JennyTablina
Member
Quick story about a venture into Gamer/Tech blogging I had a year or so ago.
A while back someone tweeted to me that a female blogger was looking for girl gamers to review titles on her tech site. I was still in Uni, and had a little experience briefly posting news and a few reviews for another site. I jumped at the chance and gave it a go. Checking the blog it seemed the blogger got to review an awful lot of stuff, I guess you gotta have samples or hands on time with tech to be able to review it all, so I dismissed it.
The lass tried to set up a means to get me free games to review, as I was struggling for funds to get new titles at the time (despite having a job between my Uni hours). She managed to get a games company in touch to send me 2 games to review. I reviewed them, felt a little weird about getting the titles free, but presumed this was the standard thing, so I shouldn't feel too bad about it. The companies PR stopped responding soon after, so I don't know what happened there...
Though it became quickly apparent that this blog was giving super positive reviews for EVERYTHING they got their hands on. Then the head of the site got pregnant and started running a blog about latest baby tech and support devices, and suddenly was being sent random stuff like baby hammocks and those baby fontpack things. I realized the bloggers intention was simply to get free stuff - it wasn't about covering the news or growing as writers at all. I felt a bit sick and upset about the whole thing, realizing the whole thing was merely a means to get free stuff for practical infomercials. Which made me wonder if my reviewing was impacted too.
It seems to be far from the norm, but it really switched me off trying to pursue gaming journalism on anything other than my own terms for now.
A while back someone tweeted to me that a female blogger was looking for girl gamers to review titles on her tech site. I was still in Uni, and had a little experience briefly posting news and a few reviews for another site. I jumped at the chance and gave it a go. Checking the blog it seemed the blogger got to review an awful lot of stuff, I guess you gotta have samples or hands on time with tech to be able to review it all, so I dismissed it.
The lass tried to set up a means to get me free games to review, as I was struggling for funds to get new titles at the time (despite having a job between my Uni hours). She managed to get a games company in touch to send me 2 games to review. I reviewed them, felt a little weird about getting the titles free, but presumed this was the standard thing, so I shouldn't feel too bad about it. The companies PR stopped responding soon after, so I don't know what happened there...
Though it became quickly apparent that this blog was giving super positive reviews for EVERYTHING they got their hands on. Then the head of the site got pregnant and started running a blog about latest baby tech and support devices, and suddenly was being sent random stuff like baby hammocks and those baby fontpack things. I realized the bloggers intention was simply to get free stuff - it wasn't about covering the news or growing as writers at all. I felt a bit sick and upset about the whole thing, realizing the whole thing was merely a means to get free stuff for practical infomercials. Which made me wonder if my reviewing was impacted too.
It seems to be far from the norm, but it really switched me off trying to pursue gaming journalism on anything other than my own terms for now.