Several weeks ago my editor for the website i contribute towards, decided to set me up my own personal 'company' email address. The purpose of this was so that I could access many of the big games companies press areas and to allow me to have a more professional contact address, which was tied to the website.
Before having this new email address, o would have to wait for my editor to send through any relevant press releases, or information sent through by gaming developers. Although this way did work very well to begin with, when your an editor managing various sections of a website and numerous writers, it can sometimes take time to get round to sifting through and sending out information.
Having now gotten this address and gained access to all of these big, generally restricted press areas, I'm now experiencing a whole new side to gaming journalism that I haven't really touched on too much before. This new side is to do with talking first hand with PR companies, gaming studios directly, and gaining insider info quicker than the general public.
Up until this point, the majority of the news I have reported on, has come from hearing about it through other news outlets. Apart from when i have reported on gaming conventions, when announcements are made publically direct from the gaming companies, my work is often released later than the bigger news sites.
It was a great feeling the other week to have gotten a press release through, which was about the release of the new World of Warcraft expansion, and to have written up an article sent it through to my editor and have it published before a number of the popular gaming news sources.
With all of these new experiences coming my way it does really make me wish that I could turn this into an actual full time paid job rather than a volunteering position that I do in my spare time. It's also really strange to think about how I kind of fell into this position, after initially getting in contact with Culturefly.co.uk about writing film and book reviews.
However this happened and how I managed to end up where I am, it has been really awesome writing for Culturefly.co.uk, and even better I can write down gaming journalist on my CV. I know I'm still very small time compared to many other journalists out there but I think I've done enough to earn that title.
