Video Game Reviewer or Blogger
Playing video games for a living? Sounds like a dream job! You may not require official training to become a video game reviewer or blogger, but if you want to make a career out of this job, reviewers and bloggers today require skills in all the latest technology.
Personal Connection
A video game reviewer plays through a video game and then writes a review about it. Sounds like a dream job, right? Becoming a video game reviewer or blogger is all about leveraging technology to provide marketing within the video gaming industry:
- Do you love video games?
- Do you have a vast knowledge about video games and a passion to share it?
- Do you enjoy writing?
- Would you enjoy getting video games prior to their release?
- Are you interested in staying up to date with the latest blogging and vlogging platforms?
Other Connections
Even if you don’t end up becoming a video game reviewer or blogger, there are many different career paths that are involved in and are a part of the video gaming industry, including:
Working as an animator for video games as an animator
Composing music or sound design for video games as a composer
Designing and producing your own video games as a video game designer
Writing scripts and storylines for games to be built around as a video game writer
Developing strategies, analyzing opponents in order to win as many matches – and tournaments – as possible while using your gaming knowledge to excel at the highest level as an eSports player
Working alongside game designers and programmers to ensure a video game works flawlessly before they send the game out to the market as a video game tester
Creating content about video games for Youtube or another video-sharing service as a YouTuber
Providing commentary on eSports competitions or hosting them on stage with your charisma, knowledge, and personality as an eSports shoutcaster
STEM Connection
Here are just a few ways that new and emerging technologies are transforming video game reviewing and blogging:
The competition in video game streaming platforms:
The current trend in video game marketing doesn’t involve blogging or reviews. Instead video game publishers are paying popular video game streamers to play their newest games. This has led to a significant live-streaming platform market. Twitch was purchased by Amazon for $970 million, and it was the original leader in video game live streaming. Rival platforms such as YouTube Gaming, Microsoft’s Mixer, and Facebook Gaming are growing. Read more:
Cybersecurity for video game streaming:
With all of the money involved in the video game industry, hackers are on the rise. It becomes the responsibility of both streaming platforms and video game reviewers to take the necessary steps to secure themselves. Video game vloggers or streamers need to establish two-factor authentication, setup antivirus software, and encrypt their traffic using a VPN. Read more:
Search engine optimization now requires machine learning:
If you want to get a lot of traffic to your video game blog, you will require search engine optimization (SEO), which increases the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through search engine results. However, search engines are now relying on artificial intelligence, so the future of SEO requires an understanding of machine learning. Read more:
Journeys to Becoming a Video Game Reviewer or Blogging
Working as a video game reviewer or blogger may seem too good to be true, but may successful bloggers started in high school so that they could grow their user base and start earning an income by the time they graduated.
Read about how a medical engineering student became a video game reviewer:
Markilplier now earns millions a year from his video game review YouTube channel, but he started off as a quiet student in the marching band. He had always loved video games and started filming himself gaming and posting his play time on YouTube. By the time he started college as a medical engineering student, he had thousands of subscribers.
Markilplier then bought a better camera and editing suite, and with two semesters left before graduation, he put school on hold because he was making a living from his YouTube videos and subscribers were joining by the thousands.
His best advice to kids who want to be a YouTuber? “Do it for fun, not for the goal of getting rich because most people don’t.”
Read more about Markilplier’s story here.
Read about how a video game reviewer leveraged his video production degree:
Joseph Garrett, known as Stampylonghead, has 2.3million subscribers on his YouTube channel, but the channel was “a complete accident since his original aim was to become a games journalist.” Joseph did video production at univsersity and worked on YouTube doing video game reviews. “That blew up… completely by accident,” he says. Joseph records, edits and uploads all of his videos himself and uploads at least one new video every day.
Articles, Videos, Podcasts of Interest
All you really need is an online platform and ideas to write about. Read this article about how to become a game reviewer:
Read More
You probably are ready to get started making money by writing about video games. Read this article about how to start a gaming blog to make money:
Read More
If you’ve played video games, your parents have probably begged you to spend less time on them. This Ted Talk will help you make a solid argument for more game time. It talks about how gaming can actually make the world a better place:
Read More
Fun Facts
Some fun trivia about video game reviewers and bloggers:
Vlogging is the new blogging:
According to content marketers, gone are the days that people want to read blogs. Vlogs are the blogs of the future. Videos attract 300% more traffic and people will spend 100% longer on pages with videos than on pages without videos. Read more here:
Streaming is the most effective marketing:
Video game reviewers were commonly paid by video game publishers to review their new game as a form of marketing. However, the latest trend in video game marketing doesn’t involve blogging or reviews. Instead, video game publishers are paying popular streamers between $25,000 and $50,000 an hour to stream a newly released game. Read more here:
Freelance as a video game reviewer:
Everyone wants to make money playing and talking about video games. Well, companies are hiring. Read more here: