GenieKnows Games Narrowing the field

First of all, I don’t think I can thank Genieknows.com enough for putting together this contest and getting all these prizes. It was an interesting contest with such an amazing prize and I learned a couple of bits of trivia while searching for the answers to those questions.

Well, the guys at GenieKnows gave me this handy login to post on their blog, so why not put it to use? It’s also been awhile since anyone has posted anything so even if I’m a bad writer, there will still be something to read which is better than nothing right? … Right?

I must admit, that the first time I saw the contest advertised on the web, I was a little skeptical. It was like nothing I had seen before: “Enter to win a $25,000 Ultimate games room” but my love for games made it impossible for me to resist. Reading through the rules and regulations, I saw it was open to Canadians (I play World of Warcraft, and none of those contests are ever open to Canadians), saw that it required me to answer trivia, saw the prizes and after wiping the drool off my chin from reading the complete list of prizes, I couldn’t sign up any faster. The following weeks, I would check my e-mail with an unhealthy obsession ever Saturday until the next clue would show up, mostly because of the obvious better chance of winning, but partly because of the leader board (What can I say, we play games to see numbers go up). I think I was chasing third in the first few weeks, and eventually jumped to first but someone overtook me by one in the last two weeks or so and I ended up placing second. After the last clue was answered, I felt like it was over too soon and I wanted more though quickly realized that the winner would be announced soon and came to my senses.

Everyone who was as involved in the contest as I was knows that the winner wasn’t announced on the stated day so I settled back into the comfort of my skepticism, telling myself that of course it couldn’t be true…

On Monday, October 22nd, I was joyfully proven to be wrong when I checked my e-mail and found that Mark Harper from Genieknows.com was asking me to call him. Now the first thought that shot through my head was “omgiwon” but being afraid to jinx everything, my brain came to the rescue and came up with any other possible reason for him to call me. I was talking to a coworker and had gone silent not really noticing that he was still saying words to me when I picked up the phone to call. Mark cut straight to it after he found out who was calling and my response was a loud “Holy …crap!” (choosing my words carefully while in the company break room). We then agreed for me to come down to their office on Saturday which felt like years away.

The Genieknows.com office looked cozy, chic and casual, but what did I know, it was a Saturday and there were only a few people there. I got a quick tour and of course the last room was where they had piled all boxes full of the awesome fun stuff that you can see in the previous post. After some photos, handshaking, me blubbering my thanks to every person I saw, we all picked up a couple boxes, the oversized cheque and headed out the door to my car. The people on the street must’ve thought we were robbing someone, I sure felt like I was.

That’s basically it, I only have a few things to mention and then a few pictures to show. For now it’s not really an Ultimate Games room, the house’s den is cluttered with junk so I’ve spread out the systems to various rooms:

the Wii in the upstairs living room for my parents, the Xbox360 in the den and the PS3 in my room. The rest of the bigger prizes arrived week after week during November and December (and should still be arriving) which was pretty fun though my parents decided I didn’t need anything for Christmas, and I can live with that. My dad enjoys golfing and bowling on the Wii, brother monopolizes the Xbox360 all day, everyday, my mom enjoys the pizza for a year from Pizza Hut and I’ve made lots of new friends…

P.S. The Arcade machine is really cool but for now it just sits in the hallway downstairs since as I mentioned there’s no room but I wanted an excuse to show a picture.

Thanks again Genieknows.com!