Being For the Benefit of Developers Developers Developers Developers

Whatever you think of his opinions, Kieron Gillen's material tends to make for a pretty interesting read. Back in July he gave a speech entitled "How To Use And Abuse The Gaming Press And How The Gaming Press Wants To Use and Abuse You" to a roomful of indie game developers, and he recently put the full transcript (with accompanying slides) up on his website. Gillen, whose games writing has spanned a ludicrously wide breadth of publications and sites, calls on independent and lesser known developers to actively and rabidly pursue the gaming press in the interest of spreading word about their games. He cites a couple examples of games which in all likelihood would not have received publishing deals without a snowball of hype generated by the press. He also incites developers to cultivate cultish followings and answers questions such as "Why the hell do they always quote Peter Bloody Molyneux?"

The secret is that we actually /want/ to write about you. When someone has a phenomenal amount of work to do before the nineteen day clock ticks down to deadline, anyone able to present them something interesting to fill their pages saves them an amount of work. While games writers try to stay aware of what's happening in the games scene, and will go after anything that attracts their attention, by going after the games press you hugely increase your chance for favourable coverage.