PUBLISHERS, RECRUITERS, & DEVELOPERS:
If you need to contact me about a business matter, email me at dave@mrdavepizza.com
If you’d like me to review your game go here:
https://www.mrdavepizza.com/showcasing-services-and-content-creation/
ABOUT THIS WEBSITE: This is just my little corner of the internet where I write personal hot take–sometimes poorly edited in the face of a pandemic–posts about video games, as well as publish samples of creative writing and casual indie entertainment reviews. What’s offered is my humble opinion and a curated selection of topics I research and try with the hopes of making this interesting place I call Mr. Dave Pizza. Incidentally, MrDavePizza is also my gamer handle.
I have posted hundreds of articles since 2020, and it is updated semi-regularly with usually current indie and retro game topics, plus guides and tutorials on gaming-related topics–but recently some other topics too. I also have a YouTube channel that has several videos and subscribers, although it’s no longer my main focus. I am a positive gamer and like to write about things that make people happy. You probably won’t find anything too shocking here, but it’s far from boring!
My tastes have changed over the years, but I love games that are retro, magic based or space themed, and anything with a solid colorful and fun atmosphere. Lately, I’ve found that I also just love good games that are casual and offer things like easy mode and assist options enough to keep me trying lots of new stuff without getting bogged down with learning curves, although those games have their place too. The older I get, the harder it gets for my dopamine receptors to translate games as some type of entertainment–instead, postponing for the next available Instagram reel marathon–but I still play them occasionally.
I have played tons of games in the past, which helps me translate the mechanics of games into a discussion. I believe every game has something unique to share with the gaming community, and that’s why I love to write about them. Or at least I did, I have been pursuing different forms of writing in recent years, although sometimes still game focused.
In addition to writing and videos, I have *some* dev experience, as well as being a graphic design experimenter and a by-necessity CSS hacker. I’m also quite proficient at Canva–every time I use it I sing their commercial jingle! Not a sponsor. I’m constantly working on my artistic skills, including–occasionally–pixel art, although I’m not what I would call a visual artist as my main character–writing has always been my main hustle. I’ve always been interested in tech though, and it comes naturally for me to figure out how things work.
Additionally, I’m currently in my umpteenth attempt to write a book. I’ll post more details when it becomes more of a reality, hopefully.
A little personal info about me: My real name is David and I live in a small town in Eastern Iowa where I’m a caregiver for my parents–don’t tell them though. I grew up here, although I lived in Portland, Oregon for 10 years. I have worked in several industries like bookselling, fundraising, and customer service. I have a bachelor’s degree in Social Science from Portland State University and a certificate in Computer Information Systems. I started this website during the pandemic to kill some time and kept going with it. Sometimes, I like to play retro games on my CRT box television. I run a very small business refurbishing games and retro toys and selling them.
I hope you like my content, and maybe I can create content for you. My readers are my friends. Thanks for reading. You are amazing!
Do you like my game dev tutorials? I wrote some exclusive articles on game dev marketing in my friend Nick’s book Into the Indies. It covers several interviews with real game developers and how they went about making a game. My contributed articles talk about how indie devs can be realistic about their marketing and project planning. I am quite proud of my participation in this book and I highly recommend it. It’s available in print as well as e-book from Amazon.
I am a past contributor to ChoiceBeat The Visual Novel and Interactive Fiction Zine. I have written a couple of articles in Choicebeat about the games OVERBOARD! and NeuroNet: The Mendax Proxy. This is a pretty awesome group of creators and I support their work. https://choicebeat.wordpress.com/
I was an avid content creator for the group Indie Game Collective from 2021-2024, just an open group for content creators, mostly on Twitch, who wanted to showcase ALL kinds of indie games. This group was not exclusive to one subculture or style, just a place where we shared our work. The rainbow logo is representative of the variety of games we play and often how colorful they can be, also the diversity of our community. This group decided to stop operations in April of 2024 due to operating costs, which was a very sad moment for many of us, but for the best. Many of us are still good friends, although more and more I wonder what most of them are up to. There is some information about them on Twitter for the time being: https://twitter.com/IGCollective.
And to end on a casual note, I also sort of/kind of took a throw at putting together my own solo-dev visual novel called Thank You, Mr. Bell. It’s a personal tribute to the historical inventor Alexander Graham Bell. I have had this one on the backburner for a couple of years now, and don’t really have any plans to pick it up again, but it was an interesting exercise in creativity for me.
There is more about this project on this blog over at https://www.mrdavepizza.com/thank-you-mr-bell/
Thanks for reading Mr. Dave Pizza. 🥰🍕