How a Game Magazine works

[StriderKyo]

Originally posted by Green
That idea about cutting out reviews of crap games was something I wished Gamefan (or any other mag) would've done. Some bad games no one would ever hear about unless a mag featured it, so whats the point? The big titles would be exempt, though. Anyways, its all over and done with, so whatever.

Yeah, I always wondered what the point of reviewing "A Bug's Life Zany-Kart" was. I mean, nobody old enough to read would seriously consider buying it, except maybe parents who most likely wouldn't be going to GF for their info.

[kabuki]

Originally posted by mattvanstone

Now, unless you want to hear about Driving a forklift, smoking, Sex or Soccer, this is as good as it gets.

Any good stories about sex on a forklift? Perhaps some forklift-soccer memories?

Good thread *still reading it*

Originally posted by Captain Vegetable
Nice thread, Matt.

I used to dislike you severly. But that seems to be going away with every post. Keep this up and I'll have to ask you to marry me.

I agree, you've become quite the excellent poster over the past few days.

[MVS]

Well, the question invariably becomes "How do I get into this?", and, for that, there really is no easy answer. I wrote that story a long long time ago on my LJ, so, it's there if anyone needs to find it, but, I would warn you that what happened to me was largely luck and I can't very well give advice based on luck.

You could just as easily ask someone "Dude, how do I win the Lottery?".

I would think, the best thing to do is to talk to actual editors now, like Thray and a few others and see how they got in, and what they did and all that.

I can say, that a large part of that industry is who you know, and not what you know, and that's not to slight those in it now, just that there are probably more people that can do the job, than openings for it.

Yes, I think the panel of editors opinions would be the most helpful thing.

[Tyler_Durden]

I have 2 questions:

If an editor's score for a game is too low or too high, will the rest of the editors call him out on it?

What's Dave Halverson like? I like Play, but reading the mag gives me the impression that Halverson's a wack job. In his Rygar review, he said that he got down on his knees and thanked God twice while playing the game.

[Josh]

Originally posted by Tyler_Durden
...Halverson's a wack job...

From what I hear, that is fairly accurate.

[The Crow]

This an excellent thread that really depicts what us journalist folk are all about, and how we get spoiled with the royal goods. I've been to many PR trips, as Konami, Universal and Sammy are quite fond of those. I've had Sony, Midway and Microsoft pay for trips to San Francisco, Chicago and Redmond, WA -- respectively. I am my own boss, so I do things a little bit differently, in terms of work load, deadlines, and such.

That said, the way I made it into the industry was good timing, ambition, and a nice dash of luck. Almost exactly 4 years ago, my older brother and I registered a domain name, and began building a website that highlighted the Sony Playstation. As time progressed, the site began to grow and grow. We began to buy out other Playstation sites to have our traffic grow even further. We paid for higher listings on search engines and etc. Now, my brother has his own marketing company, and I control the largest Playstation 2 site in the country. It was very, very, unexpected and I feel incredibly fortunate, because I was 14 when the site started, and I'm only 18 now.

[Josh]

What site?

[The Crow]

PSX Extreme.

[Rumpy]

How's that for a success story? Buying out other sites huh? The good old Bill Gates strat. A fine move .

[MVS]

Originally posted by Tyler_Durden
I have 2 questions:

If an editor's score for a game is too low or too high, will the rest of the editors call him out on it?

What's Dave Halverson like? I like Play, but reading the mag gives me the impression that Halverson's a wack job. In his Rygar review, he said that he got down on his knees and thanked God twice while playing the game.

1) Depends. I mean, people are different and like different games, if you can lay out why a game is bad or good, then you'll be okay. Just giving a game a 50 and saying it's bad will get shit talked to you for a spell.

2) Met him a couple times, nothing of note to report. I can say that no person that I've ever met that worked for him reported anything but bad comments and distaste for him, and you can take that however you like.