
Yep, there it is, my first ever business card (with my phone number blurred out, stalker). Moo was having a 48 hour sale last week, and I decided to pick up some mini-cards. They’re smaller than normal business cards, but I like to think that Patrick Bateman would still be a fan. Thank you P. Nathan Smith for providing the awesome art of yours truly. Because it was a short sale, and because I was working that day, I didn’t have much time to fuss over the small stuff. That said, I had no idea what text I should actually put on the card. I guess my title right now is freelance writer. I get paid for writing random stuff for random people, but I’m not sure if that really explains me on a card.
So I went to Twitter, where I spend 140 characters every few hours trying to explain myself. In my bio there, I say that I am a “Filmmaker, Screenwriter, Gamer, Rockstar, and more emo than you’ll ever know. I get paid for writing comedy.” It’s a little long for the back of a card, but it does describe me pretty well. In narrowing it down, I lost “Rockstar” because although I do rock, I’m not sure it’s going to help me on a business card. Next I slashed the emo part, because I am an emotional dude, but I’d rather not be the sort of emotional dude who advertises it to the world. Then I change “screenwriter” to “writer,” because hey, I do lots of different kinds of writing.
But Gamer. That has nothing to do with my job. That has nothing to do with employment. And then I had the realization: The majority of my income over my lifetime has been money made from doing something with videogames. Testing them, playing them, or making videos about them. Nowadays, since my job isn’t videogames, I feel bad devoting so much time towards them. I play a lot. I spend even more time studying the industry and the gaming press. I try to keep my gaming website over at www.multiplayersingleplayer.com updated on the reg. And yeah, most of the time that I’m doing all of those things, I feel a strong guilt about it. Like I’m wasting my time.
Making these business cards, I realized that I shouldn’t feel guilty. Videogames have paid my rent more than any other industry, and they’ll probably pay it again at some point. I studied film and writing in school, and I’ve spent my life working towards working in those fields, but nothing interests me more now than the storytelling possibilities in today’s games. And I should stop feeling guilty about that interest.
There are tons of people who still look down on games like they’re a waste of time. They think that videogames are a toy that you’re supposed to grow out of, and if you don’t, then you’re some sort of degenerate. Whenever I hear anyone say this, I know immediately that they haven’t played a game in the last five years. The industry is moving so fast, and maturing so quickly, that every three months a new game comes out that fits into my all-time desert-island top-ten games ever. In the past year alone I have been in awe of Uncharted 2, Little Big Planet, Assassin’s Creed 2, Mass Effect 2, and more. These are games that make me proud to be a gamer. And when I realize that there is a huge group of people who are too greater-than-thou to even know about these games, then I feel sorry that they will never have these wonderful experiences.
So yeah, my business card says Gamer. If you had asked me to predict that when I was in college, I wouldn’t have been able to even guess. Now it turns out, it’s who I am. I blame my parents for letting me play a Pac-Man arcade machine when I was three. And by “blame,” I think I mean “thank.”