Image via Seven Seas Entertainment
Becoming a video games journalist was supposed to be the ultimate moment in my life. It was the chance to do something I’d always loved: writing. I’d never thought that I would have the opportunity to make my hobby as a video gamer my full-time paycheck.
What I didn’t know at the start of this journey was how fine the blade of the knife I was riding would get. It’s wild to see how touching a dream can leave you completely devastated.
Fandom, The 00s, And A College Major I’d Never Pay Back
Like so many writers covering video games today, I was born into the games industry with a Game Boy Color in hand. I will never forget my time with Pokemon Yellow when I was eight years old. The pixelated Kanto Region shaped my love of RPGs and fastened the identity of Pokemon Super-Fan to my lapel. I’ve worn it with pride for decades.
Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy VII, Harvest Moon, Assassin’s Creed, DDR, and so many other video games sculpted me over my childhood. I was an avid cosplayer, dedicated JRPG nerd, and faithful Sony supporter. I spent hours taking on matches in Left 4 Dead 2 with my childhood best friend, and when I wasn’t playing, I was drawing or writing about the characters whose cosplayers I would build and wear to any Anime Convention within driving distance.
I was filled with fandom joy. I loved every moment of it. I celebrated that childhood with a close-knit group of friends just as deep as I was, protecting me from the bullying and teasing so many young fans go through. This allowed my deep affection for fan culture to bloom unchallenged, and it propelled me through high school and into college.
Unfortunately, in 2011, there really wasn’t a degree for “professional nerd who reads way too much Manga.” Instead, I took an English Major at the nearby University and hoped for the best. After four years waxing poetic about Shakespeare with a copy of Tsubasa: Resevoir Chronicle in my shoulder bag, I took a job in IT.
I never really knew what I was going to do with my English Degree. I figured I’d teach, or I’d become a professor. I never really saw myself actually becoming a writer. That was a pipe dream. I roleplayed on forums and wrote 100,000-word stories about boys kissing. Those weren’t exactly the credentials of a writer in my mind. It was just breathing. Writing was breathing. Breathing didn’t pay bills.
So that IT job turned into a 10-year career. I would write in notebooks all day between fixing computers, 100% games on my 3DS during long night shifts with no work to occupy my time, and press my hands against the glass of the corporate building windows that I had been encased in. I wanted to badly to feel something. To be somewhere else. To do something that felt important.
In that decade of living in the footnotes of my own life, I’d continued to nurture my intense love of games, fandom, and nerd culture. But it felt like a dirty secret. A life I lived indulgently by going through old poster collections or opening storage boxes with Kingdom Hearts action figures tucked inside.
Big kids don’t put Eevee plushes on their bookcases. I was married. I had a house to keep. It felt like the life that had been so colorful and vibrant had been carefully stored. It seemed to belong to someone else.
2020 Games Journos and The Plague Boom
In the spring of 2020, two things happened at the same time: I found out I was pregnant with my first baby, and the whole world shut down. The life I’d built up until that point was suddenly suspended. I found myself unsure of what the future would hold. I couldn’t go back to work as an IT Tech. It was too risky in my current situation.
I started looking for remote work.
That was when I saw something that, at the time, I thought was a joke. An Indeed listing for a Dungeons & Dragons Writer for ScreenRant. I’d admittedly never heard of the website, and immediately figured the situation was likely not all that solid. But on a whim, I threw my resume and a sample of writing at the listing, and then promptly forgot all about it.
Three days later, I got a response. I was invited to go through the training for the website as a Video Games Journalist.
I was completely blown away. I’d never submitted a piece of writing anywhere before. I’d never tried for a contest. I’d never even entertained trying to get published. I responded back, and a week later, I began training.
There are these odd little moments in your life that flip the lights back on in your person. Even though I was so pregnant I could see my toes, and I literally couldn’t even find diapers to buy due to the state of the world, I was happy beyond reason. I was working under one of the best editors I’ve ever had the privilege of learning from, talking to a team of people that were just as excited as I was about everything, and writing every day about things that had been the core of my person since I was old enough to tie my shoes.
I joked that if I could go back and tell my younger self that writing all the information from the E-Reader Pokemon cards down into a journal was actually going to pay my bills one day, they’d probably immediately burst into tears.
I was off. I was so happy. I wanted more. As much as I could get my hands on. I wanted to write everything and play everything and cover everything, and nothing at all could satiate my desire to coat the world in news, guides, and features. My fingers couldn’t type fast enough. I was high on the pure joy of sharing something I loved so much with the entire world.
With that joy and drive, I moved through several positions at ScreenRant and was then offered a job at Dexerto. Another incredible team filled with so many wonderful and talented people who were going just as hard as I was.
And then from there, I joined the team at Gamepur as Managing Editor. A privilege that, to this day, humbles me right down to the prints on my fingertips. The Gamepur team was where I cut my teeth on some of the hardest things I’d ever done in writing. Shaping coverage, building guides, and understanding what news everyone needed to cover.
My team was, and will always be, a core piece of my heart. It was an honor to sit in the room with so many incredible, talented, and driven people. And I can’t think of any greater honor than basking in the writing of each of those people.
However, it was about that time that things were starting to tip in the Games Industry. It was a high that we all knew, to some extent, couldn’t last forever. The world had started to move forward, AI was starting to nudge its way into media, and so many websites had become drunk on Covid-era views and traffic spikes. A mixture of gamer burnout, media distrust, and changes in the media landscape, where drawing their nails on the chalkboard. We all wanted to ignore the wail of it, but some sounds are, inevitably, too much to bear.
The Dangers of Becoming Your Job
Here is the thing they don’t tell you about getting your dream job – If it falls apart, it feels like the world breaking out from under you.
One minute, I was leading a team forward on huge releases, and the next, I was frantically submitting resumes as jobs were cut. I stepped away from my job at Gamepur due to creative differences. We started Bonus Action, and I went back to Dexerto. But it was too late. Changes in the world were rippling, and before I knew it, I was trapped in a layoff cycle that left my entire life in pieces.
I remember, last spring, standing in the parking lot of a Planet Fitness sobbing. I was grabbing at every scrap as this world I loved so much came crashing down around my feet. I was cat-sitting just to buy groceries, and scrubbing toilets to make rent.
Around me, my friends were taking jobs outside the industry or stepping back due to burnout. I was throwing my portfolio at anyone who would listen. I would lie in bed at night, staring at the ceiling, just waiting for the sun to come back up so that I could try again. I swore I wouldn’t stop trying. I swore I would keep going forward.
But that path grew darker and darker.
And before I knew it, I was standing in my home office, fingers pressed to the glass as I stared out at the dark world beyond my home, wondering what on earth I was doing.
I felt betrayed. I felt very foolish. I felt like I’d gone all in on a game that was impossible to actually finish. Around me, all the posters from my childhood were up on the office walls. My Eeveelution plushies were out and proudly displayed. My collection of video games was organized on a bookshelf perfectly in view of anyone chatting with me on a call. I remember looking around and feeling so ashamed of myself.
Ashamed for feeling secure enough to bring all those pieces of me back out into the world for people to see.
The collapse of my career and the breakdown of the games industry were more than just losing a job. I’d flown far too close to the sun, and in doing so, my identity collapsed alongside my career. Burning up in a heap.
Healing, Danmei, And Comfort in Fandom
The past six months have been some of the hardest of my life. I’ve felt detached from my own life. Things that used to bring me such immeasurable joy have felt intangible. I haven’t been writing. I haven’t been drawing.
The only games I’ve played have been for random freelance gigs, and the process has been some of the loneliest projects of my career.
However, despite the complete emotional breakdown I have been riding, despite the smoke of my burning career spiralling up around me, I have found some very strange little comforts that have reminded me why I cared so much about this job and why it meant so much to me.
The first was discovering Danmei. It was so much fun to try a new type of media that has such a vibrant and dedicated fanbase. I’m planning my first cosplay in years thanks to The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation.
I’ve also been playing D&D again, and it has nudged characters around in my brain for the first time in ages. While every word I write feels like it is pulled out with monumental effort, it’s been strange and nostalgic to see those words in a creative space again.
Becoming a video games journalist was, without a doubt, one of the best things I have ever had the chance to do. It has also been the most devastating. The agony of caring so much while watching it all come down is enough to snap your resolve and throw you to the ground.
I became a journo because I love to write, I love to connect, and I love being a part of something bigger than myself.
To every person I’ve had the opportunity to write alongside, it’s my time with you I miss the most.
Few things in this world are as amazing as that moment when we unite and come together with a combination of strengths and passions. I’m still picking myself up, but I know that seeing each of you rise and conquer is one of the best things I’ll have the privilege of taking from this career.
Even if I go back to fixing keyboards and looking out windows, I’ll always treasure every moment I had here – talking to devs, interviewing artists, writing with a brilliant team.
I can’t imagine anything better. As I’ve said before, we have the coolest job in the world, and it’s all thanks to every single one of you.
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