If you notice the word retired in quotes in the title, that's a hint that my retirement from reviewing video games was not of my own volition.
In an age where print media outlets are shedding profits and employees in a neck-to-neck race to rock-bottom insolvency, one would think that offering content that appeals to a mass audience would be pretty high on the priority list. Yet, when the newspaper I worked for starting trimming the fat (i.e. scaling back an already short-handed staff and freezing wages) the first content on the chopping block was entertainment-based. Goodbye, staff-written movie reviews!
When the DVD reviewer took the next hit, I knew my days were numbered. At that point, I had five years of weekly reviews under my belt. I built my network of contacts from scratch — I'll never forget my first review copy, Radiata Stories from Square Enix.
That said, my last year of reviewing was strained. I had started law school while keeping my full-time job (insanity, I know), so I typically only had time to review games around the holidays. I recruited a few co-workers to fill in for me; however, their dedication could never quite match mine. I love playing video games, all kinds of genres (with the exception of sports titles, sorry EA and 2K Sports). They merely enjoyed them, and they apparently couldn't find too much time to devote to playing their assignments.
It's heartbreaking to watch the empire you built crumble.
It had been my intent to groom my successor when finally my transition to lawyerdom was complete, but my reviews fell victim to the editorial ax.
I'm still in law school, but I'm no longer working for that newspaper in any capacity (and no, I didn't quit because my precious reviews suffered an untimely demise). The hard part is now adjusting to being an ordinary gamer, not someone who is swimming in the latest titles. Example: I just realized that Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep released on September 7th, and I was completely out of the loop! I've been eagerly awaiting it, and now I have to do something I haven't done in years: Go BUY a game.
I know, I know. Suck it up. I lived in the blessed realm of sunshine and unicorns for too long, and now it's back to reality. People have no sympathy for the ex-reviewer. But I miss the specialness of it, and how I couldn't wait to write about the game, especially if it was a good game that I didn't want people to miss. I mean, I reviewed Okami twice — for the PS2 and then the Wii — because I wanted so much for people to experience its beauty and inventiveness.
If I can find one good thing about my being a "retired" reviewer,it is that now I can dabble without the deadline pressure. I've returned to some old favorites, downloaded Limbo, and started to tackle the many RPGs I didn't have time to get to.
And after I scrape up the cash, I'm heading to the store to pick up that Kingdom Hearts game. I just have to find out why one of the characters looks exactly like Roxas from Kingdom Hearts 2. You can take the reviewer out of the game, but never the game out of the reviewer.
