Sunday, October 14th, 2007
Issue: 44   Editor: Nyxxified


How BL changed my life Navvie
BL and Real life. You would think the only impact it has on real life is the wife telling you that you need to spend more time with her, or the boss firing you for spending too much time on the net. But can BL really change your life forever?

Gather round children for I have a tale to tell. It is one of hardship and friendship, good times and bad but ultimately, how BL changed my life.

Starting out in BL can be hard, doing crimes to rank is long and OC's can be expensive, cash is king (or points). So as a fairly new BL player your left wondering "How can I make some more cash?" From early on in my BL career I was part of an Underground crew who still exists today. Famous for crew and casino takes with seemingly little or no reward. Being part of such a crew requires resources, cash and points. Sure you can play the game and do the crimes but in truth this just takes too long and quickly becomes boring. So I noticed a talented player by the name of AchillesX, a pic maker. Commanding hundreds of points and millions of dollars for pictures. Costs him nothing but time yet gives him the items which lead to a powerful player.

Blood was all the rage at that time, blood splats and stains all over your profiles and I stumbled upon a competition on the forums with a handsome reward for a simple banner stating that the Colorado bullet factory was owned by someone (I forget his name). So I thought "what the heck," downloaded a 30 demo of Photoshop and got playing. I won! My design seem to be more creative than most and I won the cash... ChaCHING!

I thought to myself "This is easy". Knock out a few unique designs and in comes the cash. This was great, we used this to finance the various operations that my UG crew carried out so I spent most nights hard at work in Photoshop enhancing my skills and bringing in the BL dollars.

As I tried more and more elaborate designs I quickly became known as a pretty good pic maker. People actually asking me for some work rather than me having to find it. Ever seen a 'No Picture' image with a Marvel character... Thats me. Anyway, these skills then played a part in the real world, I was suddenly doing graphic work for my company with my new found photoshop skills. I seem to have a creative spark and with the skills learned doing profiles I was able to translate this to screen.

Times were good... then, I lost my job. Small company, not doing so well so asked who wanted to leave. I put up my hand and moved on to yet another IT role. I'm bored by now with computers and IT. All I want to do is stay at home and play with Photoshop. Then we filmed a friends wedding, I got to use my Photoshop skills when editing the video to create something quite unique, Good times.

So how did BL change my life? I realized, I actually have something here. With the skills learned in making Bootleggers profiles and pics I'm able to create some pretty spectacular Photoshop and video work. As a result I've just created my own wedding video business, I'm now my own boss and there is no doubt that without BL none of this would have happened.

So for some, BL is just a game, they keep it separate from their real life, they can manage it so they never get in trouble. Some really immerse themselves in it while others, like me found something in the game that can translate into real life.

-Mercenary