So today is a good day in one sense because I learned something new. This might come as a complete shock to you, but new college grads are not lurking on LinkedIn looking for jobs. One of the companies that I am presently working with threw up a listing on a website for an associate-level role that I have been dropping a beer’s worth of advertising a day to find hungry and talented people to join a startup on the ground floor.
What is that website you ask? Tough pistachios, you thirsty knowledge thieves! We hoards it! Gollum… Gollum… It is… precious.
So we are on week two of fan favorite blogging. I actually struggle with the fact that this is the second most requested thing from my polling on the socials, and I decided it is because I have old, jealous friends, and if I were popular on the toktoks and posting videos of myself in nerdware for pennies a click from the associate marketer eyeball farms of the Bezosian internet, then I would probably merit fresher topics.
So let’s get on with it.
I googled myself in January.
That might sound gross to you. Honestly, it sounds slightly gross to me. It is like that coworker who stares you right in the face and says real loud, “I just got a vasectomy.”
Great! Good for you! I did not need to know that! Why did you open your mouth and emit those noises at me? Everyone I know who has had one has done this. Like, were you expecting a fist bump? When they schnip your schnizzle, does it change your wiring like somehow you need to share this with everyone, like you are trying to get a finder’s fee or something?
I need to stop talking about this. So, let’s return to googling myself.
Unlike a vasectomy, you should do this from time to time. You will perhaps learn that you have given a random talk at a tradeshow you are not proud of (no link forthcoming) or that places you have done some affiliated work have risen in prominence with your smug-looking mug while you are prognosticating on things you are good at.
What I found at the time, somewhere near the top of the page, was this little random link to “The John Szeder Papers.”
I panicked a little. I didn’t write a John Szeder Papers, nor did I play one on TV. A quick click got me to remember that a few years prior, a young gentleman was working on his thesis on where mobile games got their beginnings. He was introduced to me by one of the OG mobile developers for games. Once upon a time, there were fewer than ten of us doing this.
We all still share the same therapist.
So Old Man Szeder got to sit in his squeaky chair and tell stories about how it all began. I used to snarkily tell people from 2004 to 2006, “I am the invisible man of game development!” when people asked me what I did for a living. I made flip phone games for early “smart phones”, back when the iPhone was still being pulled from the ashes of Apple Newton, and Carriers still ruled the earth.
At the end of my lunatic ramblings, some of which got elevated to make me sound like some sort of super designer instead of just a very tired coder who had a lot of embedded experience under his belt, who loved to solve problems, I was persuaded to make a donation of some of my materials to the Strong Museum of Play.
I packed up a very large box with papers, contracts, royalty statements, and an impressive collection of old flip phones.
What is most exciting about that is that one of my handsets, a Sanyo Katana, Sexy Blue and still able to hold a charge, had a game on it. And not just any game, but Duckshot, my AIAS nominee for mobile game of the year in 2007.
That is right, children… Aside from accidentally being an award-winning indie game of the year scenario designer for some soul-saving work on Oasis, another of my games almost won an award later in life.
My humble brag at the time was that my business partner, Tom Hubina, and I simultaneously held the first and third spots on carrier decks with original games. There was our Duckshot game at number one, and Paintball Challenge in the number three spot. We put great games into the first and third spot at the same time over every major sport franchise, celebrity, and brand in the toughest category and toughest carrier for original IP.
Yes, that is a bold fucking flex, and I am not at all humble about it. Tom and I were great partners in taking ideas and making them into fantastic experiences on early mobile phones.
So now my game is nestled away amongst some collection of devices that might be on display someday, wired up in a box to let kids see what was turned into the mulch and soil from which Angry Birds and Clash of Clans arose.
The moral of this story is not just to google yourself from time to time to understand what bright spots or sore spots the internet remembers you by, but to find magic like the discovery that donation that you made in the name of your wife and family (who suffered for many years of my labors in the salt mines) actually is a thing and you are alive while shit you built is in a museum.
And if you ever wanted to feel old, without tearing an Achilles tendon, this is probably the best way to do it.
Come back next week when we talk about my self-afflicted title of “anti-fractional CTO,” the third most requested topic on my list of things to rant about.
