If you’ve been on Twitter, NeoGaf or Reddit this morning, chances are you may have seen a thread (or ten) about a small games website that’s been involved in some practices that aren’t exactly above board.

I’m not here to rehash the story – there are plenty of other places you can go to get the full details on what’s unravelled in the last few days – but the scandal has unfairly brought other smaller games websites into question too. Writers getting started in the games journalism industry often do start out writing for free – and this kind of negative publicity now has people questioning the integrity of all “small” sites. Take note – we certainly don’t all commit such heinous practices.

The site, like us, and many others, relies on volunteers to run. Without our amazing team of volunteer contributors, we wouldn’t be able to cover even a fraction of the games we do. It’s not ideal – in a perfect world, everyone deserves to be paid for the work that they do. Unfortunately, the games journalism industry is cutthroat, and unless you know someone or have been very lucky to land on your feet after some kind of work experience, you’re very unlikely to immediately land in a paid job writing about the hobby you love. A starting place for many is writing for free. There are literally thousands of sites out there, desperate for your precious free time. You’re promised free games and exposure in return for your written words. Here, we’ve had several of our writers now go on to secure full-time jobs in the industry thanks to the portfolio they’ve built up with us. We couldn’t be more proud of ’em. Unfortunately, not everyone can be so lucky.




If you’re wanting to get your foot in the door in games journalism, yes, you may have to write for free. Don’t let today’s scandal put you off. Use a bit of common sense and do your research into any independent sites that are offering writer positions to ensure you are writing for a genuine outlet that is going to give your work the value it deserves.

Here’s a bit of advice from us to help you ensure you’re applying your efforts in the right places:

1. Some sites do offer payment, but check how legitimate this is first. It’s not uncommon to be offered a dollar or two (sometimes less) for a news article. Sounds better than nothing – but you’ll often be required to write several time-consuming pieces a week to be eligible. Make friends with website ranking tools like SimilarWeb, which will give you an estimate of how many visitors the site gets. If it gets only a few thousand views a month, there’s no way the site is going to be able to pay you. Hell, even at a few hundred thousand hits at month, a site’s probably not going to be earning any real money. Guys, advertising rates are poor, and they’re only getting worse.

2. Spend some time on the website and get a feel for their work practices. If it looks professional, it probably means it’s operated in a professional manner too. Have a look at writers’ names – do the same people write numerous articles, or are there a lot of one-hit wonders? (That could be a red flag.) If you can get writers’ Twitter handles, it also can’t hurt to reach out to them and ask about their experiences.

3. Lengthy application processes are generally a good sign. If a site asks for very little from you, chances are they aren’t so bothered who writes for them and are just looking for as much ‘free’ content as they can get. If you’re asked to fill in a detailed application form along with submitting samples, it’s a positive sign that the site cares about who they have on their team, meaning that they value good work and are more likely to want to foster good working relationships.

4. Check how well a site is likely to publicise your content. Are they active on social media? Do they share articles on aggregate sites? A Twitter follower count is not a great indication of how popular a site’s following may be. How many people actually engage by commenting and sharing content? Small sites aren’t going to have the following of IGN obviously, but some user interaction is a positive sign your work will have an audience.

5. Make sure you get credit. Perhaps most importantly, following on from what has unravelled today, ensure that the site does – and will continue to – give you full credit for each piece of work you’ve written. If you’re not getting paid, that credit is the most important thing as it’s part of your portfolio that will hopefully eventually lead you to getting a paid job. Go back through a site’s archives and check that all pieces remain correctly labelled with an author’s credit, even if they’re no longer writing for the site.

The bottom line is, everyone has to start somewhere – both site creators and journalists – and there are an awful lot of brilliant people out there trying to create a name for themselves. Unfortunately, it’s a fact of life that there are bad apples among the good ones, so just exercise a modicum of caution.

Hell, games journalism or not, that’s just good life advice.