How To Become A Video Game Reviewer

So you want to be a video game reviewer, huh? You want to sit back and get free video games in exchange for writing, or speaking if you’re doing a video review, your opinion about the game? Well you’re in the right place; I can tell you how to do that. In my couple of years as a gaming blogger/reviewer, I’ve received quite a few free games for review. These games range from the full-blown $60 so-called “AAA” blockbuster titles for console or PC, to the small and cheap downloadable indie games for PC, PSN, and XBLM. On the occasions where I’ve scored a review copy of a big release title before its release, say Madden or Saints Row IV, I ALWAYS get a ton of new PSN friend requests and messages of “how did you get the game early?” It never fails, and the amount that came after getting the platinum for Saints Row IV before its release was absurd (people found out because of sites like PSNProfiles.com and trophy syncing). I may not accept all friend requests, but in general I always try to explain via a reply that I’m reviewing the game and it was a review copy. This always gets followed up with “what’s your site?,” “is it (getting review copies) hard?,” and “how can I go about doing that?” Here’s the number one thing that should be your main take away from this article; you should not be writing or game blogging to simply try and score review copies! That is the absolute wrong attitude to have, and if you start out with that mentality and don’t quickly change it, you’re going to fail. Have a passion for gaming and writing, and treat it professionally even if you aren’t making money at it. Write about gaming and the latest news or trailers; but don’t just regurgitate press releases. Buy games and review them; the more you write the better you will get, and the more reviews you write the better they will become. Treat your reviews professionally, which means try to use proper grammar and spelling. No one is going to take you serious if you’re writing like you’re sending a text message or posting some drivel in the comments on YouTube.

“Is getting review copies hard?”

The short answer is no. Honestly, it isn’t that difficult at all. I have had blogs in the past, and whatever its focus, I’d usually write something gaming related on it purely because I’m a gamer. I had written game reviews before, for games that I bought of course, and had never even given thought to free games and review copies. Before this site got its start in April 2011, I was writing wrestling columns for LordsOfPain.net. If you’re a wrestling fan who visits that fairly popular site you may even have read some of my stuff (I wrote under the screenname “Stinger,” and my columns were “Deadly Venom” and “A View From the Rafters”). When the demo for the WWE All Stars game hit PSN, I tweeted to THQ and the WWE Games community manager at the time, Marcus Stephenson, that I really liked the demo and was looking forward to the games release. Apparently they were fans of LOP and asked if I would be interested in receiving a copy of the game to review. Naturally, I said absolutely because it was a game I was going to pay $60 for and they were offering to send it to me for free in exchange for writing my thoughts about the game (something I was going to do anyway). And so, WWE All Stars was my first review copy. And since I was getting burned out and growing tired of writing about wrestling under a deadline and with no pay, I decided to leave LOP and start my own site with a focus on gaming. Thus, here we are today. My first retail review copy for this site came a few months after I started the site, and it was a PS3 copy of Madden NFL 12 which I had not even requested (I’ll cover this process soon) but had covered. Honestly, I had no business receiving a review copy of that game. It in no way benefited EA Sports as traffic to the site was maybe 100 visitors a day at that time. See, it isn’t hard… you don’t have to be a big site and pull in a ton of visitors. So now the reason you’re here…

“How can I go about doing that?”

If you’re looking to do video reviews then you have to start a YouTube channel (or some other platform, but don’t handicap yourself here). I’m not a YouTuber, so I can’t really help you on that front. If that’s the route you’re going, then there’s equipment that you’re going to have to invest at least a little bit in. You’re going to need a decent microphone, and if you’re going to show yourself in the video then you’ll need a decent camera. You’re also going to need a way to capture your gameplay. There are built in ways to do that on PS4 and Xbox One, and easy free ways to do it on a PC. If you’re serious about it though, on consoles, you’ll want to invest in a capture device like an Elgato. You’ll also need software to edit video, and a program to record audio (the free Audacity program is pretty great). As you can see, there’s a lot involved in that on the start up front. My recommendation here would be to start small and work with what you’ve got. Unless you’re rich, don’t spend a ton of money when you’re just starting out. Use what you have (you do want a decent microphone though, and something relatively cheap like a Blue Snowball will do just fine) and see if it’s something you’re going to like doing and be able to stick with before investing a ton of money. You don’t want to be the person who gets hyped up on the idea of becoming the next big game review YouTuber and runs out spends a bunch of money, makes videos over a three week period, and then gives up because there wasn’t immediate growth. If you do that, you’ll just end up with a ton of expensive equipment ready to be listed on eBay. If you’re like me, video content’s not going to be your thing. You want to write, not talk (although you video folks still should write a script). For that you need an outlet. Unless you can get in with someone else who already has a site going (and I’d advise against that when just starting out) you’re going to want to create a blog or website, whatever you want to call it. I want to point out for the would be video reviewers, the rest of this chapter is geared towards those who will be going the blog route. You could pay for a webhost and set up a site, but I personally wouldn’t recommend starting that way. Maybe I’m just cheap, but spending money on a host and then trying to build an audience, which takes time, seems counterproductive when there are viable free options out there. I say that particularly to those of you who might be more prone to giving up when you’re getting very few to no visitors three months after starting. Don’t waste money if you aren’t sure you’ll stick with it. For that reason, if you don’t already have a blog/site, I recommend using WordPress.com. It’s free and easy, and when you eventually feel like taking the site to a paid host and running the self hosted WordPress platform, you’ll be able to easily import all of your posts, comments, and subscribers. Of course WordPress.com has its restrictions- you can’t install plugins (unless you pay for the expensive Business plan) or run ads (outside of WordAds)- but it is the best option for starting out when you just want to focus on the content and building an audience. Plus it gives you the time to see if it is something you’re going to want to stick with without having to spend money. You should spend some time researching the differences between WordPress.com and WordPress.org (the self hosted one). If you know for sure that you’re going to be doing this and not give up on it, and you want to be able to monetize it as quickly as possible, getting your own web host and using the WordPress.org platform may be the best option for you. You’ll have the most freedom there and will be able to customize to your heart’s content. But, because of how easy it is to switch from WordPress.com to a self-hosted site, I’d still recommend starting out on the freely hosted WordPress.com. It’s a personal preference, do what feels right for you; you know your situation better than I do. Before going any further down the blog route I must point out that it’s the Internet and current year, which means less and less people care about reading. Video content is typically king these days and more and more folks would rather watch a streamer play the game than they would read someone’s opinion. Text based reviews is a bit of an uphill battle. With that said, there’s certainly nothing stopping you from doing a hybrid of the two. The great thing about YouTube videos is that you can embed them. So even if you go with a blog or a website, you can post your written review and also include a video review. That’s probably the best route to take honestly because it covers all the basis. If you can also stream the new release game on Twitch or YouTube, all the better. If you want a site, the first thing you have to do is determine where you want to host it. Again, I recommend a beginner to just go with WordPress.com. It’s completely free and it’s reliable. You don’t have to worry about anything. You can just focus on building your brand and writing. The platform can expand with you via paid upgrades, but if you feel you outgrow it or want more freedom then you can always take your site with you. But unless you know 100% that you’re going to be dedicated completely and a success, why waste money at the beginning on a web host that’s going to charge you by the month or year? Right now, this site, Vortainment.com, is still on WordPress.com. I’m extremely happy here; it’s a great service. Of course I’ve put money into the site with a getting a paid plan. But the site can be freely hosted. It’s always up and has been no hassle to me. It also makes some money, thanks to the unobtrusive WordAds program (which I’ll talk more about later), so it’s a win-win for me. Having said that, there was a time when I thought the time was right to move my site to a paid host and to the self-hosted WordPress platform. I went with DreamHost, who I had heard and read nothing but good things about. It was a fine experience for a while, but eventually the site got to where it was down more than it was up. Then I was having to be in contact with support and working on backend stuff instead of writing content. They have a pretty generous 90-day hassle free refund period, and I was a couple of days away from that when I decided to forget it and just move back to WordPress.com and got my money back. Obviously tons of people have success with that method, but that one ultimately bad experience caused me to just be happy with WordPress.com. You might have a completely different experience, perhaps smooth sailing for you. But when you’re just starting out fresh, I personally advocate taking a smart free approach that allows you to write and build an audience without having to worry about anything else. Now that’s not to say that you shouldn’t invest any money in your site at the beginning. I do recommend getting a domain name if nothing else, and while they can be a little costly, purchasing a good theme is also high on the priority list. WordPress offers a number of good free themes to use at the very beginning, but a quality theme is ultimately important. And the more you can customize it, the better it is because you don’t want your site looking like every site that also uses the same theme. As for the domain, I’m not going to tell you how to name your site or pick a domain. There’s lots of advice out there about trying to get your keywords in your name but keeping it short. My site is called Vortainment, which means “a vortex of entertainment.” I would suggest that you come up with a unique and relatively short name for your site that you can get either the .com or .net domain for and also get the name on social media platforms. Once you have your host and your name, and you have picked out a theme, you’re ready to start fixing up the site itself. I recommend you keep things simple and organized from the very beginning. Two things you’re going need to use for that organization are categories and tags. A post should only be in one category the majority of the time. In the case of reviews, the category could be “Reviews” if you’re just doing video games. I do games, movies, books, and other stuff, so I actually put it in two categories; Reviews and Gaming. You do what you think works best for your own organizational needs. Tags are the other organizational tool that you’ll use and will have a lot of value for your audience, so it’s important to have a plan for them and get it right at the beginning. Take it from me, because I speak from personal experience, you don’t want to have to restructure your site later on and have to edit thousands of posts to have a tagging system that makes sense and is simple to readers. So let’s say you’re posting a review of a game, and for this example we’ll use Borderlands 3 , here’s how you might go about organizing it. Title: Borderlands 3 Review Category: Reviews, Gaming Tags: gearbox, 2k games, borderlands, ps4, xbox one, pc, fps, looter shooter That’s really all the tags you need. That’s all the relevant information; developer, publisher, game title, platforms, and genre. If you want, you can even list the score as a tag (that tends to work better if you use a star system) and also “game reviews” as a tag. The point is to keep it simple. You don’t need to go overboard with tags. Think of them as an index for your site; it’s relevant information so that your readers can easily find all posts of a similar nature. You’ll notice that the category is capitalized and the tags are all lower case. You can capitalize the first letter in your tag, but it’s best to do tags in lowercase. There’s no SEO (search engine optimization) law about it, but it just helps keep categories and tags distinct for your reader. If you look at the tags as the index, then think of the categories as the chapters of your blog. Earlier I mentioned WordAds, and so let’s briefly go over this. I personally recommend using WordPress.com, when starting out at least. However, if you want complete freedom to monetize your content, know that WordPress.com is limited to just using their own WordAds program if you qualify. You need a custom domain name and you must also meet their minimum traffic requirement, which they don’t specify. They do point out that in order to make “meaningful revenue,” you’ll need thousands of pageviews a month. You can also use an Amazon Affiliate link, but you can’t turn your site into some affiliate marketing thing on the WordPress.com free platform; it’s against the terms of service and will just your site banned.

When and How to Request Review Copies

There is no real, sure fire way to answer this. It depends on the game and your relationship with the publisher or firm handling the title; i.e. have you worked with them in the past on getting a review copy, or is this the first time they’re hearing about you. If it’s a big release title that is guaranteed to have a lot of interest, I’d say request a month out. In most cases, two weeks will suffice because the smaller sites typically aren’t going to get copies early anyway (release day copies are pretty much the norm for the non-big sites). If you request a month out, the worst thing that is going to happen is you’ll possibly get a reply back stating they’ll make a note of your request but won’t start putting together a list until closer to launch. If that happens, simply follow up two weeks before the game is scheduled to be released. The “how” is the easiest part (again, once you get past feeling weird about it… which may just be me, I don’t know). You should have already been familiar with the contact for the game and been emailing your coverage to them, but of course you don’t always have to take that route. Your request may be the first time you’ve emailed anything about the game. I like to keep it relatively short, and I do have a go-to request style. Here is an actual request email that I sent out where I did get a copy of the game: “Hi, I’m Gary Smith, I am the Editor-in-Chief of, and a reviewer at, Vortainment ( https://vortainment.com ). I’m writing to put in a request to be added to the review list for “REDACTED”. Specifically, I’m inquiring about receiving a PS4 copy of the game for review. If I can be added to the list, my mailing address is included below…” And then I’d provide my mailing address since it was the first time I had ever contacted this person and I also included links to some of the Borderlands 2 coverage. That’s it. If it’s a first time contacting them, introduce yourself and then tell them why you’re writing. Short and sweet. Some folks like to try and be fancy and include their stats and link to Alexa and all sorts of things. I don’t mention that stuff (maybe once I might have), and you shouldn’t unless you are asked (and if you are asked, be honest. Plenty of publishers, including big ones, are more than willingly to work with smaller sites). The main thing is to be professional and respectful with it. If your request is “Yo, gimme this game for review,” you’re not going to get anywhere. There is no magic formula or email to send out. You’ll get some, and you won’t get some (most). When you do receive a game though, play it thoroughly and write a review of it in a relatively timely manner and always send the link to your review to your contact. When you do that all you have to say is, “here’s the link to my review, [provide the link], thanks for sending it out, have a great day!” And don’t expect a reply back, but usually they’ll eventually respond with a “thanks for the review.” Don’t be nervous sending the link if you score the game low either; you’re not on Metacritic and they truly aren’t going to be upset. Be timely with your reviews, so don’t request more games than you can potentially handle. The object is not to acquire as many free games as you can. If you request four games that all come out on the same day, and you get all four of them yourself, then you aren’t doing anyone any good because you’re either not going to spend enough time with each game to write a honest review or some of the reviews are going to be way late.

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