One Month At Game Informer

So it's been about a month at the GI office and I thought it might be interesting to talk about a few details from it. This isn't gonna have any super secret information in it but maybe this'll give you an idea what the office is like and what a day in the life for a video game journalist is like.

The first week the internship started was entirely training in the Content Manager System (or CMS for short). Every website has their own version of this, though I wasn't expecting GI's to be quite so robust. I spent 4 hours a day learning how to make text look nice or BOLD and embbeding various types of media. So you can already tell this wasn't the most glamorous period but it hit like a hurricane. Before me and the other interns knew it we were assigned to start writing news and features.

yes I did overdecorate my desk why do you ask?

News moves at breakneck speed so it's hard to fall into an exact routine. Usually as soon as I arrive theres a story to be assigned as well the various stories throughout the day. All the while trying to think up interesting pitches for you guys to read. I landed my first one one with the Pokemon Go Plus article which was a crazy afterthought I imagined would get struck down. Now writing about Pokemon for GI is easily something to cross off a bucket list and something I've done at least weekly. There wasn't any time to celebrate however as the next pitches were already due. Even in slow news months the fight to keep content up is fierce. I managed to get in a little fun though.

It took me longer than it should of but I worked up the courage to ask to go into the Video Game Vault. This is gonna sound corny but it feels like what I imagine the first steps into Narnia felt like. The smell of dust and old plastic meld into distilled nostalgia. It was like being in a candy shop that no photo will do justice though if you do want to see the rest of the pictures I took in the vault then this Twitter thread is for you. It was the first time that it hit me that I was in a place with a real, cultivated history. I also got to try out the PSVR a few days before it came out, so naturally I had to play the weirdest thing possible and bought Catlateral Damage. It was an awesome experience and I gotta make time for 100ft Robot Golf at some point. Though time seems to be quite a commodity for people who write about games.

While writing about games can sound like it's all just fun, there is some serious work involved. I've had far less time to finish the games I've been meaning to(looking at you Gears of War 4 and The Silver Case). At one point I worked myself so hard that I burned a cup of noodles, resulting in the image above. People in this industry constantly forget to take care of themselves when work becomes a form of play. This may seem grim but I'm noticing details I hadn't before. Certain games have deeper meanings than I ever realized while others seem flat out tone deaf.To be able to analyze the games I love so well just being in proxy with better writing has made it seem better.

Game journalism isn't the cakewalk many think it is. Even the act of playing a game while analyzing it is stressful enough to make you ready for a early curfew. Giving games the effort they deserve is a grueling task that requires as much eloquence to elaborate as mental fortitude to deal with the inevitable blow back. But to have the chance to show people amazing games that they might not see otherwise is worth it in itself, and who knows, maybe I can one day help make the video game industry a better more inclusive place.