11/10/2016
Hello everyone. This is Joseph, if you visited Hunter Lucas in the last year you probably met and dealt with me. I apologize for being silent since we closed but I had no information to share and didn't want to provide any false information or guesses, more so than I may already have done.
Now that it's closed and we have parted ways, I wanted to personally thank Hunter, Lucas, Owen, Wilson for doing their part to keep the place going, and Vaughan who I took the place of. Working in a venue like that was the kind of job many of us would have been grateful to have, and I was. I know it was an enviable position but as we can see, not everything works out the way we hope.
However this has taught me a lot going forward, and I believe in a future brighter than it's ever been. One where we the gaming community, one that rapidly grows, evolves and shapes our culture every day will look forward to for ourselves and those who come next in line. I reached out to my friends, and other gaming communities to try and make this place be what it could be, and although I could have done more it did feel a lot like using a bucket to throw water out of a ship that was flooding by the gallon. No one person is at fault, and I believe fully that in time future attempts will be more successful.
I believe in the concept of a game center, and as a friend of mine put it, there is so much value to having somewhere to go and play to the best of our potential. For me, it's worth not touching games at home, when I know there's somewhere to go and play that much better and enjoy it that much more. I mean I still do, because I can only hold out for so long, but you get my point.
Games are worth that. Games have been around as long as we have, whether it's Chess, The Olympics, Football or Rocket League, they will continue to be around and to anyone who doesn't recognize that, I intend to do my part to change minds. I'm not saying live a life free of responsibility, quite the opposite, we all have to put in the work to make the world better, whether that's organizing events, getting up at the crack of dawn to do a job, having meaningful conversations or showing someone a game that might be the perfect fit for them, no one deserves to live a life without joy, competition and community, all of which can come from games.
As for the future, I'm going to show my support for Raiders Esports Centre and if you haven't checked the place out yet, please do so. It's still in it's early phases, so any feedback you might have could go a long way. It's a great place that I hope to go to whenever I can, and the onion rings are on point, just saying.
Thanks again for everyone who came to play, hopefully I'll see you all somewhere we belong.
