As the podcast turns 5 years old this week (November 27th!), it’s time for two blokes to offer advice no one asked for about working in games media.
It resulted in a jolly chat that we think you’ll enjoy.
Image Credit: Ryan Plugs
- Publishers will never give you enough screenshots for a cover feature - but you’ll make it work somehow.
- Shorter sentences are always better.
- Writing magazine captions is hell on earth for every single writer you can think of.
- Semicolons always give away an amateur writer.
- Having a strong work ethic is 100 times more important in games journalism than having a degree.
- Taking a good screenshot of a first-person shooter is basically impossible.
- The best developer interviews are always with people who have nothing to sell.
- Review scores are good.
- Indie games, in 99% of cases, do not generate web traffic.
- Games journalism should always have the capacity to be funny – even if the audience is too thick to engage with it.
- If you work for a long-running games media brand, no matter what you do, some grumpy fuck readers or former editors will always say it used to be better.
- Games magazines are still a better way to learn about new games than websites.
- People who say games journalism doesn’t matter anymore always change their tune when people actually cover their games.
- US games media and UK games media were nothing alike. And still exist in parallel realities.
- Games media always needs more perspectives beyond white guys (ironic saying that, I know).
- Search engines damaged everything great about games media…but the publishers prioritised short term wins over all else, so the blame is shared.
- Guide writers will never get credit for doing a great job.
- The future of games journalism is smaller specialist websites or video channels supported directly by their audience.
- Sub editors and production editors will never get credit for doing a great job.
- Recommending people get into media now is borderline immoral, and no one should be charging for journalism degrees in 2025.
- Podcasting is to video what print media is to online media.
- Deals articles suck, but websites have to make money somehow.
- The best games magazines always created their own universe around a platform or games in general. The internet has eroded that, and given way to consensus thinking poisoning everything.
- There is still nothing better than holding a print magazine that contains something you wrote.
- Official Nintendo Magazine should come back.
- Staff writer is the best job on a games magazine. Closely followed by games editor.
- Explaining why something is good is harder than explaining why it is bad.
- It’s a bummer that the more expertise you get, the further you seem to move away from writing.
- You will get sick of the first hour of every game you cover at preview and review phase.
- You work with people whose superpower is to boil things down to their core essence and they will do the same to you. Expect to become a caricature in seconds.
- You will learn the keyboard shortcut for the accented Pokémon e or you will copy and paste it from another document every time.
- Video and written reviews are totally different art forms. Don’t try to turn one into another.
- Working in video completely breaks how you play videogames - I’ll never look at a save file the same way again.
- Never take an appointment on the public show floor of Gamescom.
- If you’re over the word count turn your most extraneous paragraph into a boxout.
- Rezzed was the best games expo and it’s a huge bummer it’s gone.
- 5 stars, 10/10 and 100% are not the same score and metacritic is broken because of it.
- Try not to over research your interview subjects - preconceptions can shape an interview in a bad way.
- Try to review in isolation - it’s always really obvious when reviewers have been on a group chat.
- Try to end every relationship on good terms - in the UK it’s a ludicrously small industry.
- Websites using the language of magazines - cover stories - is cultural appropriation.
- As depressing as it is, start with your video title and cover line and work backwards - it’s difficult to add a hook after the fact.
- There is no shame in reaching out to a developer if you get stuck during a review.
- There’s also no shame using tired conventions - a list feature - to smuggle in your best writing. Anything to get someone to read.
- If you’re late to the party, there’s no point joining a reviews pile-on - choose to elevate something good instead.
- The most important entry in a list feature is the lowest entry - use it to set the tone, mess with expectation and get people excited for the list to come.
- Reviewers shouldn’t give a range of hours for how long a game takes - it didn’t take you a range of hours.
- Don’t fill your magazine redesign with concepts that only make sense with a four month run-up.
- Under every journalist’s jumper is a terrible branded t-shirt. No shame in it.
- NGamer should come back.