#NerdsUnite: Confessions of a videogame journalist (Love where you work)

<editorsnote> Nerds, meet my buddy John. We started talking on the twitter not too long ago, and then he reached out and asked if he could write for us regarding his journey through the nerdy realm. I was all DUDDEEE!! That's so raaaddd!! And now, here we are. Like right now, in real time, this is happening. Pretty cool huh? HIT IT JOHN!!! </editorsnote>

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's John Sollitto

Occasionally, and by occasionally I mean like once every full moon of the third month, I get asked about my time at G4. When that happens I get one of those fuzzy-framed-nostalgia-filled flashbacks. Working at G4 as one of the Legendary Unpaid X-Play Interns was both magical and eye-opening. A lot of what I learned there has translated to my work at the Game Creators Vault.

Let me begin with my initial interview. I got all purtied up, wore a nice shirt, combed my hair, the basics when you go for a job interview. The guy who interviewed me was WAY cool, really laid back and he made me feel really at ease. We talked a little about my writing for IGN and for City of Heroes, what I wanted to get into, and what kind of games I played.

Time passes and I get a call that saying I got the position and basically started right away. My first day? Play a bunch of videogames and record my time playing them, then go help Michael Leffler (the comedy producer of G4 also known as Drunk Link of any of the other hilarious characters on the show) film one of the Golden Mullet sketches. Seriously, first day I was playing videogames and doing a G4 sketch. It was a dream come true.The offices of G4 are pretty amazing too. I mean it’s a bunch of cubicles, but still each one has some crazy videogame paraphernalia or comics all over the place, games systems everywhere, G4 TV programming playing at people’s desks, costumes strewn about. It was glorious madness. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so at home in a place than I did at G4.

Funny thing about G4, they share a floor with the Style Network since they’re both owned by NBC Universal. So occasionally you’d get someone leading clients or talent through the halls and you’d hear “And this is G4, you can tell by all the toys and dolls on their cubes,” to which my friends would emphatically mutter under their breath “They’re action figures!!!!”

So amidst shenanigans of all sorts and fun times playing videogames I actually got to see how their programming was set up and how their shows got put together. They get their games like a month in advance so they can film all the appropriate footage for the review ahead of time, then the footage is logged down in the editing bays. That footage is paired up with the voice over of one of the hosts and the text they say is written up by one of the reviewers. There’s at least five or six reviewers doing stuff for X-Play so they can do multiple games at a time and work on different packages for the show so there’s always programming.

For the Vault, since we can’t get games ahead of time, we try to buy them the day they come out and then cap the footage at my place or Anders’s place. Then we try and shoot a multitude of videos on a weekend where Michael (or from this point on Megatron, since I call him that) will take them to his place and edit them. It takes one to two weeks for Megatron to edit a video cause we’re all students and I understand that he’s got stuff on his mind. Plus Megatron is the man and people ask him to help them with projects all the time so I let him slide cause he’s boss.

Now, the ONLY thing I did NOT like doing at G4 transcribing interviews. Seriously, that was the only thing I didn’t enjoy about my job and I did it maybe twice. I just don’t like it because I want to know what they’re saying and not have to take notes on it. Kind of like watching an educational movie in school, you just want to watch it not do the worksheet.

I got to go into the editing bays and see how the packages were put together, how the scripts were written, I got to even write some mock scripts of my own. Heck, they let me write an article myself that got published on the website in the Feed section! It was AWESOME. I didn’t just make friends in X-Play, I made friends with the Attack of the Show team as well as the website crew.

The thing I took away from G4 was to enjoy your environment. I mean seriously, I can’t explain how STOKED I was to go to work EVERYDAY. I didn’t want to go back to my apartment. They had to tell me to go home because I wouldn’t leave. I played videogames for work, I hung out and talked about comics at lunch, and I got to wear a raccoon costume and get beat up by Morgan Webb. (click here to watch the video)

Honestly, if you love the environment you’re in, you’ll get work done. It won’t feel like work at all. Time just seemed to pass without me even realizing it. I’ve tried really hard to make the guys at the Vault feel that way. I want them to love working on the site and with me. I want them to enjoy it as much as I do. Whoever you work with or whatever you do, make sure you do it in a place that you enjoy being in and are doing something you love there. Just make sure it’s not the toilet cause that’s kind of weird.

#nerdsunite

Want more from John? Click here to follow him on the twitter!

#NerdsUnite: Confessions of a videogame journalist (Finding Your Zen)

<editorsnote> Nerds, meet my buddy John. We started talking on the twitter not too long ago, and then he reached out and asked if he could write for us regarding his journey through the nerdy realm. I was all DUDDEEE!! That's so raaaddd!! And now, here we are. Like right now, in real time, this is happening. Pretty cool huh? HIT IT JOHN!!! </editorsnote>

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's John Sollitto

I was having a conversation with my sister the other day on the Facebook machine and she said something to me that really struck a chord. Jackie, my big sis, has always been one of my closest friends in the world, and I’ve always taken her advice to heart. While we were talking she said one of the most important things she wanted was for me to find my peace, to stop and find a way to let myself be.

Lately I’ve been really involved with work and school and chugging along in my life. Things have just been going really well and I’ve wanted to capitalize on that momentum and really push myself to do the best that I can.

Jackie was worried I wasn’t taking time to slow up and really take some stock in my life and make sure I’m happy with who I am. That’s very important, but to be honest, I’m not the kind of person to slow things down when I’m doing stuff. I’m always doing SOMETHING. If I’m watching TV I’m thinking about the Vault too or shuffling cards. If I’m writing I’m listening to music. Even when I was a kid I was kind of a spaz. But the idea Jackie had, letting myself be, that was the key thing I took from her.

I started really seeing how to do that while working in my dad’s shop. There’s that old saying that working with your hands shuts off your mind and really allows you to be at peace, right? I have no idea who says that. I think lumberjacks say it. Yeah, lumberjacks, that sounds right.
 
Okay, point is, they’re right. When I was working on signs or banners and whatever I really started to feel calm and at peace with what was going on in my life. I don’t know, it’s kind of hard to explain. Things started to fall into place in my head and I was able to look at them in a whole different perspective. I started to really value all the things that’d happened to me lately and find all the good things in my life.
   
Now, I’m not saying you all need to go out and start making signs. You need to find the thing that Zens you out. Sign making isn’t the only thing that Zens me. I mean, part of the reason I’m in video game journalism is because video games calm me down. I get angry? I play some violent games. I need to take my mind off of something? I play something like Skyrim and hunt for supplies to make a bunch of armor. Because I’m always doing something, being engaged in something I like or that’s fun or that requires little work Zens me out.
   
Now, what does that mean in relation to you? Since everyone isn’t the same finding your Zen is a bit of a personal thing. Some people like to meditate, others do crafts or take up some sort of trade. Heck, I know some people work out cause it calms their storm. The point is that you need to think of the things that you like, all those things you really enjoy about life or really enjoy about yourself, and start exploring those.

It’s like that Sound of Music song! But instead of raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens I think about stabbing a dragon in the face and driving the Russian army back from the coast of New York. Totally different but eerily similar in effect. Trust me. Writing has the same effect too which is why I like working for this site.

Eccentricities aside, this is kind of a therapeutic thing. I mean I really learned a lot about myself and was able to actually cool myself off from an argument with my parents by Zenning out. You’d be really surprised what you can accomplish internally and personally when you just kind of let yourself be. Also, if by letting yourself be you end up doing something in the process and it gets completed, then it’s a win-win! Right?

#nerdsunite

Want more from John? Click here to follow him on the twitter!

#NerdsUnite: Confessions of a videogame journalist (And Now We Play the Waiting Game)

<editorsnote> Nerds, meet my buddy John. We started talking on the twitter not too long ago, and then he reached out and asked if he could write for us regarding his journey through the nerdy realm. I was all DUDDEEE!! That's so raaaddd!! And now, here we are. Like right now, in real time, this is happening. Pretty cool huh? HIT IT JOHN!!! </editorsnote>

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's John Sollitto

If patience is a virtue but isn’t a strong suit, then doctors must be fairly virtuous people with flimsy jackets. Get it? You see what I did there? I said patience, as in waiting patiently, and made a joke about doctors who have patients.

Oh screw you, that was funny. I’m funny.

Fine, I’ll get to the article. In this era of media saturation and CONSTANT contact on all forms whether it be Twitter or Facebook or what have you, we are supremely used to hearing and knowing things like that. You can’t hear or see me but I snapped my fingers in an attempt to illustrate instantaneousness.

For example, I recently got into contact with one of the producers of Rocksmith, Ubisoft’s revolutionary new game that claims to actually be able to teach someone how to play the guitar. By “got into contact” I mean I researched the game in a creepy way to find out who worked on it and found out that he had a Twitter and tweeted him. Maybe ten to fifteen minutes later I got a response back! Happy day! I honestly didn’t think he’d respond for like, a week since he had maybe 100 or so tweets all spaced out over a couple of months.

I told him I had an idea about a project to do with my company and his game Rocksmith and he said he was interested and told me to direct message him. Here’s the thing, you can’t DM someone who doesn’t follow you. So I asked him to follow me or give me an email that I could use to contact him with.

Minutes go by, no answer. Every time I would look up at the clock and think “maybe he responded now,” the clock gave me this answer:

I started to get worried. “What if he didn’t see it? What if he’s in another time zone and he won’t respond till another day or week or something? What if the power went out wherever he is and won’t come back on for days? What if his internet got shut off?” I kid you not, I was so freaking worried about him not seeing my question that I FACEBOOK STALKED HIM. I found him on the Facebook and sent him a Facebook message with the plan for the experiment we were proposing.

Don’t worry, I heard from him later that day or the next day or something and got his email and he followed me and we’ve been in contact since then. That’s not the point. The point is that I literally freaked out and started acting like a 16-year-old girl about whether or not this guy would tweet me back, like I asked him out to the prom.

Ladies, this is not a shot at you, this is more of a statement that we as a race and several generations need to calm the eff down and slow up our lives. Back when I was in ‘Nam, Vietnam to you kiddies, we sent mail through the post office. THE POST OFFICE! Can you imagine the horror of thinking your letter might not get to someone until a day later? Maybe two?? MADNESS! News was delivered only in the morning! And by god we didn’t hear about celebrity affairs until they were over and there was a freaking baby being used as proof!

Okay I didn’t fight in Vietnam but you get my point right? We’ve all become so dependent on technology to deliver messages and news to us at such a constant rate, that we expect answers and information instantaneously. We’ve lost our ability to be patient, and no not the doctor kind.

Good things really do come to those who wait and I know that’s so cliché and fortune cookie but it’s true. I waited for an answer and got one and even got in contact with the PR guy and maybe he might be giving us some free gear to help us out. Even Jen knows this, despite her famed ADD. When she contacted Spirit Hoods and the first time about sponsorship and they said “no” she just plugged on. Sometime later they were APOLOGIZING to her and then gave her a tour and a crap-load of free swag! Seriously, she’s blogged about it I’m sure and she even talked about it when she went to Cal State Fullerton in her lecture.

The moral of the story is this: be patient with what you do and what you put your time into. It may be like pulling teeth and it may put you on edge, but the payoff is worth it. Some of you might say, “But John! I was patient a bunch of other times and things didn’t work out and I didn’t get anything out of it!” To which I reply, “Well it wasn’t a total waste of time because you LEARNED something didn’t you?” And I swear to God if you say “I didn’t learn a damn thing!” I will turn this blog around and ground you for eternity. Nothing is ever a waste. Even if you don’t come out of it with something you can see right at that moment, a couple months down the line, if you’re patient you’ll be able to see what I’m talking about. And if you don’t see what I’m talking about, then you need glasses and I can recommend a good doctor.

#nerdsunite

Want more from John? Click here to follow him on the twitter!

#NerdsUnite: Confessions of a videogame journalist (Knowing is half the battle)

<editorsnote> Nerds, meet my buddy John. We started talking on the twitter not too long ago, and then he reached out and asked if he could write for us regarding his journey through the nerdy realm. I was all DUDDEEE!! That's so raaaddd!! And now, here we are. Like right now, in real time, this is happening. Pretty cool huh? HIT IT JOHN!!! </editorsnote>

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @JohnSollitto

When I played The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time, I knew I wanted to be involved in gaming. Now, I can’t draw for the life of me, programming is a little too difficult for me to buckle down and learn, but I liked to think I was a good hand at coming up with stories. So I decided I would write video games. I wrote some 12 or 13 games in my youth, none of which I hope to God see the light of day.

Time passes, sunrise sunset, and I’m going to an industry career day at Westwood College. The entire decision was based off of an article my dad saw in the paper that day and my mom suggested I go since I wasn’t doing anything that day. “Sure, why not? It might be fun,” I said. When I get there I sort of wander around the college peeking into the rooms before I find out that there’s some speeches happening in another part of the campus. So I go to see a speech by a man from Obsidian Entertainment, Jim Rivers. He shoots straight with all of us, tells us what would get us hired and what would make us blend into the background. And on that day, John Sollitto the gaming journalist was finally born.

Unfortunately for me I didn’t know he had been born that day. I continued to think that I had to work on my writing to someday be a project lead or a level designer so I kept at it. Time goes on and my parents buy the sign shop where I work today part time. In a strange series of cosmic events, the woman who owned it before us somehow bowled with a few of the people who worked at Obsidian Entertainment. She suggested I contact them and a few emails later I meet Jim Rivers again, this time he’s giving me a private tour of the facility and one-on-one advice.

Jim invites me to his industry mixer he hosts every Wednesday and I agree to meet him there. It took me some time to make friends and blend in there but eventually I got to be a regular fixture there. IF you’ve been reading my previous articles you know that this mixer is where I met Mark and subsequently got hired to the Vault where I work today. Jim however, was the first person to see my potential as a journalist. He told me that while I might have had some skill doing stories, I seemed more at home making connections and learning from the guys there. To be honest, I had to agree with him. One G4 internship later and a freelance deal with PC Gamer and I was set down the noble press path.

But this isn’t an origin story so I’ll spare you the details of how I donned the fabled G4 Raccoon suit and got beat to a pulp on camera for a TV sketch, effectively making me an official member of the video gaming fraternity of journalists.

The more I learned from those guys at the mixer about their jobs and what exactly they did, the more I started to look at how games were reviewed and the more I started to question it all. How did this game get this score and how did that game get that? Was a bug really that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things? Didn’t these reviewers know how much work these people did? Why were they just focusing on the negative? I downloaded the Unreal Development Kit free game making software to see if I could really understand the plight of developers boooooy did I learn.

Did you know that making a game is some real hard work? No, seriously, I cannot begin to explain the complexity behind making a WALL explode into a dozen pieces, let alone the program that makes PHYSICS happen. And that’s just the Unreal Development Kit! Other companies use their own programs and whatnot which means that if you’re going to work at multiple companies you need to learn how to use ALL of them. Then there’s animation, concept art, programming, voice acting, motion capture, the list goes on.

The only part of the production process I’ve ever participated in directly is quality assurance focus testing. Basically I just played a game for six hours and made notes about bugs and things I didn’t like. That is one of the LAST stages in production and that takes SO long. But knowing as much as I did about how all of it worked, I was able to accurately describe what was wrong or really look at the details that would be necessary.

Now my point is this: a lot of people who write about the industry and review games just say that playing games is enough. To which I respond: hell to the no. Let me put it in perspective. If someone was a food critic, and all they did was eat food, never cooked it, never learned how to cook, but just ate food, would they know WHY the food tasted good? Would they be able to identify what was in it to know how to recognize it again in another dish? To know what went will with this and not with that? No, they would just know taste.

Granted if you play a lot of videogames you can see what sells and what many people find fun. However, a big thing that people do is complain about bugs and mechanics. A lot of fans say, “Hey, why didn’t they do this. This has been done before.” If you don’t have knowledge of how games are made then you can’t appreciate the work that they do or gauge how hard it would be to put in the things that gamers ask for. Plus the common misconception players have is that developers are a bunch of guys and gals jerkin’ around all day and screwing up games. The reality? Some dude hunkered over a desk for five hours trying to figure out why this one character can’t walk up the freaking stairs correctly in the fourth dungeon in the last level of the game while simultaneously answering an email about the running mechanics in the cutscene three levels ahead of that. It’s a long and arduous process. It’s hard to do. And often times, it’s a job that many people don’t want to do.

So when reviewing games, I have to take all of this into account. Common bugs like graphical glitches or texture problems, those things can be missed and if the bug doesn’t affect gameplay, then I don’t really knock the game down too much. But if there’s a problem that hasn’t been fixed for four games in the franchise that is still there? Then I have to say that will knock the game down a point.

The big picture to this article though is this: you have to know what you’re reporting on and know it well before you can go talking about it and passing judgment. I don’t know everything about games and I don’t think I ever will, but I like to think that my knowledge helps to make me a more effective and capable journalist. Plus learning more about the subject you’re writing about gives you new insight and may just spark your passion for more articles. Yes it’s a lot of work, and yes it will take time. However in the long run, you will gain more credibility and help you look beyond what you see. And now you know. And knowing is half the battle. GO JOE!

#nerdsunite

Want more from John? Click here to follow him on the twitter!

#NerdsUnite: Confessions of a videogame journalist

<editorsnote> Nerds, meet my buddy John. We started talking on the twitter not too long ago, and then he reached out and asked if he could write for us regarding his journey through the nerdy realm. I was all DUDDEEE!! That's so raaaddd!! And now, here we are. Like right now, in real time, this is happening. Pretty cool huh? HIT IT JOHN!!! </editorsnote>

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's John Sollitto

Recently, a friend of mine from G4 contacted me about co-writing an article that we had come up with at lunch one day. It was just a silly idea of what we wanted a certain game to be, we got all worked up and nerded out about it for a long time. Then, the curtain dropped and my time at G4 was at ended, and I never thought about it again until he called me.

When he approached me about writing the article, I was really stoked because how often does a stupid idea you and your friend come up with become something you might actually get published? So we met up at the greatest think-tank of our generation, Starbucks, and got to working.

It wasn’t till later that night that I started to have those doubts. You know what they are. Those little doubts that creep up on you when you’re too tired to fight them off with optimism or strength of will. Those little doubts that go, “What if no one likes it? What if they HATE it? What if people hate me?” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve faced those doubts at night.

This is something everyone goes through, you know? I just happened to go through them at an age that really blew, but that meant I learned how to deal with them quickly. I was about 16 or 17 when I started writing for IGN’s City of Heroes Vault under a screen name (like ya do when you’re worried about people stalking you online). I had written an article talking about a new update to the game that fixed some of the graphics, added some new powers, yadda yadda yadda. When I published the article I walked away feeling good. Coming back to it about a day or so later there was a comment by someone saying that they thought the article was stupid, asking if this was what IGN articles had been reduced to, blah blah blah.

Now, I’m generally a calm man, I like to keep my cool. But when someone takes a shot at me or busts my balls, I’ve been known to get a little….agitated. So when this faceless piece of garbage criticized my writing saying that it was no good, I wanted to reach through the internet and pull his intestines through his nasal passages.

My ability to transfer my body into digital matter and then back again in another location is limited on a Saturday due to Mars being in the third house, so I couldn’t do that. Naturally I tried to kill him with kindness by saying that if he didn’t like what I wrote we would be happy to accept samples of his writing to see if he would be a good fit for our staff. As I expected, he never responded.

So a few years later, working on the Vault (facebook.com/GameCreatorsVault) we’re doing video interviews. My friend, Jim Rivers, offered to come down and talk to our viewers about getting hired in the industry. We were really thankful for him spending time with us to explain the process and what big companies look for when hiring new blood.

Sadly, some dickwad had to put his two cents in commenting on my friend’s weight and attacking his company. What the fuck is that guy’s problem? Someone was taking the time to explain the intricacies of the industry to students who were willing to learn. A truly educational and philanthropic endeavor. How can ANYONE be opposed to that, regardless of what company that person is from? It blew my mind. Still, I resisted the urge to Hulk out and kept my fingers away from the keyboard as to avoid typing obscenities under our site’s name.

Then we did our biggest video yet. It was with the creators of the Nuka Break web series and the writers of Fallout 1 and Fallout: New Vegas. Big big deal. Huge nerdout for me and some of our staff too. We put the video up and within a matter of hours it was getting all kinds of traffic. Buuuuut of course, there were the trolls. After half a day we had people here and there saying that our focus on the web series was stupid, our questions were dumb, our style of interviewing was awful, etc.

Strangely enough, I didn’t feel anger this time. Sure I got upset when they attacked Mark in his half of the interview, or when they took shots at Nuka Break. But what I realized was that these people were just griping to gripe. They had nothing else to do but they felt that their opinion was SO important that they had to tell us we were doing a bad job.

Now, here’s the thing. I don’t mind constructive criticism. It’s healthy and often times it really does improve the quality of your work. But when someone nitpicks for the sake of nitpicking, you really just have to ignore them.

Trolls are everywhere, in print, in broadcast, online, and even in real life. Don’t feed them by getting into fights with them, or telling them why they’re wrong. Just ignore them. If someone has something genuinely constructive to say, thank them and show that you’re not a high and mighty sort who doesn’t listen to others. Learning from your fans and learning from your peers is something you should never stop doing, and you will be better for it. I guarantee it.

Do I still have those doubts? Those little worries about whether or not someone will like my work? Of course. Does it keep me up at night? Absolutely not. Do I worry what MaStErBlAsTeRXX19247 thinks of my latest video after he calls us a bunch of “loser noobs who don’t kno anything about gaming?” Hell no. And when him and his troll buddies find you, and rest assured they will, you ignore them too. Or you can kill them and burn their bodies so they don’t regenerate as the Dungeons and Dragons rulebook suggests so you won’t have to fight them over again. But, you know, that’s just a thought.

#nerdsunite

Want more from John? Click here to follow him on the twitter!