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What's the best way to find gamer roommates?
Jarntazecht
Registered User new member
Registered User new member
I figured the best place to ask would be a forum on a website all about games. I've done a lot of searching and googling, though the rest of the world seems to think that gamer roommates are inherently 'bad' and it seems to be grouped in with 'loud and antisocial' and 'complete irresponsible slob'. It was a surprise considering I thought gamers were making social progress and people in the larger cities were forming awesome groups together. Most of the gamers I know are clean hard workers with decent salaries. In any case Craigslist doesn't seem to specify 'house full of gamers' anywhere and there's no way to look for similar keywords on any of the roommate-searching websites. Anyway...
After graduating college I had to move back in with my parents; shortly after finding a job I moved into my own place and then had to relocate to another place in the same city for miscellaneous reasons. For the past 2 years I have been working as a caregiver (a gross job) in a very tiny town that no one has heard of. There's no economy here except health care, fast food and retail. My hours are very sporadic and the job has bad security, so it's impossible to make any kind of good money. Enough to keep afloat, but saving's hard. Most of the people who live here are retirees and I have NO friends in this town; they're mostly in the Seattle area. Everything is so barren all the time; no meetups or clubs or young people; the entire area is just a long thread of tiny barren cities ending in Forks. My one roommate is much older than I am and hardly does the same things, even picks on me for staying in my room when there is nothing to do here. And all of the other people try to convince me that I'll be happy living here if I just go to the one tiny casino we have, which is a truly boring place.
It's definitely time to pack it up and move to a bigger city where actual things are happening! I'm looking at the Seattle area. It's about 3 hours away from here. I'm going to try and find a job in my field (IT, graphic arts, which supposedly has a lot of outlets in Seattle). If I can get somehow land a stable job there, how do I find a house full of gamers to live in where we all have the same interests but with a bit of variety?
In college I usually had GREAT roommates. In a worst-case scenario we all had different interests and were at the house at different times, but a best-case scenario had us in a situation where if we wanted to do our own thing we'd just be in our rooms doing whatever, but a lot of the time we'd be out in the living room playing videogames or watching other people play videogames or watch movies. Some people were even into tabletop, and while that's not really my thing it meant more people in the house. We'd keep our bedroom doors open when we were playing games to 'attract' people if they wanted to join in. Lots of us had our own groups of good friends too, so the house was never dead and I LOVED that. I want to start having that kind of life again because it's dead here. I want to live in the kind of house where people play games and watch movies but aren't restricted to always doing things they don't want to do - a relaxed place of mutual interests where perhaps we can work on collaborative game/art projects. The first thing I would have done is ask my friends if they wanted to move into a place, but they're either broke, living with a girlfriend, or thinking of traveling. But if I can get up there and establish a creative group to live with then I could more easily contact them about all of our projects. What would people recommend?
After graduating college I had to move back in with my parents; shortly after finding a job I moved into my own place and then had to relocate to another place in the same city for miscellaneous reasons. For the past 2 years I have been working as a caregiver (a gross job) in a very tiny town that no one has heard of. There's no economy here except health care, fast food and retail. My hours are very sporadic and the job has bad security, so it's impossible to make any kind of good money. Enough to keep afloat, but saving's hard. Most of the people who live here are retirees and I have NO friends in this town; they're mostly in the Seattle area. Everything is so barren all the time; no meetups or clubs or young people; the entire area is just a long thread of tiny barren cities ending in Forks. My one roommate is much older than I am and hardly does the same things, even picks on me for staying in my room when there is nothing to do here. And all of the other people try to convince me that I'll be happy living here if I just go to the one tiny casino we have, which is a truly boring place.
It's definitely time to pack it up and move to a bigger city where actual things are happening! I'm looking at the Seattle area. It's about 3 hours away from here. I'm going to try and find a job in my field (IT, graphic arts, which supposedly has a lot of outlets in Seattle). If I can get somehow land a stable job there, how do I find a house full of gamers to live in where we all have the same interests but with a bit of variety?
In college I usually had GREAT roommates. In a worst-case scenario we all had different interests and were at the house at different times, but a best-case scenario had us in a situation where if we wanted to do our own thing we'd just be in our rooms doing whatever, but a lot of the time we'd be out in the living room playing videogames or watching other people play videogames or watch movies. Some people were even into tabletop, and while that's not really my thing it meant more people in the house. We'd keep our bedroom doors open when we were playing games to 'attract' people if they wanted to join in. Lots of us had our own groups of good friends too, so the house was never dead and I LOVED that. I want to start having that kind of life again because it's dead here. I want to live in the kind of house where people play games and watch movies but aren't restricted to always doing things they don't want to do - a relaxed place of mutual interests where perhaps we can work on collaborative game/art projects. The first thing I would have done is ask my friends if they wanted to move into a place, but they're either broke, living with a girlfriend, or thinking of traveling. But if I can get up there and establish a creative group to live with then I could more easily contact them about all of our projects. What would people recommend?
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What you should be looking for in a room mate is someone that can pay the rent, isn't crazy, knows when to keep it down, and has a schedule that works with you. Everything else is icing on top of the cake.
You also gotta keep in mind that just because YOU want to do all that stuff doesn't mean others will. I consider myself a gamer/nerd/whatever label is thrown around, but I wouldn't be really into watching movies with my roommate. I have my own friends for that.
Honestly, finding a gamer for a roommate is way down on the list of things you should be worrying about if you want to make a move. In the meantime, have you considered meetup.com? It won't give you a roommate, but it might give you a group of people with the same interests that you can hang around with.
It seems like you're having trouble letting go of your college lifestyle, at least from the little you have talked about here. The thing is, that most people end up leaving that type of life once they graduate college. It's not as easy to do the things you described in your OP when everyone has different work schedules, friends, and life.
Finding a place/roommate is hard enough, and it feels like going in with your type of thinking is going to handicap you even further.
Then make some friends to game with that are in easy range of where you live. You'll be happier gaming knowing you're not going to come home to an unshowered, nude, rent-delinquent guy lounging drunkenly in three half-eaten pizza boxes.
She was the greatest room mate I ever had despite the fact that she skipped out with a ton of trash left in the room.
Point being that the main point of a room mate is to have someone there who pays their share of the rent. And if you can get that without them being a constant annoyance consider yourself lucky.
Friends hang out in different ways when they aren't "forced" to live together. You will get together over the weekend but you're not going to see them as soon as they're done from work like you used to. Can your situation improve from what it is? Maybe...but it sounds like you have it better off than lots of people regarding the roommate situation.
It's sounds like you're experiencing a bit of culture shock from not being in college, and loneliness from not having any friends to hang out with.
Also when you work 40 hours a week with a fixed schedule you don't want that to happen.
The kind of roommates I'd like to have don't HAVE to be gamers. (I was just thinking ideally.) I appreciate that cleanliness and on-time-rent are big factors, as well as some taboo subjects like loud sex. I just always liked the idea of community, rather than having my own place but nobody to talk to. Plus, living by oneself is a little bit more expensive than having a room in a house, which is what I had been going with so far. I had really great roommates in the last house I lived in, despite that none of our interests were even remotely related. I think the reason gamer roommates and/or artist roommates would be good is that we would have something in common. We don't have to have huge gaming nights although it sounds fun. But while all of us got along, I was always "the guy with all the computer crap" and I felt they looked down on my hobbies because they were different from everyone else's.
The lady who owned the house was a new-age woman who loved to do yoga and gardening, and my other roommates liked to spend a lot of time outdoors. We saw each other every so often but it was hard to keep in touch with them because they didn't carry phones, and our work schedules made it even harder to plan outings together. Don't get me wrong, just because I prefer indoors and machines doesn't mean I'm a shut-in; I'd gladly like to go exploring with them but these kinds of events never really happened. But, again, you're probably right since a lot of people are within driving distance of their friends when college ends. Lord knows all of THEM had people to connect with.
One thing that is very important for me is that I don't want to keep depending on my computer to stay in touch with people. I'm not a shut-in but it gets stressful, when you realize the only human contact you've had is with all the old folks, and your roommates are all older than you and interested in their own stuff, and you haven't had any human contact with any friends your age since 2 years ago, and it's just been internet. And now that I'm in this other apartment with slower internet, we can't even play Minecraft together or anything like that anymore. So it's time to start making connections, finding a job in Seattle and heading over there.
See scabies thread
I would recommend Meetup.com to find actual friends.