On My Time with Video Games, Marketing, Journalism, and the Future

When I was a kid, I was positive I would dedicate my life to working in games media. Writing and gaming were the only two things I was ever really passionate about, a byproduct poor social skills and a fascination with daydreaming. It only made sense that I should go on to review games, write previews, and get to spend most my time with a controller cradled lovingly between my fingers. And you know what? I did it! I worked as a games journalist for something like 6 years, starting in high school. Like most aspiring word warriors, I cut my teeth volunteering for websites that got a few hundred (maybe dozen) visitors a month, but eventually I made it all the way to Game Rant. Back then, it felt like the big leagues.

It really wasn’t. Game Rant was simultaneously a dream come true and kind of a nightmare. I loved my coworkers (I still do), but I quickly learned the realities of working under a parent company that doesn’t give a damn about the art. We pillaged sites like Reddit for empty stories, pumped out content, and, in a lot of ways, made games media worse. I think about my role in that a lot.

There was still a lot of journalism mixed in there. I talked to contacts, worked events, and interviewed folks from around the industry. But I could never shake the feeling that there was something deeply wrong with what was going on, and that feeling on got worse as time pressed on.

Eventually, my passion for games sort of subsided. Playing them had become surgery; every time I sat down, I was dissecting them instead of enjoying them. People say that when your vacation becomes your vocation, you’ll never work a day in your life, but really it’s the opposite. My hobby became my job, and therefore I was working whenever I was trying to relax and play some Diablo.

So I quit. Between my passion being sucked out of the hobby, feeling like I was destroying the media ecosystem, and the comically low pay, I decided it was time to chart a new path.

Luckily, I had brushed paths with one Susan Arendt during my time at Game Rant. She’d parted ways with the site under dubious circumstances — she insisted on publishing writing that was good, which didn’t jive — and jumped ship to a marketing firm. Events transpired, I applied, and a short while later I was the newest staff writer at Fluid Marketing, later rebranded to Candor Content.

Working there was like being in the Avengers. Everyone was immensely talented, to the degree that I often wrestled with feelings of inadequacy. It was the first time in my career that I had worked with a real editor, and it took time for me to measure up to my peers in any real sense. But for the first time in my life, I felt like I had found my tribe. I started learning how to do SEO on the side, and learned an insane amount from Susan and the rest of the crew.

I left to work on an ill-fated project, which bottomed out in just a few short months. It was a major blow, and it sent me into a pretty severe spiral. It was also for the best. Candor got acquired a short while later, and I don’t think I would’ve fit in with the new environment. Instead, I spent the next few years forging my own path, working with clients on SEO and content marketing projects. Now, I’m working with some of those same folks from Candor again, and I think we’re building something incredible.

It’s impossible to say what’s next for me. The games industry is in shambles, and there’s a part of me that feels I’m not 100% done with it. There’s another part of me that just wants to rediscover my roots, digging down into my love of storytelling to find more journalistic projects to work on. I’m also a deeply political person, and the older I get, the more strongly I feel that my true calling is to help usher in a new generation of progressive leadership.

There are a lot of paths ahead, and all of them are foggy. But no matter which one I take, I’m excited to see where it leads.