Changing culture, one gamerscore at a time.

It’s January, and I’ve just renewed this domain name (and the relevant WordPress domain add-on) for another year. In the recession, I think it’s important to make use of anything you spend money on, and I plan to.

Things are getting more intense and exciting this year, though I share the same doe-eyed wonder when perceiving the world around me as I did last January when Eddie gave me a column over at GamerNode. A year ago, I’d just begun my journey into games journalism, after working an almost month-long stint at IGN and beginning to hound the Escapist for articles, all attempts failing in the process.

A year and a half into this freelance journalism lark, and I’ve got Escapist articles banked and thanked for, along with various other journalistic opportunities. Soon, with luck, I’ll be delving into the world of financial journalism, and I’ve got to be honest, I’m more excited for it than I have been with anything else. It sounds like blasphemy on a blog dedicated to videogaming and my own critique of the aforementioned medium, but I assure you, I have my reasons. The financial industry is a seriously exciting place to be, with new laws coming into place and new rates to tackle recession, and for some reason that seems so much more real, so much more mature, than the current saturation of the games market by titles like Bayonetta and The Saboteur.

It begs the question: do I think about journalism – or the act of critiquing an artistic medium whilst still maintaining some façade of indifference to various platforms for the expression of said artistic think-pieces – differently now than I did whilst working the news desk four years ago at the Financial Times?

I’d wager I think about it very differently, having now seen both the light and dark sides to the art of putting pen to paper with only the intention of either upholding someone’s artistic efforts, or casting them down into the fiery pit of the game-shop bargain bin. “Journalist” is a pretty powerful word; something that symbolises criticism, expertise and the ability to render a marketing campaign null and void through the lack of a single star or half-per cent due to a small hiccup during the review process. Artists, novelists, games designers; all have had their career growths stunted due to the odd disappointment in the eyes of the critics, and it is this power that makes being a reporter, critic, journalist – whatever word you use in place of “advisor to those who wish to be reassured” – such an interesting task to undertake.

Unfortunately, with games journalism you’re at the bottom of that particular food chain. To most of the British public, you’re not really a journalist at all – in fact, you’re most likely a geek with a penchant for slagging things off on the internet, and then covering your own arse with clever rhetoric and a pseudonym in order to avoid any retribution for too scathing a response to a game you had sent to you for free. Most entertainment journalists are accused of simply doing the work they do for the stash – those free games, t-shirts and various other items given to us at preview events in Soho hotels – and not, in fact, to uphold unbiased commentary on the medium they claim to uphold so passionately.

Let me assure you, this is far from the case.

Looking back, I should have known that day in Birmingham was going to be an odd experience. I’d recieved the call two days prior to the event, a collegue back at IGN UK asking me if I’d be interested in previewing a fighting game (whose name I’ll remove for the sake of the lovely man in PR who I’d rather remained anonymous). I knew right then that, through covering Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, I’d been pigeon-holed into the journalist IGN used to cover games that involved people hitting other people in a ridiculously melodramatic display of masculine insecurity and hidden sexual frustration. I sighed, but I knew the money was good and I wanted the experience. That, and the developer’s PR staff are about as pleasant as you can get – their presence at the IGN Christmas bash alone being evidence enough to quantify this, as not many of those who sit on the other side of the fence are then called back into the warm fold of the thankful journalist.

Upon arriving, we stood in the station, a mob of geeky individuals trading banter with the PR staff and various journalists waiting to jump on the coach and go to a gym. They spoke of the gym as if it were a mystical place – as though we’d not really fit into the lean, mean, keen demographic that (I take it back, “lean” may be correct) would visit this place. I’ve got to be honest; looking at us, I had to agree. Eventually, we arrived at the gym and took our goodie bags.

I’m a child, let me state this for the record now, your honour. I am a child, and when someone hands me a bag with presents in it, I’m going to take a look, even if I’m never going to actually use or consume the contents of this mysterious sheath of plastic between me and the free bits and bobs doled out at events, presumably in the vague hope of tilting our bias towards the positive. In the bag was a massive plastic cup – protein shake mixer, I suppose, though I only use it for water, even now – and various discs and bits of paper allowing us access to the images, videos and banners we’d need to compile the visual aspect of the article.

However, hidden near the bottom, was a little tub of what I can only describe as mild steroids.

“Weight Gain Pills,” the label loudly proclaimed. After presuming this to be the case, Lex’s mother – a nurse of some thirty-plus years – assured me this was not, indeed, the case at all. In fact, they’d given a load of games journalists a bag full of steroid-chugging manly equipment to firmly put us on the road to looking like the blokes on the covers of Men’s Health who we all claim to despise but secretly admire for their ability to put the gym over the other G-word (I am, of course, referring to “gamerscore”).

Bags of stuff, however, don’t exist in the financial journalism world, as far as I’m aware. Information vital to the talk taking place is of course, present, but outside this, there are no legendary bags of swag. There are, therefore, no more awkward thank yous on receipt of said bag, and then the mad hunt to find somewhere to leave it inconspicuously so the publication’s office staff don’t think you’ve been bought off (they needn’t worry, the game was of questionable entertainment and filled with the precise sort of hyper-macho bikini-clad sweating muscular bullshit that makes FHM one of the most successful magazines in the country despite a complete lack of journalistic merit – and yet a five star review by The Daily Star is more valuable to my District 9 DVD than a mediocre review by The Guardian).

Soon I’m off to a course to brush up on my knowledge of the financial services industry. My father is an independent financial adviser, and, though he denies it, a bloody good columnist for a number of financial publications. Growing up in that household, I took business studies at GCSE, though initially it was simply to understand what he was talking about when he got home from work. Finding that business studies is simply a mixture of basic maths and common sense, I decided to persue the subject to A-level, before realising I’d rather write about the company with a big return, rather than having a 90-hour-a-week part in bringing the revenue in.

Fund management, new banking laws, the RDR (a law stating your examination qualifications have to be redone to continue being an IFA in a post-2012 environment): all of these are important to me, now, though I realise they’ve all had some resonance in my life growing up in a household where I was taught to budget before I was taught to pronounce the word itself. An odd childhood, sure, but it’s resulted in financial stability and a forward thinking attitude.

Sometimes, if you’re writing a blog post, it’s best not think forward. I’ve gotten through 1398 words in 15 minutes or so simply by writing without thinking, and it’s all very well. With news, there’ll be press releases, maybe a calculator application open; and with features, simply myself, a keyboard, and occasionally a phone to harass poor IFAs/developers about what exactly makes their pension plan advice/level 27 sub-boss so damn important and better than that of everyone else.

*pause*

Good lord, will someone give my writing purpose, before I start penning romantic comedy novels.