There was a time when I played video games. That time began in the early 1980s when the first Atari came out and reached its peak, for me, when the greatest video game system ever made was introduced…the Nintendo Entertainment System. The NES, as it is often called, offered an array of games and I remember when my friend Pat ensured that we had graduated from the Atari 5200 by purchasing the NES before anyone else I knew had it. As a side note: Pat was also the first one to get a cell phone, Tivo and just about every other electronic “toy” on the market - the man is bleeding edge, bra’.

Anyway, the culmination of the NES, and my razor-sharp skills on said entertainment system, occurred in college, when Mick (the other guy writing these blog posts), Pat and myself worshipped frequently at the altar of Tecmo Super Bowl. Yes, Tecmo Super Bowl is the greatest video game every produced. The graphics, by modern standards, are terrible, the eight plays that one can use are a mere drop in the bucket compared to the Madden series of football video games, and the game is rife with “bugs”. One’s nose tackle, for instance, can leap 6 yards forward with a special “juke” of the game controller and sack the quarterback every time. Ah, the bugs…thinking about Tecmo almost lets me smell the stale beer on Mick and Pat’s dorm room rug and the canned tomato sauce on Pat’s daily “Chicken Parm, no Parm” sandwich. But, as always, I digress.

Now I hear that guys are getting paid six figures to play video games. And these aren’t grown men and women who develop video games and therefore need to play. These are TEENAGERS who are merely playing the games. A recent Yahoo! news article, “Young Pro Vid Gamers Cross Six Figures“, highlights the exploits of Jupiter, Florida native Tom Taylor, a teenager who goes by the video game moniker “Tsquared”. Taylor just signed a $250,000 contract to play in video game tournaments and practices from a bedroom that is loaded with three flat screen TVs, each with an Xbox attached. Taylor claims to practice at least three hours a night and has a video game tutoring business for those who want to enhance their gaming skills. He charges $65 per hour for his service and Richard Jefferson, a player in the NBA, is one of his clients.

Oddly, I don’t even know if I’d like to play video games for a living, but for some, this must certainly be the job of a lifetime and certainly falls under the “sweet jobs” category in my book.

Tags: video game jobs

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