Disclaimer: This writing advice is offered by the author as part of Aftermath's Inside Baseball Week, and while it is presented as a broad proclamation, as you will see from the rest of the piece, this is a provocation. I am being a stinker. What's more, this is just my opinion, and you are free to disregard it should you find it useless, or even just annoying. It is absolutely not Aftermath policy, which is not for me to decide anyway. If you like pieces like this, however, and/or find me smart/funny/handsome, consider subscribing to Aftermath, so they can continue to pay me to write them.
Broadly speaking, there are two types of advice you can get from a stranger. The first kind is the stuff they'd say anywhere, to anyone. It's general advice for general purposes worth saying because not everyone has had the opportunity to hear conventional wisdom, but limited in application, because it is, well, conventional wisdom. The other kind is rarer. It divulges a competitive advantage that the individual has gained, a strategy that genuinely sets them apart from others and might actually be replicable. An actual trade secret. This is what I'm about to offer you today, for those of you who want to try your hand at making a living as a critic, or just want to know more about how someone could.
Ready? It's simple: Never pitch reviews.
If you are a critic early in your career, trying to land review assignments is a waste of your limited time and energy. It’s the absolute worst way to get what you want, but a terrific way to chip away at your confidence, self-worth, and momentum. (These are things that are very important to maintain at all points of your career, but especially at the start.) The deck is, frankly, too stacked against you. You are pissing into the wind, and should reconsider your approach. Allow me to explain why.
Everyone wants to write reviews, just like everyone wants to kiss Hudson Williams, star of Heated Rivalry. Wanting to do either of those things, and letting people know that you are available for them, does not get you any closer to actually doing them. You have to make a case for why you are the best person to write a review, or kiss Hudson Williams, and understand that even then, you are likely to fail. I will now abandon the Hudson Williams metaphor, because I do not know how to help you kiss him. I can help you with writing criticism, though.
Now that we've established the problem of volume and competition, let's get into the more logistical challenges. The first is access: If you are unestablished, you are unlikely to get access to your desired subject before people who are. (This gap can be closed, but you need to establish yourself first. I know, it feels like a catch-22. Stay with me.) The second is trust: Editors have a roster of critics they like to work with. As far as assignments go, a review is an unusual one; it has a wide mandate but also must serve a specific purpose. You can have a lot of freedom in a review – this is what makes them so appealing to write – but no one is going to hand that freedom to a newcomer. It's irresponsible.
By all means, do reviews. Maintain a blog, a letterboxd, do TikToks, a podcast. Keep a work ethic, exercise that muscle. Make sure that if someone wants to know what a review from you looks like, they can find out. But reviews are quite bad as a calling card – every publication has their own standards for what one ought to look like, and odds are you have your own personal ideas about what reviews should look like that might make them a poor showcase for what makes you an interesting thinker.
Instead: have a thesis. Write about art. Make arguments. Tell an editor what you see in a game or movie or show, and how it speaks to a moment. How it's in conversation with other work. Tell them how Nathan Fielder's oeuvre is better understood through the prism that is The Sims, or the similarities you see between Rockstar's methodically slow and intricate approach to game design and the resurgent appeal of doorstop novels, three-hour films, and our desire to disappear. Have ideas only you can have. Build a foundation from which you can tell people: This is what my criticism looks like. I'd love to bring this approach to an upcoming release.
Hopefully, you find this more interesting and fun than just writing a review, because it is. Recognize that the impulse to review things is an egotistical one – this is most writing, really, but reviews especially so. To believe yourself capable of producing a definitive piece about a work of art? How arrogant!
Perhaps at this point you are starting to chafe that this is all coming from someone who clearly writes reviews, and thinks much of their ability to parse works of art. I understand; hypocrites are often annoying. But you can still learn a lot from a hypocrite.
For example: I'd love to write more reviews. I think they're a wonderful tradition, far more flexible than most people believe them to be, an opportunity to identify with a work of art and then have readers identify with you, a chain of meaning extending outward from the artist's decision to grapple with something and commit that struggle to their chosen medium. I am also a vain writer who thinks that I am about as capable of producing a definitive, or at the very least, memorable take on a given work in my chosen areas of expertise as the next person. To the working writer, a review assignment can be more about validation than it is the work. Perhaps it is better, then, to just focus on the work.
And besides, no one knows what a review is or isn't supposed to look like anyway. Write any old essay about a work of art, and I promise you that, regardless of what you call it and whether or not they like it, some reader somewhere will praise or drag your piece, and they'll call it a review when they do.
Welcome to Inside Baseball Week, our annual excuse to explore topics so niche and weeds-y that no other video game website would touch them.
We're also having a sale, so if you're yet to make the jump to helping support independent games media, there's never been a better time!
