Hello! Been a while. I put this up on LinkedIn, and I’ve been meaning to put it here, but life has been BUSY. A career in games is all about the hustle.
This might be a little long, but I thought today I’d share a little about my journey and what I’m looking to accomplish with pivoting to a career in games at my age. (I’m officially closer to 40 than 30.)
I’m about to graduate with my second degree in May. I don’t regret getting the first; the only thing I regret about it was that I majored in Political Science because that’s what everyone in my small town thought I’d be. I rediscovered my love of games, though, when I was getting that degree, thanks to dorm parties, endless Rock Band nights, and marathon Civ sessions with my now-husband.
Enter that post-degree life. We ended up in North Dakota, where there wasn’t much in the way of opportunities for a liberal Poli-Sci major. I’d always been a tech nerd, so I got a job at Best Buy. Not long after, Best Buy experimented with having a dedicated games department, and I practically begged and pleaded to move from the Front Lanes to the Sales Floor. It was great. I got to talk games all day, and even when the bros would doubt my knowledge, it wouldn’t get me down. We were even the best games department in the company for a time, and hosted multiple top twenty in the company midnight launches.
I decided that this is what I wanted to do. Get people excited for all the great experiences that video games have to offer. Handing someone a game I recommended and having them come back in to tell me how much they enjoyed it was beyond a rush.
Best Buy stopped that experiment with a dedicated games department, and I was set to go see televisions and refrigerators. That’s when GameStop came into my life. It was six incredible years of building a community and hosting more midnight events and showing people video games weren’t all CoD and GTA. But after six years, it wasn’t so much about games and people anymore as it was pushing particular games to particular people.
Finally, I applied to go back to school. Over my decade in retail, decade creating communities at Best Buy and GameStop, writing for OpTic Intel and Gaming Access Weekly, I became a bit of a social media geek, and I knew this industry was for me. Do I have an uphill battle? Sure, but I know I have the passion and work ethic to get me there.
I can’t wait to join a team to give voices to players, to developers, and to games themselves. Games are incredible works of art, and I can’t wait to be a small wheel in the cog of the industry.
On a final note, I know my toddler is going to end up playing games when he gets older, and I’d love to be able to tell him that I played (however small of) a role in turning games into a much more diverse and welcoming place.