(Alternate title: “That’s interesting, all former Kotaku interns appear to be listed dead or missing.”)
I have a confession to make: I know nothing about video games.
I used to think I did. I routinely play or watch my best friend or boyfriend play the latest titles on the Wii, XBox 360 and Playstation 3 as soon as they are released. I’ve been playing RPGs since I was in elementary school. I laugh at Penny Arcade.
But nope. Compared to the knowledge of the Kotaku community, editors, writers, and especially commenters, I don’t know a thing.
In other words, the first thing I had to do to intern at Kotaku was to get over myself.
As one of the top video game blogs on the Internet (the top one in fact, if you judge by Technorati), Kotaku has the largest readership out of anything I’ve ever written for. So before now, making an error wasn’t a big deal. Of course, making an error is NEVER a good thing in journalism, but the stakes have never been this high for me. Last time it happened, while I was working for the Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, I received a single phone call from a local citizen that I had spelled his name wrong.
This time, in my article, While Pokémon Come and Go, The Healing Center Stays the Same, at least ten people noticed that I mixed up the order on Emerald and Fire/Leaf. It was definitely embarrassing. I both admired how deeply people cared about the subject matter, and felt humbled to realize I knew much less than I thought.
So the biggest impact of my internship so far is that the importance of fact-checking has been magnified for me.
By now you’re probably asking, what about the glamorous side of video game journalism, Lauren?
Well, as much as I love my internship at Kotaku, I haven’t encountered that. Sometimes the editors get cool promotional items from companies, to play games before they’re released, and to attend events for free, but does anyone really expect that the intern gets to do that? I didn’t, so I haven’t been disappointed.
I want to let you know: interning at Kotaku is hard. I work every week day for at least a few hours, I do a lot of research and copy editing, I don’t always get to write stories. When I built the fighting game infographic, I had less than a day to turn it around. The bulk of my work involves seeking out guest writers and guest blog posts on games to republish (let me know if you’ve seen a good one recently!)
Sure, the editors are incredible to work with and being in the Kotaku chat room has me laughing out loud at least once a day, but let’s not get away from the point.
Brian Crecente didn’t put up this photo in his intern request article for nothing! It’s a fantastic internship and I would love to intern there for the rest of my life if I could (except I kind of need to find a job that pays money). But a lot of people I talk to seem to have a glamorized idea of what working in game journalism is.
Just like any other field, you have to work your way up. I think I work a lot, but Brian, Stephen, the Mikes, Luke, and Owen work around the clock. When it comes to putting out a breaking story, they drop everything to put it up in the earliest and most accurate way. It’s an intense job, and the deadlines never stop. It’s also often a thankless job, with more criticism than praise for articles.
If you’re looking for a career in video game journalism, it’s not just going to materialize overnight. The editors at Kotaku work harder (and at the very least, longer hours) than the employees anywhere else I’ve interned or worked. When they play advance copies of games, it’s on a deadline, not for fun. When they attend conventions like E3, they’re working constantly to cover them.
So how’s my internship going? It’s a great experience. However, it’s far from the paradise of nonstop gaming and little work that some people imagine it to be.
If you have specific questions about my internship, ask me in the comments.
8 Comments.
I think one thing that can help you in your process of learning more about video games is picking up the controller and giving it a go. It seems from your comments that you equated being an outsider looking in (watching me and Andrew play) nets you the same experience. I think you need to step up to the plate and start playing more games. Now if only the day had 26 hours… X_x
Hi, Lauren,
Currently I’m working as the Admin Editor for Astromono.com, which is a gaming/comics/movie blog dedicated solely to coverage for Latinamerica and I can totally sympathize with you in that there’s a lot of work involved and sometimes it seems like it never really stops.
My question to you would be, how do you organize yourself? Usually at our offices we tend to have a general know-how of what we need to cover (our leads) and a sense of “this is more important than that”, but none of us are interns and our day-to-day is more about finding the mainstream games rather than reading Rock Paper Shotgun or Tiny Cartridge to find the hidden gems (which is what I’ve seen most interns at Kotaku do).
So how do you organize yourself and how do you know what articles are worth reposting if you admittedly don’t play that many games on average?
Hi Luis, good question. When I started out I was very unsure of where to start, and my editors suggested starting out with The Ludologist. From there I found links to more and more other ludology and gaming theory sites, until I had an RSS feed reader full of 50 different game sites. My editors also told me to check out Critical Distance and Rock Paper Shotgun, since both sites serve as centers of the ludology community, doing link roundups of the best of game writing. I also frequently asked my Twitter followers if they had any recommendations. From here, I was able to find about 10 posts every week, which I would send to my editors for approval. They would usually approve half or a little less, and I would write to the authors, get permission, and post their work on Kotaku.
In other words, not having time to play many games hasn’t affected my work — as an intern, I don’t decide which stories are reposted. I simply dredge the internet for the stories that look interesting to me, and my editors determine which are the cream of the crop.
Now that my internship is over, I plan on playing A LOT more games, writing critical essays, and hopefully getting them republished on Critical Distance, Rock Paper Shotgun, or Kotaku!
Thanks! That was a pretty cool answer!
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Hi Lauren,
I am reading this post two years into the future, oh la la, and I thought it would still be worth reaching out to you given my present circumstance, to ask for some advice.
After two terrible years of trying to work in corporate, I’ve decided to put my foot down and have the courage to pursue my childhood ambition of writing for a games publication!
Incidentally, I love Kotaku’s work, and it would be a dream come true to intern/work there (plus I live in NY). So what I wanted to ask you was: if you have any suggestions on how I can get Stephen Totilo to consider taking me on as an intern :P considering there haven’t been any internship posts since May 2011? One point in my favor is that I am old friends with the contributing writer based out of Beijing, who writes the Kotaku East section on China, Eric. He is nice enough to make the introduction for me : \
Hey thanks for reading this Lauren, good luck to you in your own endeavors!
Cheers,
Max
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