20 Years Game Editor And Yet Not A Bit Grown Up

When I talk about my job, the question immediately arises: can you make a living from it? The answer: It was still possible. But I don't want to gloss over anything here. The times are getting harder and the years in which hundreds of euros were collected for short texts are long gone.

With the slow extinction of print magazines - most recently the computer picture games - fees also fell. In plain language this means: write more or position yourself wider. If you want to work in an industry that now communicates externally via streams and YouTube, you should not be camera-shy and ideally should also publish two and a half straight sentences.

When I started out, I thought writing and playing would make up 95 percent of my workload. I know better today. Every second colleague - me too, of course - runs a podcast or plays in bands, collects retro games or deals with other nerd topics. Creativity and a wide range of interests help to find the topics.

Do you have pants on?

Perhaps it is this working environment that makes my “office” look more like a mixture of a mancave and a children's room. On the one hand, old video games are piling up, on the other, characters from titles such as Assassin's Creed, Doom and other gaming series are giving each other a hand. Even the toilet is not safe from so much passion for collecting. Far-Cry-Despot Pagan Min watches over there, of course, and makes sure that everyone is washing their hands.

After working half my life in the home office, the good Pagan apparently did his job properly. That's another thing: working from home. Everyone dreams of that, and yet there are some dangers. Because if you prefer to hang in front of the telly in your dressing gown in the morning, you won't get anything done throughout the day. A little self-discipline is part of it. Which is not to say that occasional bumbling doesn't have to be allowed.

The best times are when a long-term test is due - ideally in winter. Testing a new, hopefully really good game all day long is always amusing and also elicits occasional screams of joy. In general, I now have a lot of memories of certain articles and games: For example, I connect The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt with a monster guide that almost made me crazy. Thanks for the much too tight deadline. At the old The Getaway I struggled for a complete solution with countless errors, crashes and bugs and had only one weekend to play through.

What does the job give you?

Let's be honest: if you are looking for a great career, you will hardly find anything as a game editor. Of course, the job always waves to PR or other areas of the industry, but that was always too far away from the game for me. For me, the small and large moments are what make the job so appealing.

The big moments certainly include trips to events and the experiences there. To this day, a scar on my left wrist reminds me of a trip to Poland for Call of Duty 2: Big Red One. Thanks to my job, I attended the WWE Wrestlemania 32 wrestling event, making my dream come true again. Most recently, I played football with one of my absolute ManUnited heroes, Park Ji Sung. How cool is that?

But with all the youthful joy of this “dream job”, one thing above all should not be forgotten: one thing that makes this job so special: the people. Over the past 20 years, I've been able to meet some of the nicest, most creative, and most self-sacrificing people in the world. Some of them are unfortunately no longer with us and for them I light an imaginary candle at this point. It is the people who make video games and the related professions - no matter in which area - so special.

And if someone asks me in 20 years time why I did this job and didn't do anything "right", then that will be exactly my answer: Because "normal" would simply have been much too reasonable.

Which game should I play in 2020? (Quiz)

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