What I've Been Up To...

For someone who writes everyday, I've been terrible at keeping up with this blog... I was thinking that now that I'm not a games journalist anymore, I can actually write about games strictly for fun (ha!). For those who don't know, I recently became a writer for Gameloft NYC, composing dialog, scripts, and other in-game text. I didn't want to make a big deal out of changing careers, as I was never one who intended to use my journalism career to land a job in the industry... In fact, I hadn't ever thought I could make a living writing about or for games at all.

After thinking about it for most of 2011, I decided that keeping up with the games news cycle and writing thousand-word articles for little money and no health insurance wasn't for me anymore. Though I was getting plenty of work, the checks became smaller and arrived much later... some never came at all. And don't get me wrong: there are many people who love the flexible freelance life of a games journalist, and there are even some who get paid handsomely (or decently) for the good work they do -- but I was not either of those people... not anymore anyway. I also truly loved the outlets I worked for and the editors I worked with (too many to name here), as well as the work I did. My favorite part of it all was speaking with developers and at least attempting to ask the tough questions, write the uncomfortable articles, and look at games from a different perspective. So my dilemma was that I felt I no longer had the meddle to be a games journalist anymore, but I still loved writing and I still loved games. When I saw the opening for a writer at Gameloft, I applied for it on a whim, totally unsure if anything would come of it. And here I am...

Do I miss games journalism? There are definitely parts of it I miss. Though I loved being a games journalist, and thought I'd be doing it forever, I absolutely love my job now. Who knows what's next, but until then, I'll continue to help make games (still feels weird to say that), wax about games here,* and play the crap out of them... on my own time and not on deadline. :)

[*I guess I should probably say the opinions expressed on this blog do not represent my employers -- past, present, and future. Hope that covers my ass well enough!]