OK I'm just gonna copy-paste a bunch of questions in here at once to make this a bit more readable.
As someone with an interest in getting into the game journalism industry, I understand that you probably get some benefits but also a lot of work and hardships to overcome. What is the biggest obstacle you have faced across your game journalism career, and what advice would you give to any aspiring game journalists on overcoming said obstacle?
There are so many. Just to pick one at random: to be any good at game journalism (or any journalism), you have to realize that you're going to piss some people off. There will always be people who don't like the way you covered them, who take issue with your choice of words or story, who want to get into arguments with you for all sorts of reasons. Achieving the kind of headspace it takes to accept that people won't like you just for doing your job can take a while.
Question: What have been the scoops/cases where you have received the most backlash from? Most positive and the most whine-y?
I don't think I've ever published anything that hasn't led to some whining, but I remember getting a loooot of nasty messages when I reported that Fallout 76 was going to be a multiplayer game.
Some studios and companies seem worse than others in terms of employee burnout. For studios with stronger talent retention than average, what is it that they do differently? Are employees generally happy at those studios, or are things simply better than the worst case scenario? Or is the whole industry about the same and any perceived differences from the outside are an illusion?
I'm not super-well-equipped to answer this question, but in general, I think if you have a really good boss you're willing to put up with a lot more than you might otherwise. For example, times have undoubtedly been tough at Double Fine, but because Tim Schafer is (by many accounts I've seen both publicly and privately) a really good boss and human being, they manage to keep a lot of people for a very long time, despite the fact that they're competing for talent with Bay Area companies like Facebook and Google that can pay triple the salaries.
Do you find any interesting parallels or contrasts between games development and working in press or writing books?
Yup. I've gotten a lot of questions about this during interviews for Press Reset, actually. There are a lot of similarities between the games industry issues I cover in the book (volatility, mismanagement, devaluing of employees) and the issues that journalists face. The biggest difference? The video game industry actually makes money. Which makes it all the more heinous to hear some of these stories.
Your Book doesn't appear to be out until June in the UK so wondered if that is sometimes planned or so you prefer a global needless to maximise marketing impact?
Completely out of my control and very annoying.
It's been interesting seeing your work at Bloomberg and also the Launcher at the Washington Post. Do you think we're going to see continued expansion of game coverage at big MSM publications?
I sure hope so! Given the size of the video game industry, it continues to shock me that some outlets don't have dedicated games reporters or teams.
