So You Wanna Write About Video Games…

Opportunities abound, but you have to be smart if you want to make a living. 

By Steven T. Wright

Writing about video games is often touted as a kind of dream job, especially for those of us who are still a little too attached to our childhood video game consoles. But like most careers that sound great on paper, the reality of games journalism freelancing can be quite discouraging at times: abysmal rates, unhelpful and/or uncommunicative editors, pieces killed out of the blue for no apparent reason. Still, as the games market continues to grow at an explosive rate, the demand for cheap content will continue to present opportunities for writers who know where to look. With that in mind, here are a few tips I’ve managed to glean from my three-plus years as a full-time gaming freelancer.

Tip #1: In general, games writing is a great way to break into freelancing.

I started freelancing for Actual Money in my senior year of college (2014-15), and my first few pieces for Playboy and Vice were exclusively gaming-focused. While the market has grown a bit more competitive in the past five years, due to a number of sites closing and the overall number of contributors growing, I still think the barrier of entry to making some amount of money is significantly lower than in most disciplines, both in terms of clips/bylines and actual writing ability. I had tried to pitch pieces about popular TV and movies to sites like the AV Club for years, and heard crickets in return, whereas I managed to get steady work writing for Rolling Stone’s gaming vertical Glixel (RIP). I went full-time in fall 2016 with only a few dozen features to my name.

Tip #2: Pitching is the most important skill to have, by far.

This is probably true across the board, but I want to make it especially clear here. You can be a great interviewer, sure, or an impeccable prose stylist, but the most successful freelancers I know have one thing in common: a well-honed ability to spot, pitch, and land stories. This skillset extends far beyond just knowing how to craft a great idea into a winning pitch, though that’s certainly a core component of it; you need to know where to send that pitch to, how to find their contact info, or even who to ask about a specific idea. (This isn’t a “how to pitch” guide, but here’s my succinct advice: keep it under 250 words, give them the headline, tell them why the story matters, why it fits their site, and why you’re the one to tell it.) I don’t know how many times a fellow freelancer has helped me mold a nascent impulse into a sharp pitch, but it’s too many to count. In short, don’t be afraid to ask for help. Building a network of writers that I talk to on a weekly or even daily basis about pitches and opportunities is one of the only reasons I’ve managed to make this into a viable career, so I recommend you do the same.

Tip #3: You don’t really have to know much about games, but it helps.

The pieces that take some sort of expertise to put together — reviews of notable games, deep-dive criticism of a particular genre, lengthy developer profiles, etc.‚— are usually handled by staffers, which makes them tough to pitch and even tougher to land. Obviously, knowing what you’re talking about is an advantage, especially if you’re trying to do this as a career, but the vast majority of features are so game or scene-specific that your overall gaming knowledge probably won’t come into play. If you play popular games that don’t get a lot of ink due to the prevailing biases and blindspots of writers, such as The Sims or any sports title, you can probably land a smart feature fairly easily.

Tip #4: Focus on the people, not the games.

When I first started out, I would pitch a lot of articles that relied on the reader having in-depth knowledge of specific games — think more akin to literary criticism than a book review. While certain places might commission those on occasion, in my experience editors want reported features that focus on people, from major industry figures to everyday games enthusiasts making a difference in their community. On the whole, most sites are far more likely to take a story that boils down to “here’s a weird thing happening in X big game” than 90 percent of op-ed or criticism pitches. Tailor yours accordingly.

Tip #5: Go big, but not too big.

The majority of games coverage is based on the handful of big releases of each month from major developers. As such, pitching pieces based on those games 3-4 weeks in advance is a fairly solid strategy. However, some games become so huge in the culture that some outlets hire staffers to cover them exclusively—for example, I know at least two outlets have a dedicated Fortnite editor. When you’re pitching for these “triple-A” games, just make sure to have a strong or unique angle, or else you’re going to get lost in the shuffle. As a gaming freelancer, your job is to find the stories that are too big or interesting to ignore but too small or weird for staffers to find themselves, so keep that in mind.

Tip #6: It might seem obvious, but play to your strengths.

The people who write about video games on a regular basis are overwhelmingly white, cis, male, and enthusiast-minded—like me. If you’re really into (popular) esports, write about that. If you’re part of a marginalized population, you probably have a unique perspectives on a lot of games, and you should pitch from that perspective. If you have fond memories of a forgotten game that nobody’s writing about, like NeoPets, figure out some angles and go to town. There are a ton of opportunities to write about cool things going on in the world of games, so find your niche, but don’t be afraid to diversify. Personally, the closest thing I have to a unique “focus” is wide-ranged investigative pieces, and each one is so different that it hardly counts as a specialty.

Tip #7: Playing games for this job during “work time” is generally an ineffective tactic.

Other freelancers might disagree with me on this one, so take it with a grain of salt. That said, of the past thirty articles I’ve written in the past two months, only one required me to pick up a controller during my self-apportioned work hours, which gives me more time to pitch and more time to write. I know several writers who religiously play all the hottest new games in order to come up with ideas, and that seems to work for them. However, that requires you to put a lot of your spare time into playing games you might not even enjoy, so I personally try to avoid that. (Plus, if you stick to the release schedule for big games, you’re directly competing with everyone else.) The same logic applies to reviews: while I find them fun to write, especially for games I’m planning to play to completion anyway, the actual pay per hour metric is usually quite poor, perhaps $5. If you’re out to make decent money, stick to features.

Tip #8: Overall, the rates can be pretty bad.

Most of the gaming freelancers I know tend to write about games exclusively, usually for enthusiast sites. While sticking to what you know is a totally understandable impulse, the rates at these sites pale in comparison to larger outlets, especially for reported features. On the low-end, smaller sites like PCGamesN and VG247 might offer 125 to 175 GBP for a multisource, which is sometimes hardly worth it for 2-3 days of work. On the mid-end, Eurogamer pays 200 GBP for almost everything, and USGamer might offer $300 or $350 for the right idea. On the high-end, Polygon, The Verge, and GameSpot will pay between $0.25 to $0.50 a word for ambitious multisource/investigative articles, but it can be quite difficult to land those types of pieces consistently. As the pound continues to wilt under the weight of Brexit, it’s tougher and tougher to recommend writing for UK outlets, who have historically had better rates, at least for Americans. As such, I recommend viewing games articles as a supplement your existing work, rather than trying to replace it entirely. My first year full-time, I barely pulled in $20,000. I’m making a fair bit more than that now, but it hasn’t been an easy road.

Tip #9: “The big sites” aren’t really worth it, at least on a consistent basis.

On Twitter and in private, a lot of freelancers have a tendency to focus on the sites that have a massive cultural footprint in the games space, such as IGN and Kotaku. While I’m not here to stomp on anyone’s dreams—I know how awesome it can be to see your byline on a site you’ve read and admired for a long time—for the most part, these sites’ rates don’t really align with their stature. Though I’ve personally never written for them—at least not yet—I know from a few colleagues that Kotaku has paid $150 for pretty much everything for the past few years, with a bit of wiggle room for more ambitious pieces. IGN does pretty much every kind of coverage under the sun, but I’ve heard from multiple sources that they generally pay fairly poorly and treat freelancers as disposable. They also force most people to complete a massive, time-consuming form before they’ll even consider you for freelance work, so in general, I don’t recommend pitching them, at least early in your career.

Tip #10: Shit happens, and a lot of the time, you won’t be able to do much about it.

I’ve had stories killed for no reason, “timely” articles come out months and months after their peg, checks come in 6 months late (and to the wrong address), invoices mysteriously disappear in filing systems…you name it. I have multiple colleagues who have turned in features to editors who then ghosted them. I still get hate mail for articles that ran years ago, and I’m not even a particularly notable writer. I just got doxxed for attending E3. I’ve met a lot of wonderful people in the gaming industry, but it’s not a warm or welcoming place, especially for people who belong to marginalized populations. I’m hoping it will eventually get better, but for now, it’s hard to recommend jumping in with both feet. Still, there are a lot of opportunities, and I recommend everyone try their best to grab them if they want.

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