haha).  I met some really cool people there that are still my friends, like DTJAAAAM (yes, I know this legend in real life).  While working there, it lead to me getting a job as a video game tester.  I was almost living the dream!

During the three and a half years I worked there, my wife gave birth to another child.  We had an arrangement for childcare, and it worked fairly well.  We made a little extra money, so I could still somewhat reasonably buy games, and had a little time to play them.  However about a year ago, the person who had watched my kids decided that they didn't want to for much longer.  I can't begrudge the person this, they have their life to live too.  Since my wife made more money than me, I had to give up my job so I could stay at home to take care of the kids.

Now, my wife made more money than I did, but it wasn't half what she was making even 3 years ago.  Her place of employment has systematically cut all of the worker's pay about twice a year.  Now, this isn't intended as a sob story by any means.  I just feel that there are people out there that can relate to these circumstances.  It's not fun to go from buying many new releases and having hours a day to play them, to hoping a game drops to $20 so you can afford it and food.  It's also strange to me that I feel I have less time to play now than I did when I worked 40 hour weeks and drove an hour each way to and from work.

Whew, what a mouthful.  I said I would talk about games too, so I should probably start doing that soon.  Kingdoms of Amalur just came out, and I would love to play that.  Especially if I could get my hands on that collector's edition.  Not gonna happen, and I'll have to wait until the price is lower, but eventually.  Maybe I'll talk about Dungeon Siege III.  I just started playing that after purchasing in from Gamefly for $10.

Until next time...