This is going to be a long rant, Errol, but I hope you read it.

I have my problem with some parts of the games press, but I'd go out on a limb and say that the vast majority of games journalists/bloggers/whatever-you-want-to-call-them are passionate about gaming, whether I think they're good at their job or not.

Why? Because it's such a goddamn hard industry to break into, and from what I've heard you do a lot of work for sod all pay. Why would anyone want to do that? Why would someone like Jim Sterling, as an example, work for Destructoid as a day job, where he writes a good portion of the news posts, plus has to play good and bad games, and review them, and (I assume, since he's reviews editor) organise who in Dtoid gets review copies, when it probably doesn't pay much in proportion to the work he does? It speaks volumes that he's also a very prolific freelancer. The reason he does it is because he obviously loves gaming, loves writing about games and, whilst I won't speak for him, I assume he gets a great feeling of fulfillment out of the work he does, even if his abilities could land him something much, much better.

The same could be said for most people in the industry, whether they're writing for IGN or Kotaku, or The Escapist or RPS. If they don't give a shit, it'll show, and there are hundreds of other people more than happy to take their job.

If that's not passion, I don't know what is.

To be a successful games journalist, besides being a good writer, you need to be passionate about games, and passionately talk/write about them. You bemoan the fact that you haven't been paid for it, but from reading your posts on Bitmob, I don't get the impression you're all too passionate about the talking/writing part.

I'm going to critique some of your previous articles, Errol, and I don't want you to be offended by what I'm saying. I have nothing personal against you, and I hope you gain something from this, even if I'm coming across as harsh. This isn't a hater hating, so don't write this comment off as that.

1) http://www.bitmob.com/articles/duke-nukem-forever

What is the point of this? It reads more like a GameFAQs forum post than something a passionate writer would do. Attacking DNF because 2K's marketing invited a bunch of "nerds" out to Vegas firstly sounds bitter, secondly feels like a confused attack, and thirdly barely scratches the surface of any point anyone would ever want to make. There's absolutely nothing to this article beyond a crass moan that I would expect from an anonymous commenter. Yet you put your name on this.

2) http://www.bitmob.com/articles/autosave-should-be-mandatory

This is one of your better ones, but still... You're onto something good here. Why do you think autosave should be mandatory? You've listed two games which don't have autosave, and which you feel should, but what about also including some games which implemented the autosave in a great way? And how about games where it's frustrating? What are the rammifications of autosave on games like Mass Effect or Heavy Rain, where choice is paramount? You could get a nice lengthy article if you discussed all of this in a relatively even-handed and entertaining way.

Instead, you just dumped your most base thoughts onto the page and clicked "publish". It's lazy, and shows a complete lack of passion about the subject to an editor/reader. If you'd delved into the topic and come to some interesting conclusions, there'd have been potential for more hits and possibly a front page story.

3) http://www.bitmob.com/articles/3ds-vs-ngp

Whilst a bit of an overdone subject, and one which we'll no doubt be reading on hundreds of sites for the next 3-4 years, again this one feels lazy. Two paragraphs on the merits and flaws of each system may draw the hits on IGN, but even their readers will find little out of this. Where's the spec summary? Where's the lineup summary? Can you really justify the comparison of two systems with a paragraph each?

4) http://www.bitmob.com/articles/jim-sterling-and-black-america

I don't know if you've read my comment on this one (it's the first one), but you should. Ignoring the row that went on, no journalist would quote mine in the way you did. It's sinister and is likely to open you to criticism. As a writer, you need respect for your readership as your number one priority, and misquoting like that will quickly loose you the trust of your readership. When that happens, you're toast.

5) http://www.bitmob.com/articles/dead-space-2-loves-your-mother

I think you could've written something funny if you perhaps wrote a comedic hypothetical scene of Dead Space 2 on Mother's Day. Instead, just another single paragraph article. Your lazy writing that tells me you write something the second it enters your mind, instead of letting it stew and exploring the possibilities before putting pen to paper.

You say you're proud of your blog. Are these the kinds of stories you're proud of? Couldn't you put a little more work and thought into what you're doing, and show that passion which you're harping on about here?

Good thing I have a boring class today. I'll read it then

#1 is the equivalent of a drunk tweet. Note to self. Don't send blogposts to every website while drunk. Lesson learned

#2. I wrote the article out of frustation at Dead Space 2. I wasn't thinking about how the autosave feature works in other games, I was thinking about how every other game I could think of has the autosave feature. End of the day I just wanted autosave to be installed as a patch as I was writing that

#3 I wrote this one first thing in the morning after the Sony Event the night before. It was the first NGP related article on this website and at least 5 other websites I posted it on. It was also on the front page of 1Up. How is that lazy?

#4. Sinister lol. Would be if I didn't tell Jim Sterling I was gonna do it. I sent it to him the days before i put it here. I got a good laugh out of his tweet, and i'm pretty sure he did too. If you think I attacked him you're mistaken. I was showing him the bigger picture. Didn't call him a racist, or attack him. I was just looking out for him

#5 I'm tired of being called lazy. I've done 17 blog posts to your 6 in 2011. Eight of which are on this website. Your lazy for commenting on 5 of my blogs in one post. I check things here and I haven't gotten any comments since my Jim Sterling piece so I go else where. To places where people don't always bring up my old blog posts whenever they comment on my stuff.

@Chris Do me a favor. Work on your writing instead of insulting me in comments. You're not hating, but you've got a theory as to how I operate (which is way off) and you call it lazy.

This is why you don't get comments.

@Matthew As long as I'm free to keep posting I'm good

All I'm saying is this: Posting articles that consist simply of a YouTube rant against HipHop gamer don't really warrant discussion or criticism, which is probably why you deleted it. Being standoffish in your replies to any comments you might get doesn't make the situation any better, especially in a situation such as this in which Chris was just trying to be honest in a respectful manner. I find it hard to believe that you think that honest, courteous discourse and criticism of the type provided frequently by this site won't help you grow as a writer. If you're fine with that, more power to you.

You guys are a tough crowd. You bring up old things, and tell me I need to change. I deleted the HHG clip (Why am I explaining this?) cause I was upset that I couldn't embed it on Bitmob like I could before. I don't know what standoffish means so I'm probably going to be called slow and told I need to change that too.

Can all of you guys stop with any personal attacks, please. No insults, or we'll start deleting comments and/or banning accounts. Constructive criticism is just fine, though...and let's all be open to that. Let's keep it cool and mature, please! Thank you. :)

Apologies if I offended anyone. No hard feelings towards anbody. I'm just a passionate gamer like the rest of you.

Also, please don't comment spam if you can put everything into one longer comment. :)  We'd appreciate it...thanks!

No personal attacks or insults intended, Errol. My days as an internet ruffian, fun as they may have been, are far behind me.

I'm sorry if you feel I insulted you, Errol. I was a little barbed in my criticism, but there was no malicious intent.

I must say, you guys are all awesome.

After all that completely unrelated bickering, I'd like to post a comment that addresses the topic of Errol's post. Is a passion for video games required of journalists covering the game industry?



First of all, people work at jobs to get paid. And any employer who cares about money will make sure his or her employees are doing the best job possible. Does passion make all employees better at their job? I doubt it. The factory worker who turns a crank every thirty seconds and the farmhand who husks corn all day don't need passion for a menial task to do it well. Occupations like those are more task-oriented, technical labour. Passion doesn't apply if a robot could do that job.

But can a robot be a journalist? Depends how you look at it. Electronic devices such as cameras and audio recorders document the world around us. A journalist's job is partly to document, true, but it doesn't stop there. A journalist's real job is to observe the boundless amount of facts and data out there and to organize these observations into a shape that make sense as a whole.

Journalists need to be keen observers and expedient critical thinkers. Those are traits that are influenced by passion. A person passionate about games willingly spends time gaming and has an intimate knowledge of the medium. You could say they know how to look at a game in all the right ways, like an art historian/critic who can look at an abstract painting and understand its value while the average person in a museum "wouldn't get it" entirely. With experience comes expertise. Passionate people seek to experience their passion.

So how does this weigh on game journalists? I think being a passionate writer is more important than being a passionate gamer, but being both is the best option. A journalist who knows how to experience a game will be able to report on it with far greater detail and perception than someone who is lost in the tutorial. And naturally, the person who does better work gets to keep the job. So I don't think that a passion for games is 100% required of journalists, but the passion will lead to better reporting.

You can't write about video games if you're not passionate about them. However, to write about video games...you need to be a writer. To be a video game journalist who produces work that will get respect from peers and potentially land one a job, you need to be a journalist.

I've written about not letting the writer or the journalist get in the way of being the gamer, as well...but rather than thinking about these aspects of a personality as being in competition, nowadays I think of them as halves of a unified whole. The best writers about video games are assuredly gamers, and it's preposterous to suggest otherwise...but they're not good writers because they're gamers. They're good writers because they develop the craft of their writing. They could be writing about anything they're passionate about - music, comic books, movies- and very often do, because the writing skills are transferable. The same goes for journalists (and I only make the separation because journalism is a *specific* kind of writing that requires, IMHO, a particular skill set, adherence to ethics, etc.).

To address some of your other points:

- There's nothing wrong with deducting points from a review score if the game doesn't do something you'd like it to do, based on what other games in the same genre do. There are certain design "best practices" that become attached to genres and become gold standards, and IMHO sometimes it's legitimate to criticize games for not considering why those gold standards exist, and/or failing to consider the value add to gameplay if they followed some of those standards.

A good reviewer or critic does tell you why they felt the way they felt. The problem is that people mistake "explanation" for "justification." No critic needs to justify a damned thing to a reader. If the reader doesn't like the reviewer's perspective, they should stop reading the reviewer's work. Period.

- Passion the way you mean it can actually prevent a journalist from doing their job. A journalists' job is to report the news. Google "AJ Glasser No Cheering From the Press Box" and read that article. AJ says it better than I could...

- If you want to make an impact as a video game journalist, you need to read lots of journalism, period. And good writing. That's some of the earliest advice given to me when I started out trying to break into this industry.

Lots of people love video games. Lots of people love to write. Not everybody actually knows how to write. Or work constructively with editors. Or how to write to match the voice of a particular outlet. Or meet tight deadlines. These are the skills that separate the amateurs from the pros. Writing is a skill that needs to be developed independently of the subject matter being written about, and then you need to learn the skills of the trade.

Last thing, and I mean this constructively - if you're going to call out the quality of other peoples' writing, you can't afford to make simple mistakes like you do in this piece. We all make copy editing mistakes, but if you're going to call out the quality of others' writing, you can't afford to make such simple, blatant errors while also retaining any credibility on the issue.

Also, if you ever really think you want to try to do this professionally, you may want to think about making disparaging comments about your potential colleagues. The video game journalism industry is a very closed circle and you never know who you're going to be working with. You can't afford to burn bridges even before you start. Your comments are general right now, and you're not the first one to make them, but just be careful.

Not everyone can get into this industry with a gimmick, and those who do will gate themselves from the truly prized access, and professional respect. If your only goal is just to get into press events, and you can attract audience numbers with a gimmick, fine...but if your goal is to actually write, then you need to be noticed, and judged, on the quality of your work.