Videogames Writing Top Career Tips Part 2

Videogames Writing Top Career Tips Part 2 Ed Smith, a Warwick Film and Television Studies graduate, continues to offer his insight on developing a career in writing for the games industry. When to write for free Its absolutely vital to write for free at first. You need to do a lot of writing to improve your work, to demonstrate to potential employers that you have actually been published and you can work to deadlines. If a website is making money and your article is going to generate profit for the publication, do not write it for free. Write for free only if the publication is created for free and never pitch to a paying magazine or website saying youll work for free, even if you think itll get you an in. They dont like it. It undermines their work. How to graduate to paid work The best way to graduate to writing for money is to get an interview. A lot of game-makers are anonymous and under-appreciated, so theyre really flattered if you write to them asking for a chat. If youve played a game that youd like to do a feature on, best bet is to look on www.mobygames.com. Here youll find the entire cast and crew credits of most games ever made and once you get the name youre after (doing a feature on level design? Find the level designer. Something more general? Find the design lead) you can start looking these people up online. A lot of them are on Twitter or can be contacted via LinkedIn. Be polite, humble and deferential. Make it clear what youre writing about and why you want to talk to them specifically. Some will want to chat via email, others will agree to a call on Skype, in which case youll need to record the audio then transcribe it for yourself later. Either way, if you have an interview with a prominent game-maker then you have a leg up when it comes to pitching to paying sites (my first paid article came in 2012, when I wrote to the creator of Journey, out of the blue, and asked if I could speak with him). Remember the rules about pitching and make it clear why this interview is interesting and important. Also, its best to pitch after youve done the interview, or at least when you have a date set for the interview. It makes the pitch that bit more solid. Keep up the momentum Once youve had a couple of interview-led articles on paid sites, you should feel more comfortable pitching editorials or offering yourself for reviews. After that, its a case of keeping generating ideas and interviews, keeping pitching, keeping writing and constantly trying to drum up your own work and your own publicity. Its a lot to handle but if youre playing lots of different things and keeping up to date with whats coming out and what people are currently discussing, you can continually find interesting topics to cover.  Keep up with other critics Go to www.critical-distance.com for a weekly round-up of some of the best videogame criticism and reporting. Its great way to follow whos saying what, which articles have and havent already been written and which publications might be looking for new hires. Ultimately, writing is kind of about pot luck. You might have a great pitch that gets buried at the bottom of the editors email pile and never hear back. Conversely, you might just happen to have the right idea on the right day. Be original Aside from the practical pointers above and in my earlier blog post, the best advice I can give is to try and be original. Game criticism is still in its infancy and frankly, there isnt enough smart or engaging writing out there. If you have something substantive, informed and  engaging to write about games, this is a great time to get started. For more of Eds top tips read Videogames Writing â€" Top Career Tips Part 1.