It was real

I had a weird bunch of stuff happen to me over the past couple weeks.  It started with a random woman walking up to me at Elli's school:

Her:  Are you Sky?

Me: (not recognizing her at all) Yes....

Her:  You are a game inventor, right?

Me:  (wondering if my friends are playing a practical joke)  Yes....

Her:  I can get you a contact in a big games company to pitch your games!

Me:  (this has to be a joke, where is the hidden camera)  Great!

Her:  Gotta go, catch you tomorrow!

Me:  Wuzufuh?

So it turned out to be entirely legit and I went to pitch my games to a game company.  The world is a crazy place, it turns out.  In the end the company was not remotely interested because they build toys and I build strategy games; they don't sell what I make.  I got some advice I definitely won't take on how to make the games more saleable as mainstream games and some advice I should consider using for selling them to anyone.  I don't mean to malign the advice but I don't build toys for kids for the same reason I don't play football professionally - I suck at that activity and should never pursue it for profit.  Unfortunately the advice for selling my games to big game companies involved building a complete prototype with full art and production value which probably comes to a grand in cash and hundreds of hours of work.

I dunno.  The opportunity to pitch my ideas was cool but I am really not sure that I actually want to be a freelance game inventor doing all that other stuff to push my games.  For one, freelance game inventors generally get paid worse than janitors on an hourly basis and for two the majority of the job would make me want to scream.  Doing all kinds of negotiation, networking, and hounding of producers sounds like a nightmare (If I wanted to network all the time I would go into real estate or something) and doing art and sorting out production is a pain in the butt for me.  I have enough trouble just doing the trivial print, glue, and cut that my current models require.

While the opportunity was good it seems like I really have the option of either just continuing to build games as a labour of love or turning my game building into something that isn't much fun and has a terrible hourly rate.  So far I have been very much sitting on the labour of love side and I think I want to stay there.  Someday I might decide to earn money again but if I do it will probably just be getting a 9-5 job.  I enjoy the ability to lock the door, walk away, and completely bury my job too much to find the entrepreneurial lifestyle appealing I think.

Really all I want to do is massage numbers until they are beautiful.  Somehow I need to fall randomly into a job where people who make games just want the games to be made right and don't mind dealing with a temperamental 'game artist'.  Good fracking luck, I'll need it...