Game freelancers: thoughts?

On the most recent bombcast (5-21), the crew was asked about game "journalism" freelance. I'm curious if there are any in the Giant Bomb audience that have thoughts on their role in the industry or their site and what you ultimately hope to gain from your work.

I've been writing since 2009 and at some point I was completely committed to turning this into a real career. Then I went to E3 and saw how so many journalists live their life and how much of a struggle it was. Still, I kept at it as a fun hobby that let me to on trips and experience a whole new world that I had only read about as a kid. As I've begun transitioning to a field that I find more beneficial to society, I remain in this weird state of limbo between a career and my hobby that (due to graduate-level work and internships) has forced me to value my contributions to both fields a lot more. In short, I want to get paid in more than just experience.

I don't think I ever ran the risk of not valuing myself or my work; I determine my own self worth but I can see how others might run that risk. I've produced really good and not so good content over the years but the opportunity to get a laugh or show someone a game they had never once considered has always won out for reasons to stay. If you aren't passionate about writing or producing content, you will burn out in any field. If you wouldn't do it for a hobby, why try to make it a career?

I'd love to hear what the Bombdience has to say.

I studied Journalism because of the original Hotspot podcast and because English was my strongest subject in school. As things went along I realized that the journalism industry is pretty fucked hard to get into right now and even when you're in, it's not exactly the highest paying-stress free career path.

As I finished my second last year of my degree I went overseas and studied Mandarin. I've kept this up since I got back home and have a pretty good grasp on the language. Now, I'm looking at moving to China or Taiwan and editing for numerous law and accounting companies. There's a few game developers who are looking for people to write dialogue and all item descriptions, too. Obviously, these jobs aren't going to be sick high paying at entry level but at least it'll be combining 2 things I love, Editing/Writing and speaking Chinese.

I wanted to be a games journalist for a long time before I realized that it was just too unrealistic. I wrote for a few small sites and went to some events but at the end of the day I decided to separate that fantasy from something that I can actually see myself getting at. I love reading and watching games journalism, but I don't think I could ever create it at the quality that the best in the industry do.

Like @cramsy, I realized that writing about games is a stupid hard career to make it into. I enjoy doing it, but I'm too much of a realist to expect it to turn into a reliable job opportunity when I'm done with school. I personally opted to start learning Japanese instead, thinking it might be useful for games in particular and also always really wanting to learn a second language. This gives me more options to fall back on. I think that anyone who wants to do games writing nowadays needs to have this safety net, or they are risking great financial and mental strain trying to make it all work.