So You Want To Be A Game Journalist?

simoniker writes "Over at Game Career Guide, they're looking at how to become a video game journalist, and exactly what that 'infamous' job entails. An extract: 'An [apparently simple] task roster belies the complexity of the role of games journalist. For example, playing a game with an eye towards reviewing it differs from playing it purely for fun and, if it happens to be a terrible game (which you will see more than your fair share of in time), it may not be such an enjoyable experience. Dealing with PR people ... can be tiresome to degrees depending on the nature of the PR person (some are more tiresome than others, let's just say).'"

Comments

Little Fish

[Merovign]

There are a lot of game websites that offer pennies for reviews - it seems less money this year than last.

There is an ongoing "wage deflation" in writing as most web editors and some print editors look online for writers.

The general poor quality of nearly-free writing does dampen that somewhat, but there are enough good writers working in their spare time, while engaging in trustafarianism, or otherwise not needing a lot of money, that it's creating a bit of an "outsourcing" effect, both with regard to pay and social reaction.

There are still good paying jobs in this and other writing fields, but I'm seeing a trend toward people who are good at sourcing cheap content rather than in-house experts. As usual, we'll see how it all turns out.

Re:No mention so far of the politics..

[regular_gonzalez]

I worked for a time as a games reviewer, and I can say that I personally never knew or witnessed such action. Then again, we were pretty low on the totem pole and never had a "world exclusive". Still, the site was fairly big and reviews were collated at such places as metacritic.com, and even for the biggest releases there was no pressure to give a game any particular score.