This post is a tad meta, sorry. 'What's that, Jon? You're writing about a writer who writes about vidya-games?'. Yup. Writing about stuff is easy. Anyone can type some old tosh on the internet and post it up, ahem, but writing about stuff and keeping the reader interested and want to read more? Bloody hard. Yesterday Cara Ellison, a critic who writes about 'games and pop culture' , came up with an ingenious way to (hopefully) make a living. Cara's articles are thoughtful, funny, cathartic and heart-felt. She inspired me to improve and attempt to put a more individual stamp on my own personal writing style. I have a long way to go, and with less life ahead of me than behind, I respect her innate talent and fresh point of view.
There is a consensus that games journalists have the dream job. Play games all day, write about them and get paid. Brilliant, sign me up. The truth is, the games industry is still young and still lacks the respect from the media that is attributed to critics of film and music. Cara has written, among others, for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Guardian and The recent TV programme How Video Games Changed the World. She recently won The GMA Rising Star award and is a big advocate of writing and creating Twine games (electronic 'choose your own' adventures - click the picture below to see what she has created- NSFW). Games journalists don't get paid much. With the advent of YouTube and Twitch and the focus on new media, the expectation of journalists to multi-task creatively is much higher. Cara struggles to make ends meet despite her great CV, and this is her problem. She wants to do what she loves most, earn a comfortable living and entertain us with her writing.
There is a consensus that games journalists have the dream job. Play games all day, write about them and get paid. Brilliant, sign me up. The truth is, the games industry is still young and still lacks the respect from the media that is attributed to critics of film and music. Cara has written, among others, for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Guardian and The recent TV programme How Video Games Changed the World. She recently won The GMA Rising Star award and is a big advocate of writing and creating Twine games (electronic 'choose your own' adventures - click the picture below to see what she has created- NSFW). Games journalists don't get paid much. With the advent of YouTube and Twitch and the focus on new media, the expectation of journalists to multi-task creatively is much higher. Cara struggles to make ends meet despite her great CV, and this is her problem. She wants to do what she loves most, earn a comfortable living and entertain us with her writing.
| So Cara has gone to Patreon to propose something new. Patreon is not Kickstarter. It allows you to 'tip' creators for their content as they create it. There is no upfront pledge as such, although you do set your monthly cap on what you give, but as the creator makes something, a written article, video or recipe, you can promise to pay a small amount for it to show your appreciation. Cara plans to create what she calls, 'Transmetropolitan Games Criticism', by raising enough money per article to drive, fly or sail to important and interesting figures in the games industry and write about them in ways that potentially could be more challenging for mainstream games sights. This excites me. | |
The internet is in a flux at the moment. Hard copy media is slowly tipping into the oil like a doomed dinosaur and online press is taking over like the ice-resistant mammal poised to command evolution. Cara won't be writing games reviews with a score at the bottom. She agrees that reviews like that are necessary to aid purchasing choices, however, if your desire to delve deeper into the games industry and pull out the heart, lungs and intestines of what happens on the other side of the screen is your bag, baby, she's the girl.
Anyroad, please share Cara's Patreon page. You can find it here. Share her link amongst any of your friends and family and on all the social gubbins you can find. I have no vested interest, nor do I want to harvest click-throughs, so just share her link not this blog.
She's already hit her target to cover travel, however it would be great to see what she could do with even more creative freedom. I am looking forward to see what comes out of this idea, because her writing is lovely, but also where this could lead writing and blogging for the future. We've seen emergent gameplay, but this is emergent journalism. Good luck, Cara.
PS - Cara, sorry if I drunkenly tried a pathetic conversational gambit at the GMAs. I was a teeny bit Star-struck.
Anyroad, please share Cara's Patreon page. You can find it here. Share her link amongst any of your friends and family and on all the social gubbins you can find. I have no vested interest, nor do I want to harvest click-throughs, so just share her link not this blog.
She's already hit her target to cover travel, however it would be great to see what she could do with even more creative freedom. I am looking forward to see what comes out of this idea, because her writing is lovely, but also where this could lead writing and blogging for the future. We've seen emergent gameplay, but this is emergent journalism. Good luck, Cara.
PS - Cara, sorry if I drunkenly tried a pathetic conversational gambit at the GMAs. I was a teeny bit Star-struck.
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