The Game of SEM
Posted on: December 19, 2007 by Syzlak Comments
After watching Zero Punctuation review 3-4 games and then t-bagging my lips (note: I’m drinking peppermint tea to sooth my sore throat…nasty nasty reader), I had a revelation.
How many of us SEMers were at one point in time gamers?
I can really only speak for myself here and admit that I definitely was a fan of the 80s arcades and Nintendo Entertainment System. For a spell, I grew up in the suburbs of Portland and had a neighbor who fixed arcade games for a living. Keeping them in his garage, all the neighborhood boys and girls had a virtual arcade at their disposal. Nothing equals happiness when you’re 6 like free video games. So while I honed my skills on Donkey Kong, Tron, and Millipede, I imagine I was also slowly sculpting my future to be focused on the tech industry in some way.
Now, while I realize that some of us are inherently tech savvy, others are very adept at language or math and see programming as the union of these traits; however, all of us were turned to this field in some way. My first job out of college was at TrafficLeader. I had heard what my friend did for a living, and it made sense…somehow. I began on the paid search side of SEM (definition debates to ensue) and was very comfortable within a couple short months. While I had been “surfing the web” since ‘92, there was really no reason (proficiency in math? bah!) that I would be as successful in learning search as I was.
Or was there? Perhaps my former life as a gamer combined with my familiarity with the web made it easier for me to embrace new technology, software, analysis, etc.
Talking to my friends and colleagues today, I notice just how many of us play games online. Orisinal, Desktop Tower Defense, Chain Factor, none of these games are that different from the arcade games (or early Nintendo games) of old. They rely on simplicity and re-playability. So, if many of us now play these simple games in order to take our minds off of the immense workload (@ work or home) we face, I wonder where all of us developed these inclinations.
For me, Mr. Shore’s garage. What was it for you?
