Covering Video Games Part II
The extent of my video game knowledge ends somewhere around Super Mario Brothers III, so I asked a few gaming writers how a freelancer can get their gaming reviews and stories published.
“It’s a tough business. There aren’t very many game-specific publications and most places are very skimpy about the amount of coverage they give games. So I say, write a regular bit about games on a web site (not necessarily a gaming site), to build your cred. Then pitch mags with that in your back pocket,” advises Todd Zuniga, who has covered games for Official PlayStation Magazine, WIRED, The Onion AV Club, Sound & Vision and G4 TV’s X Play.
“There are some sites that are good places to get started,” says Paul Semel, who has covered games for Maxim, Vibe and Spin, amongst other publications. “You can get clips writing for fansites like Nintendojo, Yahoo Games, Gamespot and Gamespy.
There is always something new in the gaming business, so to keep your pitches stay fresh, “stay up on game releases and comb game company web sites for press releases. (info.ea.com, for instance).”
You need to learn to be flexible with word counts. “Gaming websites reviews tend to run 500-1000 words,” says Semel. “A monthly magazine can be as much as 2,000 but other publications can be as short as 75-100 words.”
Plus, covering video games ironically involves some social skills: it helps to network at conventions like E3Expo. “It’s a pretty tightknit community, so you’ll want to introduce yourself and get other writers’ email addresses and see what other reviewers are saying,” says Semel.
If you think you have more to say than just reviews, there’s no reason to limit yourself once you have some clips in your pocket. “Official PlayStation Magazine, for example, is hip, cool, and loves stories on games with interesting angles,” says Zuniga. For instance, there is an article right now on the site about how many people it takes to create a game as huge as Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
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