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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).'"
.. of being asked to go lightly on a game because it's an exclusive review. You know, I don't think I've ever seen a cover-highlighted 'exclusive review' where the game hasn't ended up getting 8 out of 10 or above.
From TFA, the requirements for being a games journalist seem to have changed since I was one:
1: Are you willing to work long hours for almost no money?
2: Can you actually play games well enough to get screenshots of levels beyond the training stages?
3: Can you write? (This requirement may be optional.)
Those were pretty much the order of requirements. Games journalism (in print, certainly) is one field where actual writing ability rates far below being able to churn out tolerable copy to the required word count for the deadline.
I worked on games magazines for the better part of the 1990s, and the sheer throughput of wannabe 'games journalists' I saw in that time was quite amazing. Dozens and dozens of people. What's scary is that quite a few of those who didn't vanish entirely are there even now, some in their 40s, still playing videogames for a living on shit money for bosses who treat them with contempt. They are literal lifers, with no way out because that's all they know how to do.
There's the very occasional escapee who's made a journalistic career away from games, but anyone who thinks that becoming a videogames journalist is their stepping stone to bigger and better things is deluded. If you want to become an actual journalist, you'd be better off starting as the scut monkey on the tattiest local newspaper than as the editor of the best-selling videogames magazine in the country. You'd learn more useful career progression tips in a month than in five years of PR lunches and checkdisks.
You must think in Russian.
What in the hell is "trustafarianism"?
The grandparent is a bit mistaken in their use of this term, but basically a "trustafarian" is a young person who pretends to live a bohemian, liberal lifestyle -- usually characterized by living in low-income neighborhoods, wearing second-hand clothes, and basically making a show of their 'rejection' of materialism -- all the while being supported by their parents. Take the first bit as the "rastafarian", and the second part as the "trust fund".
In men, this lasts until their parents stop paying them, or until they grow to old to maintain a respectable level of hipsterdom. In women, it lasts until they marry some douchebag junior currency analyst at Goldman.
HTH.