Disregarded Demographics: Columnists

We’ve been through traffic wardens, chat show hosts, truck drivers and supermarket workers.  PR, postmen, sewage workers and dog trainers. Now it’s time to close the file on Disregarded Demographics’ employment on Negative Gamer, but not before taking a look at one last group of people left abandoned by videogames.  One closer to my heart than others:  Columnists.

I’ve only really been a columnist for the last six months, on this very site.  I’ve written features on a variety of subjects in my time, but I’ve never been charged with the scribing of a weekly piece that sticks to similar subject matter each time.  The practice is restrictive yet strangely liberating in the freedom it allows you to ramble on, and I hope it’s been a little bit enjoyable for you guys too.  Columnists crop up in just about every publication you can think of, yet you don’t see any games dedicated to them, do you? Shamefully I must admit that I’m sort of anticipating Ubisoft’s Imagine: Journalists, but still I doubt that that’s going to cover them either.  Let’s face it, sitting in a chair at a computer dithering and dribbling over what to jot down next isn’t the most scintillating videogame idea that ever popped into anyone’s head.

When have I given a crap about that, though? It’s my column and there’ll be a game about us if I want there to be.  The PC – the very machine I’m writing this on will do – is the ideal system for our new game.  A title of this nature is going to require a lot of typing.  Picture a self-contained world of information a lá Football Manager.  You begin by desperately making pitches to a number of websites, magazines and newspapers, hoping to entice some interest from them.  A debt meter creeps steadily up the side of the screen while unemployed; if it reaches a boiling point, it’s game over to your dream life of freelancing and over to the drudgery of a desk job that you don’t want so that you can survive.  Let’s go against this site’s name, though, and assume a positive stance – one of your pitches hooks somebody in.  You’re given a column.  Now the fun begins.

Within the pitching stage you will have decided what sort of columnist you want to be.  Critics will be the most familiar to readers of the gaming press.  You must review the latest products of whatever field you choose, then sit and wait to receive the backlash, be it from readers for scoring something too highly or PR agencies for berating what they want you to promote.  Agony Aunts have to resolve problems or offer advice to their readership, from the most mundane topics to potentially life-threatening ones.  Entertainment columnists – i.e. celebrity mud slingers – have the most interesting role of all, debatably.  They must build up a repertoire of contacts to continually schmooze with for information on famous people.  A line must be reached in terms of style that amuses readers and embarrasses celebrities simultaneously – but not to the point that your subject matter will want to punch you outside nightclubs or sue you.

You’ve managed to get your debt solution approved and you’ve chosen what sort of person you’d like to be.  You now have four main panels to use from this point onwards.  The first is the news panel, where you are sure to get much of your inspiration.  It also allows you to keep an eye on the competition, to see that you’re not running with the same ideas for example.  Probably the more important section is your email inbox.  Here you can chase stories and attempt to obtain juicy nuggets of information and quotes.  Due to the technical inability of getting bits of code drunk at parties in order to leak information, your sources are purely made up of in-game characters who have emailed you first, or ones you have picked up through other characters.  Or by stealing them from rival news sources.  Email is also used for communication with your editors and any members of your readership that bother to contact you.  You do not have to respond to anything sent to you, but the email works on a morality system of sorts that dictates how popular you are in the public eye depending upon how you react to messages.

A selection of mindless Flash games make up another panel, to help you get around the crippling writer’s block that you will suffer on occasion.  The final panel is where most of the game time is spent: the writing screen, where you must physically type out your columns.  You can’t cheat.  The pieces must be written, and the game tests this in a few different manners.  First is your basic spelling and grammar check, ensuring you don’t write gobbledegook just to fill the space.  Second is the need for a constant Internet connection so that the game can run your article through algorithms to check that it is not plagiarised from a real world news source.  Finally, your work is uploaded to a central database so that you cannot simply plug the same words in again and again should you get bored.  What happens to the articles, nobody knows.  Maybe the developers could sell them to other players as DLC for the in-game news source.  Stop writing for the game, though, and crude articles bearing your name will mysteriously begin appearing on the real Google News, scuppering any chance at a future writing career.  Not that you will want one after dealing with this fiendish piece of software.

Well, that’s it.  For now, I’m done here as a regular, but I’m sure I’ll still see you all around as I pop in and out sporadically like some flea-infested jack-in-a-box.  Keep those ignored people in mind as much as possible and if you’re development-inclined, get making games about them.  Most of all, be good and stay negative.  I’ll be watching…

Images: JRenseyblog, DaddyExecutive, ACPLTeens