 |
| When a PR scandal reaches the stage at which it is seen as a fit topic for late night new journatainment you know you have a hot-button issue for sure... |
No, you want to get paid to play and review video games?
No no! You want to get paid to report
on the goings on in the games industry?
No no no! Nooooo! What you really want
is to get paid to play video games and write Walkthrough Guides for
them!
Or perhaps it is some of the above?
All of the above?
The Wages of Sin . . .
If so, it probably will not
surprise you to learn that a lot of games journalists spend years
working their way up the ranks from the bottom, beat-by-beat, with
those very goals in mind.
The ones who attain those goals get
there through hard work.
Their journey usually begins by writing in the trenches, where they pay their dues earning considerably less than a living wage and take any paid gigs that they can get.
Their journey usually begins by writing in the trenches, where they pay their dues earning considerably less than a living wage and take any paid gigs that they can get.
As their goal is to begin the process
of honing their craft, finding their voice, and eventually building a
legitimate portfolio to represent them to editors who might be
interested in offering them a gig or, more likely, a freelance
commission for a specific project.
The new freelancer must accomplish the
above, all the while avoiding the plethora of traps and evil editors
out there both online and in print who want nothing more than to
obtain your services gratis - and they will tell you any lie that
works to get you to write for them. Lies that include possible
future pay based on the traffic your piece generates, or a share in
the site revenue “once it is established” of course.
Among the more often told promises are
help refining your craft, and editorial guidance in obtaining the
sort of skills and focus that is required for these beats. Of course
that guidance rarely appears in any other form than another
assignment for which you are paid in experience only.
The inexperienced are unaware that this
song and dance of writing for the experience or to build a portfolio
is just that - a song and dance. The editors at the sites and
publications that do pay for the projects and pieces that they
commission know which publications and sites induce their writers to
churn out copy for no fee and they don't consider a portfolio built
around those pieces of any value at all.
At least part of the reason for that
has to do with the quality - actually the lack of quality - that
those pieces will possess. Because the “editors” for those sites
and publications are not interested in helping you to create a
high-quality piece that presents your skills in the best light --
they are only interested in generating volume to fill the pages of
their site/pub in order to generate ad revenue and hits, gain a
better spot with the search engines, and make money.
 |
Veteran games journo and Giant Bomb
co-founder Jeff Gerstmann ended up losing his job at GameSpot for a
negative review of 2007's Kane & Lynch: Dead Men - an event that
we are pretty sure he never actually saw coming. Getting the sack
for an honest review is not how the system of ethics in games
journalism is supposed to work...
|
. . . are Swag, Free Meals, and
Risking your Reputation
That duly noted, it will probably not
surprise you that many writers just starting out seek and take
advantage of any perceived shortcuts that they can find along their
own personal journey towards getting established.
In fact that attitude and ignorance of
the process and industry are what the unscrupulous editors use and
count on to get writers to work for free! Have you head the
expression you cannot con an honest man? Well the same thing goes
for honest writers.
Taking shortcuts or working for free to
build a portfolio rarely ever leads to legitimate gigs, because the
editors you actually want to work for are not impressed by what
amounts to barely edited first--and-second-draft pieces that are
accepted by the fly-by-night editors who are all promises but never
deliver on them.
Look at it from the legitimate editor's
point-of-view for a moment: the work you are listing in your
portfolio is not very good largely because the publication you
created it for does not care about quality - only quantity. And then
there is the point that if you are willing to work for free for those
editors, why should a legitimate editor pay you? After all even you
don't believe your art is worth anything - otherwise you would not be
giving it away, right?
Never Work for Free
Legitimate editors understand the
concept of “just starting out” - that is why they make allowances
for newbies and offer them extra guidance in the creation of early
projects.
A legit and professional editor will
not accept what amounts to a rough draft from you as finished copy.
They will instead kick it back to you with the problems noted, and a
list of suggestions. Re-writing is a staple for the aspiring writer
- get used to it. Well, get used to it if you are working for a
legitimate outlet.
The good news is that there is method
in play here. Once you actually come to recognize the common
mistakes that get a piece kicked back for re-write, you will stop
making those mistakes. Your quality in writing will go up, and you
will find the process gets easier. It is a self-correcting process
you know? If you don't learn from your mistakes that will not be a
problem, since those editors will stop offering you gigs.
 |
| When you are a games journalist it shouldn't matter whether you keep your bits inside or they dangle. Right? Right? After all games journalism is all about knowledge, expert opinion, and how well you know your games and have found your voice as a journalist - not what sort of reproductive organs you possess. Right? Right? |
Advice-Seeking Emails
It's fair to say that a vast majority
of the brothers and sisters of the gaming pen will consider any
advantage they can to attain a boost - up to and including shortcuts,
nepotism, or help from a sympathetic member of the Fourth Estate's
Gaming Cabinet who has already secured elevation to the flag ranks of
games journalism and so could - should they choose to - put in a good
word for them.
Sadly that sort of advancement -
jumping the queue if you will - rarely ever works out to be either in
the benefit of the writer getting the unnatural bump, or for that
matter to the editors who have been induced into providing it by
someone whose judgment they trust.
The reason that I am writing this - and
why this subject has cropped up yet again - is down to the fact that
when I opened my mail client yesterday morning I discovered fifteen
new email messages from aspiring writers seeking advice from me on
how to break into one or more of the games beats.
That's fifteen emails in ONE day. It
happened to be a Friday, but still. That's a lot.
Fifteen emails is the total I would
normally receive in an average week, so getting them all in one day?
Unusual is the best word to describe this.
I've noticed that email of this sort
tends to arrive on Mondays or Fridays - the same days most CV's are
revised come to think upon it - and I doubt that is a coincidence.
If I dig hard and deep enough what I am
likely to find is that online somewhere on a chat board for writers
and writing my name was mentioned along with a bunch of other
journos, in a completely unrelated thread, and this was the result.
I write this on a Saturday morning in
the middle of preparing for a bad storm that is rumored to be coming
our way.
I live on what amounts to a very large
island off the coast of Massachusetts and bad storms like this are
not to be taken lightly. There is concern that the storm may become
what we call a “Nor'Easter” -- and in New England that is not a
good word to hear.
That type of storm forms on average
around three times a year, building up along the East coast as warm
air from over the Atlantic smashes into cold arctic air masses to the
north and west, with the result being northeasterly winds that blow
in ahead of the storm.
While this type of storm can occur any
time of the year they are most common between the months of September
through April, and when they choose to arrive during the winter
months the northwest side of a nor'easter will often contain very
heavy snow combined with hurricane-force winds.
So it is not only very cold to start
with, the windchill combined with the heavy snow makes for a
miserable - and often very dangerous - time.
The roads freeze, the snow gets deep
and can form an ice cover, and that makes it difficult for the
removal crews to get rid of it. Forget salting the roads, that only
works for regular bad weather. Think in terms of hunkering down for
the duration of the storm plus two to four days, and if you live in
New England, you can expect to lose power during some or most of that
period.
So naturally my mind is occupied by
thoughts of deep wet packed snow and the likelihood that we would
lose power and I would not be able to work on the four projects that
I am presently working. I am also concerned that we may not have
sufficient firewood to keep the fireplace burning for more than three
or four days, and I have mentally reviewed how much food is in the
larder as well as the levels of other essential supplies and the
conclusions are not good.
Before this storm arrives we will need
to get at least a cord of wood, and hit the grocery, hardware, and
pharmacy. It would be a good idea to visit the library and check out
some good books so that if the power does go out - and the Internet
with it - there is at least something to entertain all of us.
I'm sure you can imagine that, under
the circumstances, happy replies to unsolicited email of this sort is
not likely. But that's actually not a concern thanks to the twin
lessons of experience and history.
 |
When games journo and sometimes PR
person Lauren Wainwright, tweeted: "Urm... Trion were giving
away PS3s to journalists at the GMAs. Not sure why that's a bad
thing?" that should have been more than sufficient data to cause
her to pause and recognize WHY that was a problem. Under the
standard code of ethics in journalism a journo is absolutely free to
accept that sort of bribe - with the understanding that they would
thereafter NEVER cover any products from the company that offered the
bribe, you know, ever again?
|
Here There Be History!
Having been on the receiving end of
this particular type of appeal via email for nearly a decade -- or
about the time that my status as a games journo was officially
recognized (and bear in mind you don't actually have to be a
successful OR a popular games journo to be on the receiving end of
this sort of thing) -- I now have a policy for handling these.
I admit that, at first I was drawn to
them. The idea that someone at a stage I used to be at was seeking
out my guidance was pretty flattering. I definitely gave them more
time and attention - and effort - than was good. And I gave what I
thought was good advice too - in fact it was a lot more verbose but
if you distill it down it's the same advice I give today but in the
form of a tinned reply I can paste into the email I answer with.
Now I know better
In the past I assumed that anything I
had to say both had value to the recipient and would be advice
well-received and followed.
It turns out that is rarely ever the
case; they were not looking to hear me say “work hard, never work
for free, write the best you can, and find your voice.”
That wasn't what they were looking for
when they wrote me. What they were seeking were any tips, tricks, or
shortcuts I could offer because there is this belief on the part of
new writers that there ARE such things.
What I was offering instead - in my
ignorance - was a road map for how the rest of us AWs actually began,
undertook, and completed the journey under discussion.
No, what they want is for me to explain
to them how they might become a professional games journo without
actually needing to put in the effort of becoming a professional
games journo.
I've corresponded with more than a few
- at length - and eventually what I learn is that they just want a
fast track to success so that they can score gigs that will pay well,
offer them prestige, ensure a steady supply of free AAA games, and
pay expenses for and offer creds to the big three game expos - E3,
TGS, and Gamescom.
I was gobsmacked to learn that today a
lot of gamers who are looking to become games journos have this
twisted idea that the life of the typical professional games journo
while on assignment is something like a cross between Hunter S.
Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
-- and the the more excessive of the stories told about the bad-old
corruption days when PRs and studios would almost literally hand
games journos bags of cash, or whisk them away to all-expenses-paid
game briefings in Tahiti and the Bahamas during the dark of winter
back home!
Today reputable
gaming publications and sites have ethics policy that is very similar
to those used by newspapers - in fact the reform process for games
journalism in many ways mirrored what the newspapers experienced
during the height of their reforms.
The reason that
such policy is successful is that the journos themselves understand
it is in their best interest to comply with them.
First there is the
whole issue with the Federal Trade Commission and other government
agencies having finally recognized that both the traditional and new
media were rife with corruption and needed to be brought in line so
that they were operating under full influence and disclosure just
like the traditional media is.
Some time if you
are bored and have an hour free to read check out the Endorsement Guides for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) as they apply to games
journalists. The contents of that site section have been helpfully
packaged as a PDF document that you can download and read at your
leisure too.
After you get
familiar with that, go check out the updated valuation rules for
things like game review copies and swag over at the IRS website.
When you get audited how the IRS auditor treats the review and
preview copies will depend on how they personally interpret the law.
Some auditors apply
the tax law of Publication 531 (undeclared tips), while others choose
to apply the same set of tax laws that are applied to gambling
winnings by professional gamblers.
So for instance
just like a professional gambler a professional freelancer is held to
the requirements to file as a self-employed business using Schedule C
-- and review copies as well as swag is treated just like the value
of "comps" that are received from casinos by gamblers - and
thus are considered to be gaming winnings that are taxed at the
highest level allowed by law.
Some have
interpreted the games as being worth their declared retail cost as
their real value - so the typical AAA game will be counted as $59.99
in real value for the purposes of assessing the income amount you are
being penalized with.
Say you average two
games a month - though really that is a low-ball figure since during
the run-up to the Christmas Holiday you can easily have a dozen or
more games dropped on you.... But let's day throughout a typical
year you only accepted 24 video games. That works out to just over
$1,400 in what the IRS considers undeclared income!
And that does not
even begin to estimate the income value for swag you received from
PRs - including free meals, beverages, and even the thumb drives they
gave you the press releases and media content on! Yeah, the IRS
considers that income if it gets to the stage where you are being
audited.
Tax lawyers suggest
that just like professional gamblers the professional games journo
should keep a personal journal in which they keep track of what they
receive from PRs, studios, and publishers, as well as what they spend
out-of-pocket. Keeping receipts for the games you bought as well as
logging that in your journal is recommended - because the IRS auditor
might decide to Google all of your reviews for the previous tax year
and assume you received review copies for every game you reviewed.
Bearing in mind
that none of the game studios or PRs - or publishers - issue Form
W2-G to freelance games journos, that personal journal may be your
first and last line of defense against this!
That will quickly
add up - because even if the total amount doesn't push you into a
higher tax bracket, once they tabulate the total value for all of the
games - $1,439.76 - plus the swag and other income - they then start
applying the fines, and then total all of that together and begin
factoring the percentage of late charges and so on. It can quickly
get bloody - and your employers will not be happy with you either -
there is that to consider.
 |
| A little common sense goes a very long way - if you are being asked to passively endorse a product in order to "win" another product, just how objective do you suppose the "winners" will be? Should you even need to ask that question? A voluntary Ethics Policy does more than protect a publication - it also protects the journos who write for it. We're just saying... |
If you are an
aspiring journo I very strongly urge you to carefully study the
documents referenced above because government agencies like the FTC
and IRS do NOT have a sense of humor. Claiming ignorance of the law
pretty much amounts to an outright guilty plea!
If you read the
game and hardware previews and reviews I write you will notice a few
things consistently throughout: at the end of each preview or review
I disclose how I obtained the copy that was used for that piece even
when I actually paid for it myself, and I never retain preview or
review copies for my personal game library.
Unless the game
needs to be held onto for coverage of future DLC and expansion
content, we give away all of the review copies as part of our regular
trivia contests - with the details appearing at the end of the
preview or review right beneath the disclosure.
Another helpful tip
- when we know for certain that a game will have future content we
will need to cover we will actually try to insist on being given a
code rather than the retail boxed edition - since game codes have no
intrinsic value and thus are not declared income.
Sorry we got off
track here a little...
If a PR manages to
compromise you ethically they can (and many will) hold that over your
head. Believe me the risks associated with being outed for accepting
a bribe far far outweigh any blip of a few seconds of bad publicity
on their part for offering it. So you see there is a very real risk
of being “owned” by the PR or studio that bribed you -- and what
you have is a recipe for disaster that most assuredly has a “sell-by
date” attached.
Science Fiction
author Robert Heinlein is well-known for promoting the expression and
idea of TANSTAAFL - There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch - which
features heavily in the personal ethics and philosophy of the
protagonist Lazarus Long, and to a smaller degree with characters
like Valentine Michael Smith from Stranger in a Strange Land and so
on.
Once you get owned
the day will come when they demand payment for that bribe -- a demand
that most often comes in the form of a positive review for one of
their games.
When you -- and the
handful of other journos who they entrapped -- give a game that the
rest of the world recognizes as a real stinker a positive review, do
you truly imagine nobody will notice?
Forget the fact
that by giving that stinker a positive review you have essentially
betrayed your audience - those audiences are NOT stupid. They will
figure out that you had a reason for writing what you wrote mates.
So following the
publication ethics policy is not just a good idea - after all those
policies are there for your protection as well as to protect the
reputation of the publications itself.
Unlike most other
media beats, in games journalism a writer who has demonstrated that
they have a price and can be bought loses all trust and credibility
from their audience - and since their audience IS the gold-standard
by which their value to an outlet on their chosen beat is measured -
well you can easily figure it out for yourself.
The PRs and games
publishers know all of this - that's why you don't see them trying to
slide by with overt bribes anymore -- and why you never see them
offering the sort of overt perk like flying journos to warm tropical
destinations in the middle of the winter to be briefed on a new game
or have their preview play in a luxury resort in California (that
stuff really did happen).
I should also
emphasize that unlike in a court of law, there is no presumption of
innocence in the court of public opinion. Even just the appearance
of culpability is sufficient in most cases to cost a journo their
career.
 |
| Don't you just bet that this is one image he really regrets sitting for? |
And we don't need
examples like 2012s Dorito-gate or the travesty surrounding 2007s
Gerstmann-gate to make that all too painfully clear do we?
In a nutshell
Dorito-gate was a debacle that was pretty much created by the PR firm
representing American sugar-water and cheese-flavored corn-crisps
manufacturer Mountain Dew and Doritos (which means parent company
Pepsi-Co and subsidiary Frito-Lays).
Toss in GTTV host
Geoff Keighley, an unfortunate promotion involving Twitter,
Microsoft's (then) new hit game Halo 4 and its primary advertising
scheme, and games journalist Lauren Wainwright, who may or may not be
litigious in the grandest traditions of American culture (despite you
know, she being British and all of this taking place at a European
awards show)...
So um, yeah, that's
Dorito-gate - an unfortunate event that would have been prevented by
a handful of games publications and sites having adopted and clearly indoctrinated their writers with the same basic ethics policy that
most American publications and sites use. Because 'Merica! Hell
yeah!
Then we have
Gerstmann-gate - which I don't mind saying still leaves a bad
aftertaste.
Considering that
despite his innocence - and he was innocent - nobody is arguing that
games journo Jeffrey Michael Gerstmann was dismissal from GameSpot --
where he had worked for over a decade -- for any reason OTHER than
having written a fair and accurate review of the Eidos Interactive
title Kane & Lynch: Dead Men.
Bearing in mind
that Gerstmann was assigned to review that title, and bearing in mind
that the only basis for his dismissal was the fact that he wrote a
negative review of the game and then later refused to re-interpret
his review or re-cast the numbers for the rating he gave the game -
in the end his career as a games journo was permanently damaged.
So that was two
very simple examples of a clear ethics question (Dorito-gate) and a
completely innocent journo trapped in a pissing contest
(Gerstmann-gate) between the games press and one company who has an
alleged unfortunate policy of pimping its ratings to its advertisers.
In both cases while
there were no clear winners there certainly were some clear villains,
but games journos - and to some extent the gaming community in
general - really did get hurt.
Every Time You
Turn Around, There You Are!
So I need to hit
the door and get to the grocery - Pete's going to deliver a cord of
wood - I have a short list for the hardware store, and I'm getting my
scripts filled two-days early. That being so, and the weather
waiting for no man (or woman, or dachshund despite the fact that
Calvin is a very persuasive dachshund) I want to sum all of this up
by providing you, erstwhile aspiring writers and games journos alike
- with the following advice.
Follow it. Don't
follow it. Reject me. Endorse me. I don't actually care. But here
we go:
My formal and
official advice to new aspiring writers wishing to break into the
games beats (any and all of them) are really very simple.
1. Register a
custom Internet Domain Name (ie, www.yourname.com) for your working
name (for example my domain is boots-faubert.com) and obtain hosting
for that domain.
Create a personal
websites to showcase your work and help potential sources and editors
to contact you, and for editors to get to know you and your work.
You can find excellent examples - and ideas for what to include on
your site by checking out the long list of sites created by other
journos at the Journalists Personal Websites page at Street Tips.
2. Register and
properly set up an account/profile with about.me.
3. Sign up to and
add your articles to Journalisted.
4. Create a
LinkedIn account and be sure to keep your LinkedIn profile
up-to-date.
5. Create a
Portfolio of the best examples of your paid work for each of the
beats you write on.
6. Do NOT write for
free. You can find paid gigs - you just have to put in the effort.
That is not to say that you will be making loads of coin for that
effort - but that is not the point. The point is that you are
creating portfolio content that shows off your talents (and hopefully
your voice assuming you have found it) that fit within the desired
constraints of the industry.
You may find that
following the advice listed below will work:
(a) Use the
website Games Journalism Jobs
The job postings on
this site tend to be low on pay - but when it is a paid position they
usually make that very clear. It should be understood that this
is not the sort of gig clearing house you go to when you are looking
for a permanent job to earn a living wage. That is very unlikely.
On the other hand
you CAN find gigs here that are paid gigs and thus allow you to
honestly add the output to your portfolio of commercially successful
work. And that IS the point.
When you do get a
gig, give it 100% of your effort and ability - treat it as if this
was a job paying three times industry standard rates. Your goal here
- in addition to getting paid for your writing - is to create work
that showcases your writing abilities and (hopefully) your voice.
When you finish a
gig here that you feel qualifies as representative of your best work,
be sure you add it to the publications or projects section of your
LinkedIn Profile (whichever is appropriate), and then add it to your
Journalisted profile.
(b) Work for
yourself
While you can be
harshly judged for accepting unpaid gigs from sites and their
editorial staff well known (infamous) for conning aspiring writers
into producing production-level content for them, no self-respecting
editor will look down on you for creating your own games blog and
then populating it with quality features, game and game industry news
pieces, game reviews, and even walkthroughs or game strategy guides.
While the contents
of a self-made, self-run publication such as this won't really
qualify as portfolio samples of paid work, the entire site/pub itself
and everything on it DOES qualify as sample work. More important
than that - assuming you can successfully pull it off - is its value
to show consistency as well as quality.
The easiest path
towards accomplishing this goal can be found at free blog hosting
sites like Wordpress and Blogger - but if you can afford it you might
want to go with a paid hosting site with a custom domain name like
the services offered by GoDaddy (we use them and like them but are
not being paid to recommend them).
GoDaddy is
representative of the services we are talking about - so do the math:
registering a new domain in the .com space with them is around 12
bucks and site hosting for it - with the blog software - runs around
7 bucks a month.
Or you can go with
one of their on sale annual hosting plans that will get you:
- 1 Website
- 100 GB Storage
- Unlimited Bandwidth
- 100 Email Addresses
- Free domain with annual plan
For just over $160
you get the above for a prepaid 36 months.
You then just go into the
hosting admin section, pick the blog front-end you want, then either choose a
free or a paid design, customize it as needed and begin writing.
Once you are at the
ready to write stage, set a schedule for yourself. Send emails to
the various PR firms requesting to be added to the PR mailing lists
for the various studios that they rep and that gets you the news and
press releases. Google is your friend here for discovering who reps who.
Here is a sample
schedule - you set aside Wednesday and Saturday for game news
coverage, since that will get you the Monday/Tuesday and
Thursday/Friday releases to work from. Now you perfect your ability
to summarize news coverage and perhaps add a little character,
entertainment, or humor to the process.
If you want to
eventually cover game reviews, decide on doing one or two reviews a
month then do them. Pick your games and try to get your reviews out
in a timely fashion. Create a review format that not only makes
sense, but is easy to understand and helpful to the reader.
Every other Friday
you publish an original feature piece - I am not talking about
regurgitating standard feature topics mind you - but developing your
own takes and approaches. Write about what interests you as that
will make it easier. Maybe you are wild about zombie games - so
write a feature article that compares the current crop of zombie
games with an eye towards the average number of zombies you kill per
game, per hour. Or reviewing the different types of zombies in a
game and the best strategy for making them chopped meat.
You get the idea.
If you stick with your schedule, six months down the road you have not
only created an impressive site/blog/personal publication, with any
luck you now have an audience that is large enough so that you can
start requesting review copies of upcoming games. You will know that
is a success when you actually receive more than half of the games
you request.
There is nothing
mysterious about this process - this is what is known as paying your
dues.
Oh, and in case you
are curious - this posting is now my default tinned reply to those
emails from aspiring writers - so when they email me asking how to
break into the games beat, I will be sending them the URL for this
post as my reply :)
Since we covered briefly the whole ethics in games journalism subject it is a good idea for you to think about voluntarily adopting an industry standard ethics policy and then following it strictly. Doing that will never hurt you - and building a solid and ethical reputation will help you on these beats.
A Simple
Set of Ethical Guidelines for Games Journalists?
Games Journalism is both a very large and widely followed set of beats, that naturally enough (when you consider the topic) includes a small nexus of professional writers followed by a very large crowd of gamers who also write about gaming.
Our interest in promoting ethical games journalism -- along the same lines as the voluntary ethics system adopted by newspapers during their struggle throughout the 1980s to achieve an ethical baseline for their industry -- is a keen one.
In that spirit we have voluntarily adopted this simple set of ethical guidelines for games journalism governing the ethical behavior and standards of games journalism based upon ten simple but important foundation points and their underlying specific rules and policy.
These Ethical Guidelines are adopted by the members of the International Brotherhood of Games Journalists, and are originally based upon ethics guidelines set
down by the Canadian Association of Journalists.
We encourage you to adopt them yourself whether you are a well-established voice on a game beat or are just starting out. When you are ready to learn more about ethics and policy in games journalism, follow this link:
