anyway.



thread: 2005-11-28 : Closeted

On 2005-11-29, Blankshield wrote:

I'm fairly "out" at work.  A bunch of factors in that, but the two big ones are:

1)I book off Gencon every year about 10 months in advance.  People see this, and ask, and I tell them I'm going to a gaming convention.  "Role-playing games, board games, card games, improv theater-like stuff.  50,000 people.  It's huge.  I'm going down to run [and sell] some of the games I've written."  The "and sell" is new this year - previous years it's just been Brick Battles, which is free online.  This approach totally gets me past the awkward "it's kinda like D&D thing."  People seem much more willing to give something credibility when it has big conventions and finished product.

2)I've been working for the same company for 6 years now, and with a lot of the same people for about a decade.  Hobbies get outted over that much time exposure; it just happens.  The (local) newspaper article with my picture in a big pile of Lego was stuck on the bulletin board for months.

But I also don't typically get into describing what they are, because 99% of the time, they aren't really interested beyond knowing "James writes games" as a neat tidbit.  If they do seem interested, or don't need me to explain "role-playing" or say "GenCon!  Damn, I'm jealous." then I'll get more involved.  But otherwise, i'll leave it at "I design games" the same way that I appreciate it when other people leave it at "I watch sports." instead of getting into the boring details about balls and pucks and seasons and stuff.

James



 

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