Hi, I’m David Lindsey Pittman, and I make games.
Growing up, I was embarrassed by my middle name: Lindsey. That was a girl’s name, and I was a boy. I didn’t want anyone to know that was my name.
In my early years working in games, a lot people called me Dave. For a while, I hated it, because that wasn’t my name! Then I accepted it; and I didn’t just accept it, I adopted it. For a hot minute, I was Dave, and Dave was me. Then I rejected it again.
Names are fuckin’ weird yo, and I’m cis so I’m sure I don’t know the half of it.
Sometime during the pandemic year (I mean 2020, but they’re all pandemic years since then, right?), I decided to start using my full name in the credits. “David Lindsey Pittman”. No one calls me that, but that’s who I am. There are a lot of David Pittmans in the world, but I’m pretty sure I’m the only David Lindsey Pittman.
That was the same year I got into a brief spat on Twitter with a stranger over some hot take I tweeted about guns in video games. I don’t remember exactly what I said, and I don’t remember exactly what he said, but I definitely remember that I replied that I could end his career with a tweet. Because it was bullshit machismo posturing on my part, and it would have blown over and been forgotten the next day, except that a shitty alt-right comicsgate site decided to make a story out of it; and 4 years later, that’s still in the top results if you Google my name. The internet doesn’t forget anything.
On Halloween 2022, driving home from a screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, I was stopped by Plano PD for speeding, and arrested on suspicion of DWI. Within a week, if you Googled my full name, you could find my mug shot and my home address. I don’t mind owning up to my fuck-ups (fucks-up? how do you pluralize fuck-up?), but it is extremely fucked up that personal information in police and court records can get exposed online by sharks who will ask you to pay them to take it down.
I’ve lived my life online for as long as there has been online. I was DavidLP013 on AOL. I was David “Kyp Durron” Pittman in Unreal mods. I was MillennialDavid on AIM, before “millennial” was a thing anyone said. Then I was dphrygian, and that one stuck.
Sometimes, it would be nice to be invisible. I probably wouldn’t have so much anxiety if I just shitposted from an anonymous account, instead of being “David from Twitter” as my coworkers affectionately(?) call me. But for better or worse, my life is an open book. I’m 40 years old today, I’ve made more games than mistakes, and I hope the next chapter is a happier one.
I’m David Lindsey Pittman. And I make games.