A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine gave me a nice hint – major media company looking for game journalists for one of its franchise. I instantly thought about it like a good side-job opportunity. A nice match to my skills and interests. I was working as a reviewer for a small news site in high school days and my last full-time job was in scenario department. What could go wrong?

But then something happened. Turning pages from one review to another, researching a place: FarCry, Call of Duty, Just Cause… I catch myself thinking, that I DO NOT want to play these games. Moreover, if I do, I won’t be able to rate them properly. Not anymore.

You know, when you are writing review for some media portal, no one really cares about what you think about that particular game. You are judging a project not by your standards, but by standards of the industry. What’s interesting, and what’s not; what’s addicting and cool, and what’s dull and boring – by means of the industry, not by yours.

Here’s an example. I’ve just played Overwatch – found it pretty boring. Nothing interesting or new. And what if I will have to review this? I understand, that the game fits the industry. A perfect match (probably). It’s not even out yet, but you can already spot tons of crazy fans. So what, where it would leads us to? DNK vs the World? Very funny.

By the way, do you even realize how private, how intimate is relationship between a game and a player? There is a gazillion of factors that could affect your game experience. So how can we possibly talk about “standards” and “scores” here? Feeling like a deadend to me.

When muse strikes me, I write short reviews to lovely games and post them in social networks. Yeah, I don’t get paid for that. But I share my opinion and my experience to the others without looking back at the industry and its “nothing personal” rules. So let it be this way.

P.S. No offence to game journalists and/or their hard job. All above is just a humble opinion of a man, who does not fit for this line of work anymore.