5. You rarely get to play what you want
Imagine sitting on your ass all day playing all the games you could eat in a year! Brand new blockbuster titles and stuff you're dying to play, anyway - work or not. But unless you're one of the select few who can manage to get a job as a full fledged editor, then you can forget about all the really good stuff. As a freelance writer, you get the leftovers and all the stuff none of the regulars want to play. Don't get me wrong, you still get to play video games for money! Playing a game you may not personally care about is still one of the better jobs out there, right? And sometimes you may luck out and get to review a great AAA-title. That does happen, especially when you've been doing this job for a while and you've established yourself as a capable writer. If you're new, however... hoo boy!
One of my first ever reviews was for Hello Kitty Online. I still remember that phonecall. I laughed really hard when they asked me to write about it, they laughed, everybody laughed and I was convinced this was some kind of prank. Then I've spent the next two or three days playing Hello Kitty Online. It was well-paid work, I didn't hate it, but sometimes you have to be ready and willing to play some really weird games or stuff you simply don't like very much. I had to review World of Tanks when it just went into beta and I told the client we should drop the article, because the game sucked and it was doomed to fail. The game has what now, 50something million registered accounts? I was absolutely clueless. I hate strategy games, I don't care about tanks, I have absolutely zero patience for this kind of game and absolutely everything about this game sucked to me. I didn't know shit, but I was good at wrapping my ignorance into nice words. I think most critics are like that. We're as dumb as everybody else, we just use bigger words. Doesn't matter whether you're reviewing games, movies, a fancy bottle of wine or what the fuck ever. So if somebody seriously gave NFS Rivals a rating of 80+ they probably just didn't know any better and they were just told to review it.
4. Writing about great games makes you hate them
Every once in a while I got really lucky and was asked to play the closed beta of some upcoming new MMO. I had free press access to games like SWTOR or TESO, had most of the servers all to myself and could experience these games before average Joe. And that's important, because you'll want to have all your reviews, guides and specials up and available the very second the game goes live for everyone. In order to write a good preview or prepare a class guide, you'll want to play as much of the beta as you can. And in the case of an MMO this usually means several character wipes and starting over several times. You'll be sick and tired of the first 20-30 levels by the time the game has its launch.
In case of one particular MMORPG I had to play to the level cap, finish the story, master three different specs well enough to write about them and be as fast about it as I could. You gotta play your game all day, every day. Which is fine, unless you suddenly come down with the flu, get in trouble with your significant other for never having any time or the game itself simply won't let you play it. A plot-stopping bug prevented me from playing one particularly urgent game for a whole week. Then my account got hacked and I had to finish the rest of the story without most of my gear, because customer support had their hands full with the massive amounts of tickets that go along with the start of any AAA online game. By the time I was done writing about the game and finally had the chance to just play, do what I want and enjoy myself on there, I had lost all interest. I had played the whole thing to death and it just didn't appeal to me anymore.
But even when you get to write about the bigger, more popular titles without having to worry about tight deadlines, bugs and problems, you'll have to put up with the PR guy. Each major publisher has some PR person they'll send after you to make sure you have absolutely everything you need in order to review their game. Free press accounts, free review copies, launch events, premium content - they bury you in stuff! They're the closest thing you can have to a best friend made of tits and bacon. One of them sent me a new GPU once when a game caused severe FPS issues on my system. On the other side of the spectrum you'll find PR bootcamp instructors, who demand to see your work in progress, who tell you which screenshots you may or may not use (or even provide their own) and who will get seriously aggressive when you're being negative about their product.
One publisher asked me for a mock review for one of their games. Basically, that's a pretend review you would print in a magazine, except you send it to the game's publisher, so they can see where they're at. The game in question was awful and that's what I wrote in the mock review. They weren't too happy, but they paid me for my work, then I wrote the exact same stuff in an actual magazine review. The PR guy contacted me the same day, telling me how outraged he was about the article. He told me I was not even allowed to release an actual review, because sending mock reviews means you agree not to actually review the title in question for real. He told me that he'd have to contact my senior editor about it, assuring me he would not be pleased to hear what I did. It all turned out to be bullshit in the end, but sometimes PR will stop at nothing to make you feel guilty or even threaten you. And that's no surprise, because they're supposed to help encourage positive reviews. A negative score can cost them their job. And now imagine how awful you're gonna feel if the PR guy was one of the nice bacon-tit-people and you have to write about how shit their game is.
3. Research and quality don't really matter
Remember how I said it's all about being first with your reviews and guides? And that comes at a price - having to finish a review within a very strict deadline means you don't get a lot of time to play, see and understand all of the content, features and possible flaws and problems. Sometimes a bunch of writers have to team up and create a special issue full of class guides for some brand new MMORPG. And sometimes the deadlines are so tight that some writers don't have the time to figure out every aspect of the game in question. And if the guy who tells you how to play your high elf swashbuckler or whatever has no clue about weapon enchanting, then that information will be missing from the class guide you were stupid enough to buy. And there's another problem with printed guides for MMOs - sometimes they become outdated and invalid from one balance update to the next. It's perfectly normal to answer customer complaints about inaccurate articles, telling them that all the information contained in the guide was correct at the time it was written. Which is true, but unfortunately half of that stuff might be outdated by the time your text is printed and sitting on the shelves.
Another problem is that nobody wants to write in-depth articles about MMORPGs, because they require a lot more time and effort than writing about yet another regurgitated Call of Duty. Think about it - the campaign on Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare takes what, five, six hours to complete? Multiplayer is always the same old shit and you can't seriously play that with your pre-release press version, anyway. Quick, easy money. So do you think it's fair that magazines pay their writers the exact same amount of money for reviewing an MMORPG, which comes with 60-100 hours worth of content? Of course not! Neither does any self-respecting freelance writer, so they'll take anyone they can get. They'll ask random progress guilds or some inexperienced kid waiting for their 15 minutes of fame. Nothing a bit of proofreading can't fix, right? Except for factual mistakes, lousy research and a whole lot of rookie mistakes made by someone who doesn't know any better. But at least it was cheap, you get that shit out on release day and everyone else does it, too.
2. Your readers will hate you
I walked into a supermarket one day and a bunch of kids recognized me, they followed me all over the place showering me with questions, asking for my autograph and all that. It was the best fucking moment of the last decade. As a freelancer you don't get the same fan base some of the more popular editors get, but you can see my name and my face in some of the magazines and I guess wearing your favourite magazine's name on your shirt helps. Fuck yeah, I loved my job, I identified with my work and my magazine. I was part of something really epic! Just be prepared to get ten times the amount of hate along with those happy moments.
If you've ever been on any forum on the internet or even the Youtube comments section, then you'll know it's practically impossible to disagree with the average stranger on the internet without them feeling personally insulted. Having a different opinion makes you the enemy. That is particularly true when it comes to things many people feel very passionate about, e.g. videogames. And now imagine you're the guy who is supposed to leave his opinion and a score on a game such as, I dunno, Final Fantasy? You know how crazy those fans can get? Yeah...
People won't just tell you how wrong you are. They'll tell you they hope you get fired, they hope you're not going to get any money for the shit you're writing. You can inspire a flame war of epic proportions for giving Game A 82/100 while the clearly inferiour Game B had a score of 83/100. Yes, people freak out over one fucking percent.
And readers will feel incredibly insulted over just about anything, even if what you write isn't a review. Perhaps you have heard about TESO possibly going Free2Play. Yeah, I had to write an article about that, saying that recent events have caused some speculation about the game possibly changing its payment model. And while most of my readers are sane, healthy individuals, I had people accusing me of bashing and hating on TESO for the sake of clicks. Because I said some people assume Zenimax Online's MMORPG may go Free2Play in the future. Because hey, it ain't WoW and we're all paid off by Blizzard to burn the competition or something.
1. You can write articles worth THOUSANDS and still be unable to buy food
Being a freelance writer means you don't have a regular payday. Clients contact me and tell me what they need or I contact them and offer to write about certain games on a regular basis. We agree on an amount of pages, characters, screenshots, a deadline, my salary - you get the idea. Then I proceed to do my work, hand it in, sometimes it goes back and forth a few times if they want something added or removed, need an extra screenshot or some artwork and when it's all done I get to send an invoice. And then I get paid. Sometimes. Whenever the client feels like it.
Now, don't get me wrong. Most clients get my bill and then they pay up within a week or two and that's great. I also had a client, who conveniently forgot to pay or had accounting problems for three months straight before finally paying up. Another one of my clients has informed me they only process invoices on a single day each month. So let's say you hand in your work for that kind of client on the first of the month, but they only process invoices every 15th of the month. That means you're supposed to wait an entire two weeks before you're even allowed to fucking bill them. And just because they have received your invoice doesn't mean you'll get the money straight away. The transaction may take another two weeks, so it's perfectly normal to do a good job, keep up with all the deadlines and get paid a whole fucking month later.
And there isn't really a lot you can do about it. Sure, you can refuse to write for them until they cough up, but then somebody else will do your work, they'll likely do it for less and they're willing to wait even longer. And you get nothing.
Things get really exciting when you complain about their slow processing and they tell you that you should have put something to the side. Not only is that none of their fucking business, but it's seriously insulting. Being a freelance games critic means you'll never get rich. I get by, but I don't get to pile up much of a rainy day fund. I had a little extra money last year until my father suddenly died and I had to pay for the funeral. Back to square one, broke again. And that's when a client took a whole month to fucking pay me. When I asked what's going on I was told I should have put something on a savings account. That's easy to say when you're a full fleged editor with a regular pay day, who will always know if and when you get paid and how much it's gonna be. But if you depend on clients to pay up on time and they don't, then a huge chunk of your salary will be eaten up by late fees and payment reminders.
I'd love to continue reviewing games. It never paid much, but it was fun and I loved my job. But in a day and age where it's possible to work every day of the week, including sundays and bank holidays and by the end of the month you can't even pay the damn rent, because you have no right to demand payment for your hard work on time, it's time to do something else. Perhaps I'll provide handjobs in some shady pub down in Bulwell. It may not be pretty and it won't pay much better than reviewing games, but at least I'll have my dignity.
-Cat
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