About

Clouds blotted out the sun on a humid day in July, stuck in a chair both literally, due to the sweat, and figuratively, due to work. Alone in the apartment, face frozen staring at a monitor that endlessly rang with customer calls and flooded with information and notes such as “This person is difficult to deal with”. Every second calculated and monitored by the company software, each break a race against the clock. This is where Mason Muehlbauer found himself after over a year and a half into his first corporate job. (Hi, Mason here. While at this point, I was looking for other career paths and opportunities this is a slight exaggeration of reality, slight.) “Why am I still doing this?” Mason thought to himself as an incoming call rang his eardrum. He fell into this role due to some connections he had in the company, the relatively decent pay, and solid benefits. However, after what felt like conservatively ten thousand calls with customers these factors mattered significantly less. His original degree in creative writing was collecting dust in a drawer of his new fancy standing desk. (Mason here again, in fairness it was a nice desk!) This was his last day in that role.

He felt free from the corporate world, the downside is he foolishly left without a direction or new job. Mason had previously wanted to study game design and computer science before finiding a love for creative writing. So, he immediately signed up for an online continuing education certificate course in Game Design. Fast forward another two years and we are in the present; Mason is getting a second degree in Game Studies and Design and has a clear path he is striving for. (I know it's a bit of a time jump. But like skipping an anime’s filler you didn't miss much. I moved to Utah and did some hiking and finished my certificate courses then moved to Pullman.)

With multiple recent works in Unity, Mason has learned skills in game design, user interface and experience, relearned some of the basics of coding, worked with animation, and built a rudimentary shader graph. He is currently expanding his knowledge of general design philosophies and tools such as the adobe suite, maya, and website development. Since leaving his corporate job Mason has rediscovered and committed to his why. (Mason again, it was hard to condense my why into a succinct sentence that truly encapsulated it. I know I’m a “creative writer” and just used some big words in the last sentence, I should’ve been able to cut it down to increase its impact and readability, but I feel each part of my why is important, so instead you get another three sentences.) Utilize his creativity and skills to make memorable and inspirational works in both the narrative and game design space. He wants to reach a point where he is actively taking part in creating creative works that inspire and wow players and his peers. No longer wanting to just work for a company's bottom line, albeit he used to do so by helping customers, but rather to truly create something that people enjoy.