"Don't start me talking/I could talk all night"

One thing I'll say - and it's a standard riff, so excuse me if you've heard it before. The accusation of a games writer being bought off is inherently ludicrous - if money was a primary concern, we wouldn't have gotten into it.

The lack of money is a primary thing which makes people leave as they get older. I've had friends who've gone over to development not because they wanted it, but because they were offered a job and realised it was four times what they were being paid.

KG

That’s interesting to note – I don’t think joining game development for the money alone is a very compelling reason to do it, myself.

When I got into Wolfenstein modding in college, I met a guy online who worked for a game review start-up. He asked if I wanted to write game reviews (for the Mac and consoles) in exchange for keeping the games I reviewed. The way he hooked me was that he'd get me a free copy of RtCW for the Mac. I wouldn't get paid... but... free games!

I only did reviews for a few months, but ended up reviewing games like Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer, Hitman 2, the re-release of Myst, Fallout 2, and Lineage. Some decent games, some terrible. That's also the price you pay as a reviewer - having to play some really terrible games.

The funny thing was that they copied my PS2 reviews, changed a few words and posted them as Gamecube reviews. Two for the price of one! For example, in the intro of the PS2 article, I might say "Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer has excellent graphics." The editor would then change the sentence to "Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer has excellent controls." They did this a lot, I'm sure they ran a macro or just search for keywords and replaced them.

One nice thing is that because it was a start up, there wasn't any political pressure from publishers, so I could be as honest about the game as I wanted to be. However, being new, I wasn't as harsh as I should have been. I wanted to continue receiving free games, so why bite the hand that feeds you?

Anyway, these reviews are still posted online. The review site, while no longer a startup, never really took off in a big way. Let me know if you ever want to check em' out. It's like seeing your seeing your middle-school yearbook picture, but with words.

I have not been doing this especially long. If/when I burn out, I fear it will be because I feel I haven't been able, despite all my efforts, to be effective. I would wager that games journalism is the only type of journalism where community response is a constant factor. People who write about the real estate market or tech stocks don't have to worry about "what everyone is going to say".

The audience is so loud it's sometimes difficult to feel like you're being heard clearly. You could write a very long, thoughtful article trying to highlight something you believe in -- and then it's publicly dissected at full volume by a large group of people who maybe read the first two paragraphs.

What's worse is when they're so attached to their allegiances that they don't even hear what you've said. You could present a series of well-researched facts that dispute their long-held beliefs -- and screw the facts. In their eyes, everything you've worked hard on is just your stupid, worthless opinion.

Dealing with the PR/Marketing people is an uneasy dance, and is probably more difficult in the games biz than in other fields, but I can work with that, even if I don't like it.

Anyway, I'm going on too long here. I think that many games writers become writers because they want to share and elaborate on things they find interesting and positive about gaming, for the benefit of like-minded individuals. Instead, they end up constantly on the defensive against those who have made a habit out of being contrary for its own sake. It can feel like a betrayal.

The community wants to use your work as a flashpoint for aggressive war, the companies want to use your work to sell their product and hell to pay for you elsewise, and as you said, there's a constant chorus of voices that tell games journalists that they're irrelevant, immature, useless or of poor quality.

That'd be my best guess as to why most of us don't do this for very long.

"I would wager that games journalism is the only type of journalism where community response is a constant factor."

This certainly isn't the case anymore, since even sites like CNN.com have opened up comments.

If you want to see some frightening immediate feedback, try ESPN.com and its columnists, who are faced with hundreds (or thousands) of responses within minutes/hours. Sports fans are as irrational as gamers.

"Dealing with the PR/Marketing people is an uneasy dance, and is probably more difficult in the games biz than in other fields, but I can work with that, even if I don't like it."

Really? You think it's worse? From my perspective, games were easy; try the film or music industry... those PR people are more aggressive, get angrier quicker, and can (and do) pull more rank because their "celebrities" have considerably more clout with editorial.

I was the editor of a PC game magazine for over 12 years, which is probably one of the longer tenures. When my publication finally shut down, there was no way I was going to continue in editorial; I was done.

Switching to game production does represent a major improvement in salary, and it's also one of the few logical progressions from writing about games. At least you won't have to explain what you were doing during your job interview.

Leigh, I am curious how would you define being “effective”. Does it mean reaching a wide audience? Bringing previously unknown truths to light? Being able to influence and affect the way people think about games?

Also, I can’t help but point out slyly that Kotaku is a very interesting choice of venues in light of the frustrations you just voiced about unthinking and refractory gamers!

The financial factor in pushing writers out of writing about games and into game development or PR jobs has been reflected in my own career. I was fully freelance for three years in the UK but, when my daughter was born, I moved into development simply because it was the responsible financial thing to do (doubly so when you consider the greater ails of publishing in general).

Your characterisation of what it looks like to get paid to write about games for a living certainly looks like my story and that lifestyle is not really feasible or sensible when you have dependents.

I've been fortunate in that I've been able to maintain a successful freelance games writing career in tandem with my dev 'day job' but the heart-quickening teen incentive of free games has long passed (even if the odd trip to Japan is still a happy bonus).

I do it because I love writing about games more than anything else; because, for every 50 angry commentators on a Eurogamer or Edge review attacking your words who have, as Leigh rightly points out, only read the first two paragraphs at best, there are five for whom your writing resonates deeply and enlightens.

I think that, if you can manage your life into your late twenties and thirties in such a way that writing about games is financially viable (either by settling into a long term editorship, by not having a family or by not relying on it as a sole means of income) then there are a few of us who will continue doing this for the next fifteen, twenty, thirty years in one capacity or another.

Defining effective, possibly a little bit of each thing you mentioned. When I editorialize my goal is to provoke people to think about their opinions, or to get them to be receptive to a new way of seeing or doing things, even if they disagree with it.

When I do news stories or interviews or in-depth reporting on this facet or that, what I hope is simply that people will receive the facts and find them interesting. Our audience doesn't really like facts a lot of the time. It's much easier to say stuff like "[Insert large company] sucks" or "[Insert struggling developer] makes shit games" or something like that.

My larger definition of being effective is something I can't do on my own; my goal professionally is to contribute, even in a small way, to games being considered with more dignity and understanding not only in the mainstream, but within our own quick-hit world.

And you may have a point regarding my career choice -- I'd surely have a less frustrating time tucked among people who tend to think and respond more like I do.

But assuming your point about unthinking and refractory, what better way to attain my definition of efficacy than directly confronting that audience, rather than "preaching to the choir," as they say? :)

In response to Kieron, the same thing (joining a related field for more money) happens in "regular journalism."

I work for a paper in Connecticut, and plenty of the guys that run PR for the government or legislature used to report for reputable publications, such as the Associated Press.

At this early stage of my life, I have a moral conflict with being a flack, but who knows? When you talk to these government spokesmen about it, they all say they had to support their families.

this is sadly pretty spot on for the games press operating in the san francisco market (which is the lion's share of the US games press: gamespot, ign/gamespy/teamxbox, ziff davis, gamepro, future, etc.)

it's an engaging and fun and exciting lifestyle while the novelty exists, and i remember seriously being determined to do the best job i could to cover bad and boring games -- but eventually, that evaporated, as i lost the fire. it's inevitable.

freelancing for a year in san francisco turned me off of freelancing-as-a-career quick; i worked hard and had consistent gigs and made very little money. it would have been a solid take for, say, kansas, but for one of the most expensive cities in the US, it was too low.

freelance pay rates in the US haven't improved over the course of my entire career (that's since 1999.) salaries have, though i would say that taking inflation into account, that's probably marginal.

anyway, before i just spin this out too long, i think that we don't have much of a right to ask for quality when we pay the way we do; sure, the reviewer gets to sit around in his underwear playing a game instead of flipping burgers at mcdonald's, but the pay works out roughly the same in the case of an RPG, particularly when you take into account the fact that freelancers pay is taxed at a very high rate in the US compared to salaries.

the bit about how the vocal minority ruins your work for you is apt. i was able to work through that very easily because i had a lot of confidence in my reviewing; but eventually, after years of it, i just stopped caring about the audience. there were people out there who appreciated my work, but being thrown to the wolves every time was so tedious. maybe even worse was the apathy: putting up a review, generating no discussion whatsoever.

i could keep going endlessly so i'll just cut myself off.

Jared: Absolutely. There's many fields of Journalism which you really can't get the cash for - Music journalists can be similarly impoverished.

Echoing Christian: Page rates haven't shifted in the UK since 1998 either. And they were less than half of the rates of equivalent US mags to start with.

KG

Some long-term persistence in the field might help, but my secret dream is this: A few of the very best game press writers *do* leave the professional field in favor of better paying jobs. After that, they'll be free of poor wages, slimy PR departments and ridiculous 12 hour time allotments. Only then will we get what we need: Passionate people with keen eyes and sharp tongues who can write actual criticism about games; people who understand interactivity and who love games deeply, educated or opinionated about how players can best experience game systems as vehicles for discovery or emotional interaction, and who are then given time to write canonical critiques of worthwhile games. I hope to have a coffee table book of collected KG critiques in a few years.

Interesting question on the press burnout, and of course magazines consolidating or simply closing has become rather a trend (is it one PC game magazine left in the USA? C|Net was brought out recently right?).

I'd love to see the developers and journalists working together more. I like companies who have developers speaking, not PR or marketing people, on their games, and journalists who can ask the right questions back - who know the medium well. No wonder people burn out from it, given what they have to report on though, especially when it comes from PR.

Also is there any good site for tracking game journalism? The IGJA doesn't seem too active on news, and there isn't really any place to keep track of all the changes in people/magazines/websites and news on the actual journalists themselves, and critiques of it all (both on what they do, what they write, how they do it and so forth...).

For instance, reading the GameSetWatch review of Kokatu and other site's pay-by-views and whatnot, and changes to the system, was interesting, and a necessary part to make the journalists perhaps, in a way, more appreciated and certainly more accountable and personable.

I've not seen any site or paper with an ombudsman or corrections editor, annoyingly, which must hurt the reporting and critical side of the press as much for the journalists as the readers. This would be nice, but c'est la vie.

Here's to hoping it improves, the conditions for writers and the readers too! You guys all deserve more credit then is even gained. I wonder what it's like to be an Anon writer for Edge or other publications which don't credit the freelance writers, where you can't even get personal thanks for an article or review - ouch! Maybe it'll get to when burnout isn't required, but I'd say it'll be a fair few years all things considered.