Musai

2. You said you spent 5 years as a QA? I highly suggest that you head on over to Cracked's writer's workshop and pitch an article on something to do with that knowledge you accumulated over the years.

Well it's games. Even though it is a billion dollar industry, it' still a niche market to a degree. And the people that actually care about games news? Even more niche. Also referring to your freelance/college work as slavery? Top tier self righteousness buddy, way to go for gold

I think you're just going to have to freelance it and do your own thing until you start drawing enough attention. Until your name is being used on other sites by other people. An example I can think of is Cara Ellison. She's a blogger with some freelance work around different sites and she often gets her pieces and name linked to and talked about from other places, like Gawker, like RPS and like The Escapist. The community over at RPS were asking for months if she would be hired as full time. Matt Les's is probably another example of someone who kept at it and now he's over at The Escapist after a stint at Videogamer.

Now I don't know if she knows people in the industry who helped her out or if it's just her personality that got her there, because that's something she does have, a personality. I think that (and this is from a reader/consumer) that in today's journalism world, particularly in video games, that personalities are more important than your ability to write an article. That may not be the right idea, it may not be how thing's should work, but I think from an outsiders view that's how it appears to be.

I think you're just going to have to stick with it until you get noticed if you want to "make it" in the industry. As well, the world is much smaller now. You don't need to know people any more, you just have to get noticed by them. Maybe you're just not being interesting enough, and I don't mean that in a harsh way. Do you have examples of your work you're willing to share?

there is nothing funnier than disillusioned white males. "they said if I joined the frat I would be loved and revered forever!" that being said. Welcome to journalism as a whole. I know, I know its a little overwhelming... take some time.. get your legs back, if you need to vomit theres a toilet shaped like your own anus in the corner.

If it's any consolation (it probably isn't), but I sort of know what you mean having worked in the media and it really is about "who you know" not "what you know". With my own experience, I kind of just ended up in my previous job partly by accident (basically two phone-calls and a short test of sorts, completely bypassing the usual channels of HR and interviews) although everything I had done leading up to that sort of all accumulated into a weird combination that ironically made me ideal for the job in question.

At the same time the outlets you mentioned in your original post are really kind of shitty. Kotaku/Gawker is the absolute worst, not from a content angle, but from how the company is actually run. Gawker media is currently enjoying a big lawsuit from former unpaid interns because Gawker is basically run by a bunch of shits who led most folk to believe "that the opportunity to work at Gawker alone was payment enough" (almost verbatim statement from the current documents available) not to mention Nick Denton's attempts at fostering a phony hypocritcal class war against tech workers. The Escapist is hardly the friggin' pinnacle of games journalism either.

Speaking of writing decently, perhaps you're just not very good at writing? Have you ever had anyone who actually is good at writing criticize your work?