Phony book covers disguise video games

Sarah Weimar, special to wtop.com

WASHINGTON – For James Bit, it was an “aha moment.”

“When I was a kid, it was pretty cool to have a stack of video games to show off to your friends, says Bit.

“As an adult, it’s not so cool anymore”

And Bit admits “women certainly were not impressed.”

As his collection grew, the 35-year-old New York City resident realized he needed to do something.

“People would come over, it started looking like an eyesore,” says Bit. “It left an impression that you weren’t growing up, didn’t have any ambition.”

So Bit invented a way to camouflage the objects of his affection – phony book covers.

Aha – each plastic video game case looks like a book.

“Everybody loves a reader,” Bit explains.

Customers provide Bit with the game titles in their collection, and Bit does the creating.

“It says the exact game that they have, and I actually will go further and find out who the developer is and put that where normally the author would be,” says Bit.

Each custom cover design is email-delivered as a high-quality PDF for the customer to print out and insert into the game case.

On Etsy, the custom covers cost $6 for three designs.

The original design is currently sold out, but Bit says a new design should be available next month.

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