October 11th, 2007

Playing Games for a Living - Explained

Heading over to the Escapist website I found a very interesting and slightly disturbing editorial about the social difficulties of being a videogame editor. Russ Pitts is our man and lays down some hard truths about being in the business of playing and reviewing games. While he is a professional that’s been working for about ten years, I can confirm his words easily even with my limited experience. I was thinking about writing a related article myself, so read on and find out about the realities of playing games for a living.

There comes a time when the day job is no longer just a way to piss your parents off and be independent, but a powerful reality check born out of the fight for survival. While being a hardcore gamer for many years, I never pictured myself playing games for a living. Work is work, and fun is fun, I said. Even now I sometime feel the need to put some distance between me and gaming since it breeds a sluggish lifestyle. Let me rephrase that: I like what I’m doing to such an extent that sometime I delve too deep into my work and forget the need take out my friends for some drinks, see my girlfriend or attend a live concert. Maybe you think that’s what games will generally do to you? I disagree. It’s just the way of all passions in life, especially if your hobby becomes a job. In the end, if you hate your job you won’t be leading a successful life.

Unfortunately you’ll have to cross the maze of social acceptance before enjoying the glory of game reviewing and Russ makes an excellent point. For one thing, leaving the household and living on your own will still leave you with that silent need of making your parents proud. At least to a degree that lets you sleep well at night within a fluffy sense of achievement, knowing they have finally been impressed by your efforts. But how do you explain to technologically impaired 50 year olds that playing videogames can actually raise enough money to provide for decent living? The issue arises from the fact that no-one really knows what being a game editor is all about so if I can convince you, maybe I’ll save myself.

When you’re new to the gaming business chances are you’ll just take care of news. The copywriter takes news items from different agencies and compiles them into a singe unifying truth bearing his name and the quoted sources. I lost a bit of faith when confronted with this modus operandi, but rest assured - that’s what the big boys are doing as well. Whenever you turn on the TV and watch the news, you just hear what some big name news agency decided the truth of the day is, because there aren’t many people capable of accurately reporting the situation on the scene.

The next level allows you to write your own news materials, not unlike a good bloger, benefiting from the experience you’re recently accumulated. The editorialist knows that the third “Supermutant Killer Bees” game bears a likeness to the previous two (which he played); he’s familiar with the storyline and has heard several rumors about the game from alpha testing. It’s definitely more fun than level one and they take advantage of the cynical nature in man, arguing about this or that.

Take Halo 3 for instance. It’s been out for three weeks and the internet was buzzing with news each and every day, regardless of overall relevance. It’s a huge title that will make the delight of news editors for a long time to come. Every new Microsoft statement is pinned down, along with another secret skull finding or machinima release. You need to keep the length in check to keep the readers interested and personality is the key word.

In between you will give game reviewing a shot, keeping in mind the specifications of the site or magazine you’re working for. As a rule of thumb, the reviewer won’t have the opportunity to cook up a seven page long review for an incredibly obscure title, no matter how much you like it. Success depends entirely in you commenting the game features from a fresh perspective. Unlike copywriting with is a brain numbing activity, reviewing implies non-standard thinking and innovation.

The problem is, as a gamer, you only play games you enjoy. It’s different when getting paid to review, since a lot of weak titles will make your way to your desk. Diplomacy is suggested when tackling the bad aspects of the game, as a duty towards the incredible amount of effort put in by the developers. But your duty is twofold, since the reader must be correctly informed by your impartial effort, thus you can’t review anything if you don’t see the bigger picture. Reviewers are the master tacticians and minstrels of the gaming scene.

But that’s not all you can do. Russ is going all over the country and attends gaming conventions on a monthly basis so at times he acts as an investigative journalist. While press passes will generally be available, the real story lies behind the curtain and you’ll need to use every bit of real life skill to discover the real deal. The slick journalist will use every trick in the book to get under people’s skin. But then again, when meeting the publishers and developers that shouldn’t be an impossible task since they just love to talk about their games.

Throw in deadlines, significant daily quotas, quality standards and the fact that 80% of the games played are not your style and the image will be accurate. In the end, no-one is really paying you to play games. You’re getting paid to write about games and that’s the catch wherever you work. It’s still hard for some to fathom so I’ll end with Russ’ words: “Now here I am, a 30-something-year-old adult, living the dream, as it were, after a decade of hacking a career out of the new media jungle, working my dream job, living in a fashionable neighborhood, making a decent living and enjoying my life as fully as I'm able, and I'm still ashamed to admit in certain company that I play videogames. And by "certain company" I mean practically everyone.”