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Welcome, GamingAngels (and now BlogHer!) readers! It’s time to start bringing you more Women in Games interviews. Why? Because so many people don’t realize all the different ways that you can work with games. You don’t have to be a programmer, or an artist — you can take your skills and make a gaming-related career out of it, and that’s pretty awesome.
Controller photo credit: ginnerobot via photopin cc
We start with someone who can answer quite a few of the questions I’ve gotten (mainly, how do I start writing about games?) much better than I ever could — Susan Arendt, Managing Editor at The Escapist. Not only will you learn how she got into this and what she does on any “typical” day (even though there isn’t one), but you’ll also find out about what she loves in female game characters (and you can view her whole PAX panel on that here, hooray), what she looks for in a good pitch and just what it’s like to be a woman in such a male-dominated field. Yeah, game development is full of men, but so is games journalism. Not really a surprise, right? There is also some puppy talk, because puppies are obviously the most important thing ever in an interview about working with games.
Enjoy — and learn!
There is a tiny bit of mature language in this interview.
Tiffany: What has your career path been like to get you to this point?
Susan: Well, I worked in the “real world” for quite a while before I ever got into this. I started writing on the side for a volunteer site about ten years ago and eventually became executive editor. I had a blog on 1up and was waiting for someone to notice how amazing I was and offer me a job. (Which actually kind of happened.) So I wrote for free for five years before I ever got to do this for reals.
When you started in the “real world,” did you ever see yourself getting to this point? Or heck, even getting involved with games to this degree professionally?
Well, I hoped, of course. But back when I graduated college (in the Dark Ages), you still had to move if you wanted a job in game journalism. And you worked in print. The Internet existed, but people maybe used it for email, if that. It was far from commonplace. And I wasn’t in a position to move to Chicago or San Francisco, so I figured I’d never get to achieve my dream of combining my great loves of publishing and gaming. But then the internet took over, and suddenly you could do this from anywhere. I never really thought I’d get to do this – but when I got the chance, I jumped at it.
So now you’re Managing Editor…that’s like…what? #2 in command at the Escapist empire?
Correct.
What’s your typical day like? Is there a typical day?
There’s really no such thing as a typical day! I’ll field pitches, edit features, oversee the news team, work on a review, if that’s applicable, write an editorial, if something’s on my mind, interact with the community, record a podcast. you get the idea.
Very freeform.
Very much so. There’s always loads to do, plus the regular nuts and bolts of training people, meetings, etc.
But overall just getting done what needs to be. Are things a little more difficult with the main offices in Raleigh?
Not at all. The majority of people I deal with, I deal with online, but other than time zones being problematic, it’s no trouble unless the person is in Australia or something.
And then they’re just on a different day and everything goes to hell.
Exactly! Fortunately, the furthest away my regular contributors are is Scotland on the one side, and California on the other.
A relatively small band of longitudes!
Yeah, could be much worse.
I do have to wonder, do you sometimes feel like you’re left out as an outlet because you’re not in the big hub cities? Or do freelancers really help scratch that itch?
Oh, sure. being so remote works both for and against us. On the one hand, we’re not in the San Fran echo chamber. We tend to think a bit differently than other folks because we’re not seeing and hearing the same things from the same people all the time. On the other hand, that also greatly cuts down our face time with developers and PR. We don’t go to
