Dan Amrich
Los Angeles, CA
Male, 41
I started reviewing videogames professionally in 1993, when Genesis and SNES roamed the earth. Over the next 15 years I worked for magazines and websites like GamePro, GamesRadar, Official Xbox Magazine, and World Of Warcraft Official Magazine, while freelancing for Wired, PC Gamer, and many others. In an attempt to guide the next generation of reviewers, I wrote and published Critical Path: How to Review Videogames For A Living in February. Ask away!
Little confused by the phrasing here, so I will try to answer. Most press kits are a stack of paper, or rather, a zip file of screens and Word documents. I saved the Interstate 76 folder and papers because it is one of my favorite games of all time. The games themselves that you get for review -- if they are final retail copies, which they may or may not be -- usually become the property of the magazine, unless the publisher wants them back, and they sometimes do. Pre-release copies of games have to be returned or destroyed. Check the question about the process of reviewing a game for a more detailed answer on this one. I am proud to have held on to my copy of Earthbound for SNES. I really enjoyed that game (one of the few RPGs that I got into) and it has turned out to be rather rare/collectible. I also have a copy of an obscure Xbox game called Circus Maximus signed by the whole dev team; I was one of the very few reviewers who really liked that game, so when they sent me a personal copy, it was autographed by 50 people.
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I have a specialty and most reviewers acquire one. I was not a sports guy when I was reviewing games, except for action-oriented sports games like NBA Jam or NFL Street. Simulation sports games were reserved for experts who really knew the depth of those franchises and could give better advice. My specialties have been music games, skateboarding games, and arcade racers, but I didn't do many JRPGs, as it wouldn't do the reader much good to to the reader to have someone who was not naturally drawn to and informed on that genre do a review.
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Many times games would be 95% done, or "RC1" -- release candidate 1 -- meaning "we think it's done, it's being approved now by the first-party companies.": But my job was to evaluate, not offer advice for improvement; by the time it reached my hands, it was ready for judgment. A few times we got demos ahead of time and the publisher would overtly ask for design feedback, but it was something of an etiquette breach; most publishers hire consultants during development (many of whom are ex-media) to tell them what they feel the game needs and what score it is likely to receive in its current state. So the reviewer is really there to serve the potential customer, not the publisher.
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I realized I was a writer in college, and on my first job at Guitar World, I learned that you had to be able to write about anything if you are truly going to call yourself a writer. So I specialize in entertainment stuff -- I've written movie reviews, music reviews, feature stories, news items -- but I have also written -- but I can, with a little practice, write other things too. More grown-up things, if you will. My mom spent 25 years as a bookkeeper. I do not have her gift for math, but I went to work with her one summer during college, in another department, in the typing pool at an insurance company. For me, it was a little taste of hell. New Jersey's drivers license numbers are 17 digits long and a mix of alphanumerics. At the time (early 90s) they were still hand-typing insurance cards on electric typewriters. I had a strict hour for lunch and was not allowed to leave my desk for other reasons. I was not allowed to get up to go home until a bell rang. This is in a company that has existed for decades. A bell. And when it rang, people RAN away from their desks. I could not believe it -- and I have never seen a less healthy work environment. Thankfully my mother has retired; I now check the news hoping to hear that the company has gone out of business, or perhaps burned to the ground. So when my parents said "what do you WANT to do for a career," I thought about what I thought my strengths were and what I found satisfacting doing, and I set about doing that. I then put a colossal amount of work into making that career happen -- lots of cold calls, lots of awkward introductions, lots of unpaid writing for exposure and establishing myself -- because I knew what I would wind up doing if I didn't. You're basically asking me if I wish I had chosen a job where the topic was less fun. The answer is no. :)
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Subway Store Manager
What do you think is the healthiest option on the Subway menu?
Professional Poker Player
Are you worried that online poker is rigged?
Subway Store Manager
The 6" sub is too small and the 12" is too big. Why no 9-inch sub?
I applied for a job at GameSpot once, but have never worked there -- I think you mean GamePro, where I wrote as "Dan Elektro" from 1997 to 2003. Leaving GamePro was very difficult and emotional. I really thought I would be there for my entire career, and my wife Kat (Miss Spell) and I really enjoyed the luxury of working together. We have a great shorthand that makes us very efficient together. A change of management valued me but not her, and we got an offer from Future to go as a team to work on a new project. I wanted to stay at GP, and made that clear, but I wanted to keep this creative partnership going more, so we took the other offer. The project we worked on only lasted a year so I transitioned to GamesRadar, where I was US employee #2. It was a long and sometimes torturous process, but I think it's that way with any startup project. The daily grind and chaos got to me and started affecting my health, so when an opening appeared at OXM, I almost begged for it -- and it turned out to be a great fit. I am still super proud of those three years and the features the magazine ran on my watch. However, it became clear that with a staff full of superstars with seniority, there was little room to advance -- and in over a decade, I had never been Editor-in-Chief of anything. The WoW mag gave me that opportunity and I was one of the bigger fans of the game in the office, so it was a natural fit. I do not consider myself a flighty person -- I like to pick a project and stick with it long-term -- so the shorter sections of my resume are a little embarassing. But in all cases, I was chasing job satisfaction. I know what I'm good at, and I want to play to my strengths. Writing makes me happy, and I always wanted to write for outlets where my voice and skills were a good fit.
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Sure, why not? There is no expiration date on loving your hobby, even if it's your job. One of my mentors is Andy Eddy, who has several years on me and jokingly calls himself "the oldest gamer." You're gaining wisdom and more information, which really puts a review in a more authoritative context. When you are reading the review of a 20-year-old, they have only been playing games attentively for maybe 10 years. When you read the review of a 40-year-old, you have three times as much experience going into that opinion. So older writers definitely have value...says the older writer. And I have no reason to fall out of love with my lifelong hobby.
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Not much nostalgia is good for reviews; remember, you have to review the game in front of you, not the game that came before it. I expect the reviewer to be familiar with the series so they can accurately assess how it's different from previous chapters, since you can assume the audience will have experience with the series too. My editor was concerned that I would not be objective enough with my review of the Xbox 360 Ghostbusters game, since I am a huge fan and nostalgia weighs heavily on me. I was able to split my duties as a reviewer with my love as a fanboy, and it turned out that my review score was not only on par with other people who reviewed it, but the developer later told me that 8 out of 10 "sounded about right." As a fan, I have to say, 9.5 -- but that's fueled by nostalgia and feeling appreciated for my emotional investment in the franchise. Ultimately, you have to respect the past, but you're reviewing the present. And we all know that the past looks better over time, and you only really remember the high points. Play the game in front of you expecting it to be the game in front of you; the experience you had before is a different experience.
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