When we last spoke with Nathan Meunier, freelance writer and video game journalist extraordinaire, he had just published the first entry in what was to become a series of guidebooks for hopefuls looking to follow in his inky footsteps. That book, Up Up Down Down Left WRITE: The Freelance Guide to Video Game Journalism, covered a plethora of topics that are bound to hound the would-be journalist, including composing pitches, covering gaming conventions, and even getting your pajama-clad daily routine in order. His next entry in the series, Interview Fu: The Game Journo Guide to Conducting Killer Interviews, explores one of UUDDLW's many topics in greater depth and is already available for purchase in print or Kindle formats. We soaked up all of the knowledge present in this new guidebook and used it to pry even more wisdom from the mind of 10-year writing veteran Meunier."While interviewing is covered at a high level in UUDDLW, Interview Fu provides a hyper-focused expansion of the topic that was previously confined to a single chapter. Meunier also expanded the section on pitches into a longer, specialized PDF titled "12 Ways to Improve Your Pitches" after readers responded with overwhelming positivity to its coverage in UUDDLW. "Interview Fu wasn't driven as much by reader response as it was by my own desire to fill an inadvertent void in UUDDLW," Meunier told Gamezebo. "It's one of several areas that I didn't get into very deeply in the first book, in-part because it's a big enough topic to merit an entire separate book. It's also a subject that's near and dear to me, as readers of the book will discover."
One year ago, veteran gaming journalist Nathan Meunier appealed to the Kickstarter masses with a promise: help fund the final push of his work-in-progress book, and he'd fill it with all the juicy games writing advice he could mentally export. That project has now come to life, and Up Up Down Down Left WRITE: The Freelance Guide to Video Game Journalism is available to the reading masses beyond Kickstarter. We tapped both Meunier's book and brain for a closer look at breaking into and thriving in the world of writing about video games.
The Island of Catan is a happening place. It's a hopping chunk of land that's so laden with resources that it has to beat settlers off with a big stick. Everyone wants to stake their claim to a major piece of this hexagonal floating rock in a quest for supreme colonial dominance, but they'll have to plan their turf expansion and resource gathering very carefully if they want to come out ahead. Though it never quite comes to physical blows, this island competition can get pretty cutthroat in a hurry.