OK, I've been following various site's coverage of E3, and it really made me wonder what companies are looking for in game journalists in this day and age. Before I go any further, I should mention that I wrote and reviewed for Service Service Anime & Game Girl Magazine some 9 years ago. But really, the majority of these guys seem to have little to no background in gaming... and by background I mean an authoritative level of knowledge of older games so that when you talk about newer stuff you have something to build on. It seems as if I could grab a video camera, head to E3, and provide the same level of coverage as the "big sites". Maybe I'm just jaded.:shrug:
since when all the review are made to please the companies behing the webpage or magazine or whaterver, it is so.
No, but who's gonna change it? The current model is good for both the "journalists" and companies (bad for the people who play games, but who cares about them?). Although I have to say Edge is good for the most part.
Game journalism gets a good crowd tho. If its on tv then they want the good lookin guy/girl (that as it seems knows almost nothing about games) to cover it because they are pretty and appeal to the masses. If its actual writing, most are either swayed by publisher/hardware makers or are writing in behest of the site owners that have loads of ad revenue that they would rather not give up. Hard to find a good balance, thats why I come here every day p.s. I've had a few, so be gentle
To answer the main question directly, most periodicals don't consider games journalism a separate specialty, the way they might with a movie critic or a science writer. A games journalist is usually just a journalist who's on his or her way to a job where there's an opportunity to write about the thing that's *really* interesting to that person. As gamers, we look at the problem backwards. We have expertise and experience, and we wonder why the reporters who cover our hobby don't have the same. However, just because you have enthusiasm and knowledge doesn't also mean that you know how to write. Worse, if you can't meet a deadline or take the withering criticism (up to and including having nearly everything you write cut down to a paragraph or less) then you won't make it as a news or sports writer. Games journalists have to be excellent and thick-skinned writers first, and video game fans a distant second or third. By way of full disclosure, I studied journalism in school but missed a lot of opportunities to get into the industry. I'm a technical writer now, and looking at the way journalism is shaking out I don't regret not having entered the field.
The last decently written gaming magazine was probably OXM, at least that I read. For them ODCM here in the US died and a lot of their writers went to OXM and it showed nicely. Haven't read it in a number of years now but there isn't a piece of gaming "journalism" that doesn't smell like the writer is in someone's pocket.
99% of mainstream Game Journalism is a joke that's for sure. There are small outlets out there that aren't but they are far and few in between.
There are plenty of game journalists that really know their shit. Most are really, truly passionate about gaming. There's no way you'd stick out what is otherwise such a shitty job if you didn't have that passion. The ill-informed gaming pieces usually come not from IGN, 1UP or whoever but from the BBC, CNN etc - the major news corps that bundle games into their technology sections and get whoever's around at the time to cover the big releases, regardless of whether they're qualified to speak on the matter or not. That's when you see "Xbox" used as a company name and that kind of shit. Once you realise just how incestuous the relationship is between the game devs/publishers and the specialist gaming press is, though... frankly I'm amazed that anything of worth ever comes out of it.
Start a blog, update it with all of the new stories, submit the links to Digg, Reddit and Twitter. You'll get enough views to substantiate an E3 Media Pass. Use said pass to schedule yourself for demo slots, post impressions to blog. Use AdSense at first and then cross your fingers for hits and eventually big-name advertisers. If you want to feel good about your work, though, you'll need to get a job working for a magazine...and then live in fear that you might not have a livelihood tomorrow.
it's ok i feel the same way, although i guess as a "game journalist" you would need to have interest in all games, and not be shy of gimmicky things, also being able to speak well and write well is a plus, also to be a complete anal douche suckup like Kevin Pereira on G4, im not sure if he even qualifies. but just read his wikipedia, seems like he has skills? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Pereira or at least can open his mouth and suck a large dick. :flamethrower:
Your writing style should be appealing to the target demographics of video game magazines (male, 14-26) and you should be open for a very bad salary, as a video game journalist you earn much less than say when you're writing for a regular newspaper. The nice thing though is that you get to play games way ahead of other people. Which makes playing games more like a everyday thing, with time it lost its magic for me. Especially when you're one of the first people playing Resident Evil 5, seeing all its mistakes in the alpha version, or if you're trying to play the latest Burnout, and it's simply broken - I didn't appreciate the final version anymore, cause I was already fed up with the game. How I got in the "industry"? I was 14, and a friend introduced me to a online magazine, where I freelanced, eventually that online magazine became a print magazine, being sold in several different countries, but yeah, it was basically just my writing skills, "luck" (that friend who introduced me to the mag) and willingness for crap pay. Hell, I only reviewed THAT many games, so that I could sell them on eBay afterwards for 30-50 bucks, depending on the original retail price of the game, made an additional 300-500 bucks a month that way. Merchandise was also good, there was this Command & Conquer 3 silver ring (that the villain wears) given out by Electronic Arts as promotional item, I got 3 of them from my mag, and sold them all on eBay for like 300 bucks each, bidders are crazy for these items. I further sold T-Shirts and other promo crap - so you see, a job which resulted in desperate actions. Those were the days. Nowadays I run my own software company here in Southeast Asia, have my own penthouse and when looking back, I must say, the gaming industry and all its different games and people you encounter, the travelling to events and such, speaking with people who you really don't want to speak with, bad catering, expos with bad games etc. - I miss those days.
I had fun writing reviews and previews for a decent website and doing press junkets for a few years. I enjoyed it but towards the end I became jaded and cynical with the gaming industry. NDAs and Embargoes kill any chance of a "story" and you end up with PR for the most part. MS used to be really cool when the needed us then they got cocky and arrogant and the level of access a LOT of people had before simply vanished. As for making a living at it, you are looking at something one step below a weather person and at least they are on TV I don't count G4 or Spike as regular "TV" so to speak. There is good writing out there most of the articles I enjoy now are in depth stories on old games, consoles and companies. You can't really do that with current gen stuff and it's a pity. However as others have posted, just do it ! No one person is more qualified then other although it helps to know your history of the genre and pretty much every member here does. Just be careful of what you wish for, you might just get it.
Ok, to clarify I don't want to be a gaming journalist. If you read my OP, I already did that gig. I'm simply saying that game journalism sucks and as a whole has a feeling like it was written by a group of junior or high schoolers. I remembers a looooong time ago when my friends would look at gaming mags (there was no Internet) we would make fun of the writing in GamePro. Now it seems like everyone writes that way.
