Before becoming a game reviewer, investigative reporter, and all-around troublemaker, I was an award-winning game designer putting stories into video games. Unfortunately, that didn’t pay off very well or consistently. When I ran out of health care for my parents, I sauntered over to this website and thought I might give this “blogging” thing a shot. After all, as a freelancer, I had managed to trick no fewer than two my city EICs believed I could write and I knew how to put some words together. How hard could the work actually be here?
Almost two years later I have no choice but to laugh. And cry a little. But mostly laugh.
Today will be my last day at Kotaku. Soon you will all be liberated from my devilish notions of how stray is an embarrassment of orientalist tropesor what One piece is clearly left text This should be taught in socialist book clubs everywhere. I will no longer be here writing about it Candy Crush mothers and how game developers are affected from real political problems. Or what video game studios treat too often Employees who generate their enormous profits.
No matter what former media manager Think about covering our massive ecosystem, there are so many incredible and important video game stories every day. You just need smart and motivated people who know where to look. Despite the terrible Things that happen all the time in the community, there’s a big beautiful world out there. I just wish I could record everything. When I arrived my cityI wanted to make readers more curious about things they thought they knew. I’ve written stories about it largest franchise that gamers have never heard of. I interviewed Whales about their spending behavior. I actually played the mobile games with it frightening social media ads. Never settle for what you already know about gaming. Keep walking toward the horizon.
Despite the confidence I’m projecting here out of necessity, it’s hard for me to feel like the smartest person in the room when I’m working alongside the brightest nerds in the business, and we face some of the harshest criticism. Of course, public outrage is part of the prestige: readers are vocal about taking video games and our website seriously about it. while my reported features required a lot of perseverance, the hardest thing about being a my city The author just showed up every day and was subjected to the highest standards in gaming journalism. I think most people would have collapsed under the pressure. We turned it into diamonds. And we made it once againAnd once againAnd once again.
Now I realize that every single blog is a miracle. Yes, even the one above animal crossing porn or the surgeon who supposedly waged a console war in the middle of an operation. Still, I fought for readers and I fought for my colleagues. While New York Times The progressives fought over whether or not Transphobia is a legitimate attitudeI was an openly non-binary and Chinese reporter in a country where it’s becoming increasingly dangerous to be such a thing. I’ve spent my time in the culture war, and now the fight is someone else’s. Much luck.
Just kidding. You see, one of the weird things that happens to the people who work on this site is that they start to get absurdly interested in journalism. The industry is moving in a direction in which companies and influencers determine how games are talked about, not authors who are bound by a code of professional ethics. Pursue Fuck goes on with alarming Regularity. redundancies have blow or closed several gaming News points of sale over the last year. Yes, gaming coverage is more important than ever, but it seems that just when we need it most, there are fewer opportunities than when I started writing.
I don’t know how to fix any of this at the moment. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to the problems of digital media that go well beyond gaming. But I already know that not It helps when gamers decide that their favorite brands and influencers should monopolize the narrative of why video games matter. Gaming is not primarily a product-consumer relationship. Games are art, community and politics. The gameplay allows us a mirror within ourselves, provides a vessel for our collective apocalyptic grief, and forces us into delightful contradictions. Please find your own reasons to value video games instead of doggedly holding onto corporate and parasocial allegiances. Otherwise, the culture will truly and irrevocably rot. One day games journalism as a whole will make a comeback. I just hope the good bits of gaming culture are still intact until then.
Okay, enough doom and gloom. Even though I had one of the toughest jobs in the entire industry, I had some really great opportunities here. In between I wrote The News interview developer off Outside North America/Western Europe/Japan. I spoke to people who played games almost every day, but didn’t consider themselves “gamers”. I got game developers to give us this No bullshit point of view into AI automation in gaming. I didn’t need a gaming company to give me the green light. All you need is the instinct to say, “Oh, really?” when an assertion contradicts personal truth.
I’m almost at the end of my writing time and just realized that I need to talk about my colleagues. I forgot to talk about the time when I was trying to persuade jalopnikthis is steve not to run over his colleague for automotive science. Or the countless times Ethan has walked me through examining companies’ dirty laundry, no matter what terrible It was back then for a baby reporter. Or when I was dying of a blog idea but one of Isaiah’s inspired Photoshops catapulted me to my Google Docs. I should talk about all the times Ari has been my emotional support white guy, but that might give him an even bigger head than he currently has. Carolyn, you absolutely spoiled me with editing reviews. Thank you for never giving me less than 5-10 thoughts on anything I want to say about a video game. Alyssa! Alyssa, Alyssa, Alyssa. You are probably the most messy goblin I’ve ever worked with and I hope that energy never leaves you. Thank you for saying yes to my most diabolical ideas and I’m sorry you were forced to edit them. Patricia, thank you for hiring me and for standing up for my stories. I’m sorry I went into your office many times and pretended to be in charge my city.
And to my readers: thank you for taking the time to read my silly little articles. Stay curious and don’t let gaming culture break while I’m on the road. smell you later
