Coming out at work

At work every few months we get together to share projects that we’ve been working on for all the departments to see each other’s work, as well as for the agency to see finished products of campaigns we have produced. Individuals also present interesting ads (of any medium – TV, press, internet, outdoor, etc) or campaigns to discuss and a select few are chosen to present on something a little more personal – their “hidden creative talent” or more loosely, their hobby or interest which takes up their spare time. I was lucky enough to be chosen this time to present on my hobby.

So I spoke about gaming of course. A few people around the place know about my passion, as I have various game promo postcards and (small) posters stuck up on my wall, and a Lara Croft wallpaper on my computer. When asked what I got for my birthday, the girls around me had no idea what I was talking about when I described my awesome headphones (“why would you have headphones designed for playing games?”), and I often reply, “I played games all weekend” when asked what I spent my weekend doing. But I think the majority of people were surprised with my presentation. Particularly the nature of the games I play, given I’m a rather shy and small 5’1” innocent looking young lady with good manners and I was showing screen shots of a sniper scopes in COD4 complete with blood splatter.

It was a rather entertaining presentation. I had Azreal take photos of me dressed up in outfits to highlight the adaptability of gaming platforms, so I was a tennis player on the Wii, an elite cop in Time Crisis (PS2) and a rock star in Guitar Hero 2 (PS2). I made light of our romantic evenings at home with a shot of Azreal and me sitting side by side at our computers, playing COD4 and some close-ups of us with our headsets and some in-game conversation. I also spoke about LAN tournaments and professional gamers (people love hearing about that stuff).

The crowd lapped it up – what a success! Of course now I have people emailing me those crappy games built in excel with really basic controls, asking me what I think of them.