I hit a secret button in my shoe that causes my phone to ring and then pretend it is a very important call and I have to go.

Then I run in slow motion, explosions behind me, my hair blowing, and I leap up on to a helicopter and kiss the girl while the universe fades out to black and my theme music starts.

Wow... I need new shoes. And a helicopter.

Q. "So.. What do you do?"

A. "Something which will take decades for you to do."

It didn't take you decades. Why would it take them decades?

that awkward moment when it did take him decades :/

I avoid that question at the moment as even my gf (whom I met while playing an online game that I intend to make a game based on same idea) couldn't care less about me working on a game. Actually she "motivates" me by saying " I am sure you will make a great game but fear that people won't play " , expecting me to get a "safe" job.

So at the moment, I pose as doing nothing, wasting life until I have a MVPish result.

"I do software testing and development for a number of different fields, and I've also been picking up security review related contracts from time to time."

Luckily I have my fingers in a pile of different pies, so it makes conversation topics easier to swing around if the other person seems bored with the current one. I'm also under piles of NDAs so I get to remain vague about everything as well with a solid reason for doing so if I simply don't really want to talk about something, and that usually lets the conversation slide over to other things or cut things short as needed.

"My name is Ash...and I'm a slave." comes to mind!

Well it's easy for me, I don't work in gamedev as my 9-5 job so I just say "I'm an IT manager". It's easier than explaining all my other roles that are part of my job title like lead developer, etc.

After I tell someone that I'm a health insurance analyst they'll do just about anything to get away from me as quickly as possible, so follow-up questions are a non-issue.

Whenever someone asks me what I do, I usually think for a minute, then I spin around and pin the guy’s arm behind his back. Now who’s asking the questions?


L. Spiro

A whole book can be written on why that single question is asked.

As a Build Engineer my job can be kind of tough to explain. I don't work on gameplay, I'm not an artist or a designer...And most people don't really know what the concept of a "build" is if they don't already work with them (especially since even within the field there are so many different kinds of builds and definitions for builds). So when people are like "So...what does a build engineer do exactly?" you kind of end up having to explain to them first what a build is and what it's used for (trying not to get carried away with different kinds of builds) and then explain what you do in the context of that.

I usually start off saying something like: "I work on and manage the team's continuous integration and autotesting systems that produce different kinds of game builds that the rest of the team then works with or that we send to third parties or certification."

Then they're like "What does that mean? What's a build?"

And to try to find the simplest explanation for it I say something like "It is this...package of the game. Kind of like when you install the game on your PC, you are installing a 'build' of it."

And then it turns into a whole discussion...I still haven't found a good way of one-lining it.