I don't know what brought me back to gamespot. I didn't really have time to keep up with it after I started working my full time job. I've been gaming on a semi-regular basis, although I haven't had the time to do as much playing as I would've liked. I missed the community here, and was somewhat saddened to see that my SSBB friends pages were pretty much dormant now (more on SSBB later).

To get you guys up to date, I've been working mostly; still for a major SEC university where one of my responisibilities, among others, is the management and supervision of the university's student union gameroom. That's right, games is my job. It's interesting to be apart of a gaming community after being active on gamespot for so long. On here, we give our opinions, argue and speculate on what the realities of the gaming universe are. In the gameroom, I've got a very clear picture of what those realities are. The demographic is 18-25 year old people, mostly males, of varying interests in gaming. Some play recreationally, some play occasionally, and some religiously. It's a much more accurate depiction of what the general populus' gaming habits are than arguments between the mostly heavy-duty gaming community here on gamespot.

My responsibilities are to hire & fire workers, pick hardware & software, make purchases, manage a checkout process, and keep things running smoothly in every way possible. Most of my time goes toward making sure the workers are doing their job. For anybody who has to supervise people, you understand how frustrating it can be to have to constantly make sure that people are doing what they're supposed to do. What's frustrating for me is that the job is so simple that not doing the job correctly is just plain...lazy. I'm a nice boss, so we haven't had any firings for lack of performance. We have meetings, talk everything out with the whole staff, and problems usually get corrected. Unfortunately, most people are not inherently law-abiding and likely to follow rules on their own accord. People need supervision. I've got about 10 gameroom workers and 3 of them are outstanding. They enforce rules as it relates to the students, they follow rules dictated to the staff by myself and the other gameroom supervisor, and they do so proactively. The other 7 are interchangeable. I love them as people, but as workers, I could swap them out and have it be exactly the same.

The experience is really fun though. Sometimes I can just pick what the pre-ordained "hits" are going to be, put them on a system, and it's a success. Sometimes we actually have to consider what games would be the biggest draw based on what we know about our existing gameroom crowd. A game like Wii Sports Resort draws the passers-by and girls, but the regulars are affixed on 3 genres: FPS(Halo 3 [ODST]-COD:MW2), Fighting (Tekken 6-MvC2-SFIV-) and Super Smash Bros Brawl. Of course I know that SSBB isn't its own genre, but you wouldn't know it by being in that room when it's being played. The Brawl station is consistently crowded and almost always competitive. As I had had my fun organizing the friend list forum for Brawl here on GS, I of course took a liking to the Brawl station. And much as is the case with any other game, good competition makes you better. I love the competitive spirit, and the mulititude of skillful players that the game draws.

I hope to take some photos and put some details about the gameroom up in time. It's a really fun experience to say the least, especially since I get to play games for a couple of hours a day...and get paid for it. It's good to be back. Is anybody still playing Brawl? Anybody!?!?