Get Money Get Paid
I put out this video when I got paid for my games journalism for the first time
The summer of 2009 was a big one for me. The college search was taking off in a big way and it was time for some resume padding. That's also when I felt that I had gotten everything I was going to get out of HearMii.com (more on that next post). So I decided to finally start applying for some freelance gaming journalism jobs.
Days of Google scouring paid off and I landed two jobs.
One was at VPgameslive.com. It's primarily an online video game store but they also have an editorial component that was looking for some new staff members. They pay by the word and they give me a ton of freedom in terms of what to write about, even an epic essay known by some as my DJ Hero review.
I'd link out to every article but the vast majority of stuff up there now is written by me so just go the site and look through the archives if you want to see how I feel about games like Starcraft, Super Mario Galaxy and Grand Theft Auto.
Around the same time, I started writing for Slidetoplay.com. The guy who runs it used to work for Gamespot.com, one of the biggest game sites, and he brought that level of professionalism along with him. I had to sign a contract and they paid per article. The articles were also assigned to me on a fairly regular basis. I had a great time working with the editors of this site and it gave me some more discipline. I even started a minor controversy when I gave the game Sword of Fargoal a 2/4 when others felt it deserved much more. After a few weeks of nasty comments from fanboys and internet trolls it culminated in me having a nice conversation with the game's creator.
You can listen to it right here
Some comments hurt but it was bound to happen eventually, it's part of the job. I just laugh at it now. I love games but I recognize that they're not worth getting that angry over.
I don't write for them anymore, although I probably could if I bugged the right person. The biggest reason was because I didn't have time anymore once summer and high school ended. However, I also realized that the iPhone game space/market, while fascinating, isn't really for me and sometimes reviewing them didn't feel quite right. It's hard to describe. However both these experiences were totally worth doing I am grateful to the people that allowed me to have them. This is hopefully what I'll look back on when I move on up.
All my Slide to play reviews are right here. Some of them are pretty high profile too. Like Ace Combat and Tony Hawk.
No comments:
Post a Comment