A outside look at a inside job.

This is the first artical of a series of articals that will cover various aspects of video game journalism.This first one is on the journalists themselves.




Much like primitive man watching a wiseman perform his magic me and other 'hardrcore' gamers watch in awe at the articals and reviews are created as if by magic by gamings own version of wisemen,Video game journalists.

But what function do they serve? Are they truly the wise men of the games industry or are they just people who get payed to talk about there opinions on the things we love most,video games.

Video game journalists are tasked with many a thing to write about,be it writing reviews or writing articals on game genres,the future of games or any other such artical,this shows that video game journalists live busy lives.

A video game journalists will probably work in the industry for over 10 years,in many cases more.In that time they truly get a grasp of the games themselfs,they understand what makes a good game and what makes a bad one,they carefully weigh each of the games aspects, graphics, story, game play,ect like a trained chemist and give the game a score.The simple fact is that in most cases the score with make or brake the game,most people will only look at the score before buying a game but as games like Beyond good and evil and Psychonauts show that good scores cant sell games alone.In that regard a video game journalist must feel angry some times.They try to infrom people of a great game but the game is brushed over by most.

But from all that experience of knowing what a good game is and what a bad game is leads many video game journalists to the magical realm of video game development and producing,showing that video game journalism can be a stepping stone in to the wider realm of the games industry.

From that experience it also alows them to write more in depth articals about the games they review and the industry in general.

In the end the job of a video game journalists is a hard one.They must be able to write interesting articals and be able to truly judge games and think deeply about them,but hell they play videogames for a living.

-The Vagabond