Games Journalism – The Misconceptions
As some visitors to this site are probably aware, I write for a popular PlayStation 3 centric news site.
As I pass my one year anniversary with this particular online publication, I’ve become more and more aware of just what some people think games journalism is, and the reality.
Studying journalism’s totem pole of respectability, with positions ranging from print media to obituary writing, games journalism (or gaming journalism or even game journalism, the practice has bred numerous similarly sounding names) has the unfortunate indignation of languishing quite close to the mucky foot. Somewhere above writing for your local parish paper but still below the dazzling heights of sports or music journalism, writing about videogames comes with its very own tailored form of digital stigmata.
Branding its practitioners as “chancers”, “misfits” or, if the hand on the iron in question belongs to a male between the ages of 15 and 21, “lucky bastards”, there are a lot of misconceptions, half-truths and, in some cases, blatant falsities flying around about just what it’s like to work in this industry.
Here are just five of the most obvious ones.
Tags: Gaming, journalism