Gabe Had A Point
To further entertain the fantasy that I might one day be writing professionally, I looked around online for jobs posted seeking game reviewers. Some looked pretty cool and I might even have a shot at getting one if I applied. But one stood out to me, in that it required the applicant be able to write a minimum of five reviews in a week.
Assuming you keep the weekend for yourself, writing an article per day doesn’t sound all that bad. But then I remembered that these are reviews of games. Reminded of the recent controversy involving Gabe at Penny Arcade, I realized that if you have to write one review a day, that doesn’t leave much time at all to actually play the games that you’re reviewing.
I would imagine that I’d spend about 8 hours playing the game itself and then 4 hours writing the review. Well, 8 hours is hardly enough time to fully experience the game, since the average game takes 30-40 hours to complete! And if the game has extra modes or features, there’s no time to explore them thoroughly along side of the primary modes. If the game has multi-player modes, then you’d also have to make sure that you have people to play against within that day.
So if you were under that kind of time frame, I suppose you could write a review, but it would be relatively useless. There just wouldn’t be time to examine the game enough to give an informed opinion for your audience. At best, you could only offer to them an “at first glance” perspective. The only way I see that being possible is if you were to write reviews of older games that it’s likely you’ve already played or to write editorial pieces on game culture or the industry.
As it stands, I don’t think I’m ready for that kind of thing… I might be more confident if I knew I could write something here at least three times per week. Heh, and of the couple freelance writers that I know, they usually say that the job is great if you don’t mind not knowing whether or not you’ll get paid.
One thing I might get myself in the habit of is writing short pieces. What most often holds me up is that when I’m inspired to write about a topic, I want to produce a full-sized article… Every piece is to be a masterpiece. But like any established writer or artist will advise, the best way to become good at something is to do it every day. Whether it be a doodle or a quick blurb, it keeps me in the habit of writing so that the masterpieces that I do finally complete are better than before. And it ensures that you’re marketable to publications if you can prove that you can write about whatever, whenever.
Over the next few months, I’m going to try to do just that. Especially with me writing web content for my day job. I’ll try to keep the topics more diverse than just gaming, but video games are just what’s catching my interest most these days. I bought this domain and host for a reason…and by golly, I’m going to put it to use!
