As EGM and 1UP started spiraling downward, many staffers began exiting early and took jobs outside of the journalism profession and joined the ranks of development teams and other facets of game production.

It seems like a logical career path if you wanted to work in the gaming industry: You start as a gamer, find your way into gaming journalism, then move into production.

Is that what you would want to do?

As a gamer, I'd have a hard time moving anywhere past the journalism stage. I would think that working in production would devote all your free time to creating ONE game, where as journalism would still allow you to play a lot of games.

But if you had the journalism background on top of being a gamer, it might make it easier to focus on what makes games good and not just turn out crap like some developers.

Except for nowadays, what makes a "good game" is the same as "who has given us the most advertising money".

What requirements are there for game journalists? I have a hard time believing that these people could transition to development jobs just because they were game journalists... more than likely, they had technical skills but became game journalists because they loved games.

I always thought the more common approach (besides just having excellent skills and/or designing your own stuff first) was to become a QA tester, then work your way into the system?

I agree, though, that working in the games industry is not all fun and games. You'll have to work on some projects that either never complete or just really suck, and it may not even be your fault... but it'll take years of your life. The pay is usually not comparable to a similar job (with similar technical skill requirements) outside of the game industry.

I don't think there are any specific requirements, as i've seen some journalists transition into PR type jobs due to the nature of interacting with the public, the media, and the developers. I also know of folks who have degrees in journalism or English majors that were able to move into development via getting a head start in game community sites and knowing enough about the specific genre and game to move in to game design. Community interaction is quickly becoming more popular these days.

Starting with a QA job is the most common because that's generally the easiest position to get hired into, but you're right. In my experience quite a few folks that have started in QA have been able to move into Producer type roles since the higher QA positions involve a similar skill set of managing tasks and working directly with developers over bug fixes and what not.

That's amazing that you can go from gaming journalist to game production. There's no other industry like that.

yeah but most of those journalist that you mention dont really go into the development side or producer side, they usually go into the PR, community manager etc

In my field, film/TV production, I've found I've had to do the opposite. I've had to move from the production side to more of the marketing/PR side because there aren't enough jobs out there in the production side.

In my experience, I've heard more people get into making games by being part of testing first. Starting out as a game journalist, being able to write about games, does not translate into becoming a great level designer, animator, or concept artist.

Game developing seems tough on playing games. Most developers in interviews usually say they dabble in stuff to keep up with what's going on but they don't seem to have the time to invest in really playing through a game anymore.

That's true only because Game Testing is the easiest avenue, and most openly available job in the industry. But yeah, journalism is something different since writing or reviewing games is far different from designing them. Like I said earlier, there's certainly a small avenue for them to move on to a game developer, but generally I think writers prefer to keep writing and probably have less of an interest in general design.

Not from my experience. The folks that I know are always playing the latest big new games.

That's the opposite to mine. Game dev certainly isn't a 9 to 6 job.

Depends on how far the game is in development. While crunch times certainly end up being 12 hour days and occasional weekends, during the middle of development a regular 8 hour day isn't that abnormal.

I guess the guys I know are basically in smaller companies or contracting so that may be the difference. They're all pretty dedicated to it, down to working on their own stuff outside of hours.

I have some friends that were in game development. They played games a lot less than before they were in game developement. It also got annoying to play with them sometimes, because they'd nitpick a game to death. I guess a habit they picked up from looking for bugs all day. I also talked to a guy who, at the time, was a tester at Bungie. He said he hadn't played a game at home, for fun, in years.

My friends usually worked pretty normal hours most of the times. There was a time, though, when they went into crunch, where I didn't see them for about a week or more. (they were roommates at the time) They were working like 15-20 hour days, plus weekends. I think that went on for 3-4 weeks. They'd come home to shower, then head back. I think they slept at the office most of the time.

I liked hanging out with people in game development, but watching them make games made me want to just stay a gamer.

It definitely depends on the company. EA, for example, is notorious for working their employees to death.

Yeah, and that's why they got sued.

But in general, most developer jobs in IT are like that. You work normal hours, 8-5, or 9-6, and then at crunch time you live at the office...

Yup, and since EA got sued you'll find that a lot of companies have changed their practices and no longer have those crazy 16 hour, 7 day a week shifts. There's still a ton of crunch hours in the months leading up to a game's release, but even those are probably a bit more lenient then previous.

EA getting sued (I assume you mean the overtime one) is mainly because of CA law... a ton of companies (game companies and others) are getting the same class action for overworking salaried employees, even though this had been the norm for decades.

I think most companies are getting around this by making them non-salaried, so that they do get paid overtime... not sure how this affects the workweek,though.

But yeah, like most other tech jobs, it's not just a 9 to 5 job, and around crunch time it gets even worse. The bad part is, like I said before, the pay usually isn't quite as good as an equivalent position in another tech company, I think due to the "dream job" factor.