DFTM

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Chance of a lifetime: Win an unpaid job!

I had initially planned to blog about something else, but I need to get at least one post up about NowGamer’s competition where you can win a job which won’t give you any money. If you (somehow) missed it, they are holding a competition to see who gets to give Imagine Publishing content. For free. This from a professional publication and not an amateur site. It’s despicable enough that they are asking people to give them content without any compensation, calling it a competition in an attempt to make it look like it’s a boon to the writer makes the whole thing even worse.

I don’t think I can add much to the debate after John Walker’s summary of the whole thing, though. “Servants get paid. This is a position below servant” as he puts it. Also make sure to check the comments, both on Walker’s blog and on the official competition post.

If you’re dreaming about a career in games journalism, make sure you are never taken advantage of. Most of us have. It absolutely sucks. It might not suck the moment you accept that unpaid position, but trust me – one day you will wake up and realize that you’re being treated like crap, that your employers are devaluing you and your work.

Amateur websites that never see any form of cash flow are of course not included.

8 comments

Posted on January 13th, 2012 in Games 

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  • http://twitter.com/Scopique Scopique

    First and foremost, I want to start by saying I totally think that the way NowGamer is framing this a ”competition” is total BS. It almost sounds like it’s being offered with a wink to their own colleagues to indicate that there’s some fleecing to come at someone’s expense, and that’s 100% the wrong way to go about it.

    I have a degree in biology, and this kind of thing is how science has operated for probably decades. Probably longer. My university is a great place for biological sciences, and there’s a lot of research that goes on there. Naturally, there’s a LOT of students who attend for a bio degree…moreso then there are opportunities for them to obtain a position in a campus lab where they can do “real science”. That makes it an researcher’s-market, and I think a lot of the researchers there take advantage of that (not all, I’m sure).

    Science is such a cutthroat industry (which is why I don’t do it, because I hate that kind of crap) that peer recognition is often times more important than what you’re actually working on. Many researchers will indenture undergrads to do the actual work while they begrudgingly attend to their classroom duties, or seek funding, or do whatever. In many cases, these lab workers — who have done a huge amount of the actual labor — are lucky if they receive ANY mention in the final paper. But they’re still willing to throw themselves into this thankless position because of the experience it gives. If they’re lucky, then they get to work for an honest researcher who will give them credit and will write them glowing reviews after graduation, or will put them in touch with colleagues. I have personally met some real assholes, though, who have treated their lab workers (and anyone who crosses their path in a professional manner) WORSE than they treat their lab equipment.

    The obvious difference is that this is NECESSARY for science students. Science isn’t WHAT you know, it’s WHO you know, and while that can benefit anyone, we’re talking the difference between a field where it’s impossible to set up your own shop to make a name for yourself (science), and a field where you have every opportunity to impress a whole host of people at almost every turn without needing to have someone shepard you through the hallways of “professional journalism”.

    But that being said, is it so bad for someone to use this as a stepping-stone? That some/many/most sites do it differently (pay their contributors) is important, but for someone who has NO experience whatsoever, no contacts, and has no idea how to go about getting their foot in the door…couldn’t a stint under someone’s wing be a decent learning experience, even if other people are getting paid elsewhere? No one is saying that they have to stay there forever. Hell, so many of us blog for free now anyway (for fun, and not for profit), it could be viewed that while these people won’t get paid, they WILL get A) editorial assistance (I assume?), and B) exposure to a wider audience than they might get if they were blogging alone. In that respect, I can see how sacrificing personal gain for a period can net one an intangable benefit in other ways, the same way having to endure selfish researchers can ultimately benefit those undergrads I mentioned above.

    Is their framing it as a “competition” disingenuous? Yeah, I’ll give you that without dissent. If they had been more up-front about trading content for exposure, would that have been a better way to go about it?

  • http://breki.se Breki Tomasson

    This sort of thing has been extremely common in the design world for ages. There are literally hundreds of competitions every month where people say “Design a new logo for our site, the winner gets the honor of us using it!”. Tens or hundreds of people sign up, all of them put hard work into it, but only one of them gets to have his or her work published. Mike Monteiro had an absolutely BRILLIANT speech about this called “Fuck you, Pay me”, that I recommend to everybody: http://vimeo.com/22053820

    Over at CSICON, the way I’ve solved it is that I offer anybody who wants to write the ability to have their own Google AdSense codes in the rotation for the site. 80% of the time somebody visits an article written by AuthorA, the site will display advertisements that directly benefit AuthorA, and 20% of the time they’ll see CSICON’s own advertisements. This way, the authors always have an incentive to write more, to help drive traffic to the site and to promote their own content.

    I don’t want to toot my own horn, but I think that sort of thing is the way things are going to be heading in the future. Instead of an entire site earning money, I think content creation is going to be moving more and more into a meritocracy.

  • http://breki.se Breki Tomasson

    Any situation where people are asked to abstain from being rewarded for their hard labor is fishy. To pay people in promises that “We’ll expose you to a bigger audience” or “We’ll help you get better at writing” is empty. None of those things are payment. None of them accrue interest in the bank. None of them will help you pay your mortgage. None of them will be useful when it’s time to pay the rent.

    If I make some sort of solid, measurable effort to my employer, I expect to be rewarded with solid, measurable rewards, not an “I’ll speak warmly of you”.

  • http://twitter.com/Scopique Scopique

    “to my employer”

    If they are, in fact, your employer, then absolutely. I didn’t get the impression that NowGamer is looking to “employ” anyone here. Granted, I’m not a journalist, so I don’t know how it works IN THIS SPECIFIC FIELD, but they do say “contributor”, which at least to me says that yeah, you get the “honor” of passing in something, with no promise of financial recompense. There may be a formal distinction in the journalism world, so correct me if I’m wrong.

    As someone who HAS been on the end of putting in work for no financial reward, I can agree that it’s unpalitable, but I never approached it as expecting that I’d be getting anything more out of it then a foot in the door and, yeah, someone to “speak kindly of me”. At least in the case of the scientific community, that was actually worth more then a paycheck.

    Now, there’s caveats to this side-by-side. Students generally aren’t relying on that gig to buy groceries and pay rent. They’re IN IT for the experience. If someone is looking to find a paying gig to support themselves, then I can’t see how anyone could seriously consider this as an option. But then again, we all make choices: people who have issues with it need not apply.

    And in light of their deleting of comment: fuck em. Burn their site down.

  • http://twitter.com/Scopique Scopique

    And just to be clear: I don’t support this underhanded attempt at putting people under the whip. While I CAN see that there is a sliver of a silver lining for someone who IS willing to endure the indignity, I realize that this is a far more emotional subject for your guys who are in the journalism business. I respect that, and defer to your experiences in this matter.

  • http://blog.dontfearthemutant.com Petter Mårtensson

    While Breki has already replied to this, I thought I’d add my thoughts.

    As a stepping stone, a position like this is a good thing absolutely. If nothing else, you’ll hopefully get into contact with other writers at NowGamer (the paid ones, that is) and you might learn a lot from them. Who knows?

    I worked for free for a long time. I worked for free for so long, for a semi-amateur site, that when I was offered a freelance gig at a major Swedish publication (which shall remain nameless, but when I say “major” I mean “very major”) I didn’t even think twice about the fact that I wasn’t paid. After all, I suddenly had an audience of thousands of readers and I got to see my byline in print. I got tons of free games and I got to travel the world. It was awesome.

    At the same time, it was a lot of hard work. It was also work I put in for free that the publication in question then turned around and made money from. I learned a lot, I met a lot of wonderful people and made many new good friends. But that doesn’t take away the fact that I *worked* and that they took advantage of that work without paying me. It didn’t cost them anything to keep me on, except for the postage when I was sent review copies from the head office.

    At one point I started to get paid for parts of my work. That’s when I woke up and realised that I was actually working for these people. That I was creating content. Then I started to get paid for all my work and that’s when I very much realised what had been going on.

    Once, a good games journalist friend of mine – a great writer too – asked his editor-in-chief about money. The answer he got was simply “if you’re unhappy, you can always apply for work with another publication and hope they take you on”. As far as I know, he has never been paid. And over the years I’ve seen the quality of his work slowly diminish.

    If you’re new to the business and you are aching to start out, you should be very aware of what is going on – about where the money is coming from and in whose pockets they end up. Because it probably won’t be yours. I’d tell any newcomer to stay away from places like NowGamer because they don’t actually NEED those. They need somewhere to put their articles so that an editor can read them, that’s it. If you’re talented, you will be discovered at some point (that point probably being when you send in examples of your work to someone). Work on a blog, work for an amateur site and write, write, write. Don’t be taken advantage of.

    Then there’s the whole thing about people that write for free devalue not only themselves, but also us that actually write to make ends meet… But this comment is long enough already. :)

    Games journalism is not alone in this, as you point out. I’ve had biologist friends with the same issues. The media business in general is like this – free labor is expected before you might, if you’re lucky, end up in a position where you can ask for money and not be told to get out.

    I’ll happily write for free, if I know that whoever I’m writing for doesn’t take advantage of my work. But I’ll never write unpaid for another professional publication again. And I won’t tell an aspiring games journalist that he/she has to do it to get anywhere. There are better ways and better publications out there.

  • http://blog.dontfearthemutant.com Petter Mårtensson

    Turns out that NowGamer has two pages with identical content. The comments are there, on one of them. Quite the stupid system, but a noob mistake on my part.

  • http://twitter.com/Scopique Scopique

    ”
    If you’re new to the business and you are aching to start out, you should be very aware of what is going on”

    This.

    I think what NG is hoping to capitalize on is that there’s going to be a raft of people who ARE NOT aware of what’s going on. They’re going to be dazzled by being a part of the “NowGamer Network” and won’t even think of what they’re missing out on, or will jump now and think later. That’s trouble in ANY situation, but this apparently more so. 

    As both you and Breki (who’s comment has vanished…) mentioned, the separation of content creation from content management seems to be moving into troubling waters, where creators are at the mercy of managers, and who rarely come out ahead. Although the freelancers may be able to shop their work around, they’re still behind the 8-ball. Even those who ARE employed exclusively seem to find themselves at the mercy of the employer who treats them as disposable assets. I can’t imagine that ANYONE benefits from this: not the writer, who may become disenfranchised with the industry, not the employer, who burns bridges in the Internet age, and certainly not the consumer, who misses out on talent that is relegated to lesser known corners of the web.