#NerdsUnite: Confessions of a videogame journalist (Knowing is half the battle)

<editorsnote> Nerds, meet my buddy John. We started talking on the twitter not too long ago, and then he reached out and asked if he could write for us regarding his journey through the nerdy realm. I was all DUDDEEE!! That's so raaaddd!! And now, here we are. Like right now, in real time, this is happening. Pretty cool huh? HIT IT JOHN!!! </editorsnote>

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @JohnSollitto

When I played The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time, I knew I wanted to be involved in gaming. Now, I can’t draw for the life of me, programming is a little too difficult for me to buckle down and learn, but I liked to think I was a good hand at coming up with stories. So I decided I would write video games. I wrote some 12 or 13 games in my youth, none of which I hope to God see the light of day.

Time passes, sunrise sunset, and I’m going to an industry career day at Westwood College. The entire decision was based off of an article my dad saw in the paper that day and my mom suggested I go since I wasn’t doing anything that day. “Sure, why not? It might be fun,” I said. When I get there I sort of wander around the college peeking into the rooms before I find out that there’s some speeches happening in another part of the campus. So I go to see a speech by a man from Obsidian Entertainment, Jim Rivers. He shoots straight with all of us, tells us what would get us hired and what would make us blend into the background. And on that day, John Sollitto the gaming journalist was finally born.

Unfortunately for me I didn’t know he had been born that day. I continued to think that I had to work on my writing to someday be a project lead or a level designer so I kept at it. Time goes on and my parents buy the sign shop where I work today part time. In a strange series of cosmic events, the woman who owned it before us somehow bowled with a few of the people who worked at Obsidian Entertainment. She suggested I contact them and a few emails later I meet Jim Rivers again, this time he’s giving me a private tour of the facility and one-on-one advice.

Jim invites me to his industry mixer he hosts every Wednesday and I agree to meet him there. It took me some time to make friends and blend in there but eventually I got to be a regular fixture there. IF you’ve been reading my previous articles you know that this mixer is where I met Mark and subsequently got hired to the Vault where I work today. Jim however, was the first person to see my potential as a journalist. He told me that while I might have had some skill doing stories, I seemed more at home making connections and learning from the guys there. To be honest, I had to agree with him. One G4 internship later and a freelance deal with PC Gamer and I was set down the noble press path.

But this isn’t an origin story so I’ll spare you the details of how I donned the fabled G4 Raccoon suit and got beat to a pulp on camera for a TV sketch, effectively making me an official member of the video gaming fraternity of journalists.

The more I learned from those guys at the mixer about their jobs and what exactly they did, the more I started to look at how games were reviewed and the more I started to question it all. How did this game get this score and how did that game get that? Was a bug really that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things? Didn’t these reviewers know how much work these people did? Why were they just focusing on the negative? I downloaded the Unreal Development Kit free game making software to see if I could really understand the plight of developers boooooy did I learn.

Did you know that making a game is some real hard work? No, seriously, I cannot begin to explain the complexity behind making a WALL explode into a dozen pieces, let alone the program that makes PHYSICS happen. And that’s just the Unreal Development Kit! Other companies use their own programs and whatnot which means that if you’re going to work at multiple companies you need to learn how to use ALL of them. Then there’s animation, concept art, programming, voice acting, motion capture, the list goes on.

The only part of the production process I’ve ever participated in directly is quality assurance focus testing. Basically I just played a game for six hours and made notes about bugs and things I didn’t like. That is one of the LAST stages in production and that takes SO long. But knowing as much as I did about how all of it worked, I was able to accurately describe what was wrong or really look at the details that would be necessary.

Now my point is this: a lot of people who write about the industry and review games just say that playing games is enough. To which I respond: hell to the no. Let me put it in perspective. If someone was a food critic, and all they did was eat food, never cooked it, never learned how to cook, but just ate food, would they know WHY the food tasted good? Would they be able to identify what was in it to know how to recognize it again in another dish? To know what went will with this and not with that? No, they would just know taste.

Granted if you play a lot of videogames you can see what sells and what many people find fun. However, a big thing that people do is complain about bugs and mechanics. A lot of fans say, “Hey, why didn’t they do this. This has been done before.” If you don’t have knowledge of how games are made then you can’t appreciate the work that they do or gauge how hard it would be to put in the things that gamers ask for. Plus the common misconception players have is that developers are a bunch of guys and gals jerkin’ around all day and screwing up games. The reality? Some dude hunkered over a desk for five hours trying to figure out why this one character can’t walk up the freaking stairs correctly in the fourth dungeon in the last level of the game while simultaneously answering an email about the running mechanics in the cutscene three levels ahead of that. It’s a long and arduous process. It’s hard to do. And often times, it’s a job that many people don’t want to do.

So when reviewing games, I have to take all of this into account. Common bugs like graphical glitches or texture problems, those things can be missed and if the bug doesn’t affect gameplay, then I don’t really knock the game down too much. But if there’s a problem that hasn’t been fixed for four games in the franchise that is still there? Then I have to say that will knock the game down a point.

The big picture to this article though is this: you have to know what you’re reporting on and know it well before you can go talking about it and passing judgment. I don’t know everything about games and I don’t think I ever will, but I like to think that my knowledge helps to make me a more effective and capable journalist. Plus learning more about the subject you’re writing about gives you new insight and may just spark your passion for more articles. Yes it’s a lot of work, and yes it will take time. However in the long run, you will gain more credibility and help you look beyond what you see. And now you know. And knowing is half the battle. GO JOE!

#nerdsunite

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