Vamp0514 wrote:
There was a person on these boards that mentioned that too many freelancers were contributing too much to the mag while the Editors sat back idely and enjoyed.
Dan`s response was that there were always and will be always freelancers so forget about it.
NOw that Future has changed policy and forced the editors to do more, they say it was always us and then some, and if you don`t trust us forget about it.
So who do we trust.
The freelancers or OXM.
After all the chief retroligist didn`t even put up a review of the USGC (Ultimate Sega Genesis Collection)
Which was obviously Dan`s review as he advertises it in his sig.
I guess I have to ask where is OXM gaining and what are they loosing.
The Jasper content could have been summed up in 1 sentence ``do you see a .4 or .1`on the serial number.
Did you get a memory cards packed on the outside..... Done.
Okay, a few comments here. First, I'm sorry you didn't like the Jasper story; I thought opening them and getting nerdy, which we do rarely, was a fun change of pace -- like, what can we do that the average 360 owner never would? Open our machines for the sake of seeing inside. Most people liked it, a few people complained loudly. It's not a regular column.
Future "forcing" the editors to do more...that's an interesting way to phrase it, and it suggests that you assumed the editors were somehow not working because the freelancers were doing their jobs. That's not true, and of course, nobody attempted to prove it, nor could they -- all due respect, any external guesses about our internal workflow is going to be just that: a guess. Let me take your Genesis collection example and use it to explain away this "freelancers are second-rate" myth and "the editors are lazy thanks to freelancers" myth in one fell swoop!
I did not review the Genesis collection because I was busy that issue doing several other things, and other people (namely Taylor) had familiarity with the source material, so they were just as qualified to levy that critique. (Taylor just worked on a Namco collection on 360 a few issues ago, so he even had a fresh reference point for 360 retro-repackage collections, and what does and doesn't work with them.) Honestly, I have more experience than anybody else on staff with old coin-op games, so the "retrologist" title that Ryan jokingly gave me really came out of that -- I know and remember (and maintain in my garage) old arcade machines better anyone else here. And while I was a Genesis owner (well, still am), other people on staff were too and my take on it was less crucial; they didn't have to go and research Comix Zone, but they would have had to do that for Discs of Tron. The games that are "more important" to have my take on -- Space Invaders Extreme, for instance -- I nearly always do.
Why "nearly always"? We all have preferences and specialties when we review, but some times it comes down to manpower. I'm the features and departments editor (though lately I've been sharing features duty with Corey, because I've been overwhelmed with getting it all planned on my own.) I screen the mail and write Message Center; I plan out the entire 365 section, including recruiting endpage columnists, researching and interviewing the XNA Underground developers, and setting up the giveaways. Inbox is written by Ryan, but I write a lot of the 365 stuff that has no name attached to it, and I edit all of it.
Also in that April issue (where the Genesis collection review appeared), I was responsible for the eight-page Wolfenstein cover feature, the eight-page Ben Heck feature (which involved three days of travel between the two of them, which means everything else is on hold while I do that, plus the time to transcribe the interviews I conduct on tape -- I don't use freelancers for typing up my notes or transcribing my conversations), the preview of L4D Survival, and reviews of CellFactor, Merv Griffin's Crosswords, Puzzle Quest Galactrix, as well as all the Street Fighter peripherals. I did what we internally call the secondary review on the Genesis collection, which is playing it a little more casually/in multiplayer and then discussing the review and score with the primary writer/reviewer; I had input and was able to use my relevant knowledge, but I wasn't driving the bus on that one. I also did secondaries/multiplayer sessions on Peggle, Trivial Pursuit, and Texas Cheat 'Em that issue. FWIW, I also helped with the gameplay and screens for the Watchmen preview and even got some of the screenshots for the Terminator preview sidebar.
And that's just on
my plate. You can imagine what Fran has to do to line up cover opportunities and talk to the top brass and play JRPGs from start to finish besides. Paul and Ryan have their hands full with scheduling and writing reviews and previews respectively. Corey is our traffic cop who analyzes, corrects, and copyedits every single page during shipping, but you'll notice he writes more and more every issue. Everybody on staff has a similar workload to mine.
Managing the magazine is really what we do, and that's why we liked having freelance help when it came to writing. There is no sitting around playing games; there is no pawning our work off on freelancers so we can have mai tais on the beach or any other fantasy life you may have built for us. When we had freelancers, it did save us some time (sadly, the fun stuff -- like, "here, play this game, it's time-intensive") and we used those opportunities to plan even further ahead, or work on story ideas, or things like that. But even when we hired outside help, we still had to find them, assign things to them, edit them, pay them, and all the other mundane elements that go into actually producing the magazine. They still spoke on behalf of the magazine and we always discussed their scores and experiences so that it would match the "voice" of OXM, and would be something we felt comfortable printing and, if need be, defending. They were hired because we trusted them; they were not representing their own interests.
So...I think the suggestions that freelancers were somehow not as good/are untamed forces that do not take their responsibility seriously, or that the editors were slacking and now suddenly have to work for a living is a lot of jealous nonsense. I really like my job -- but even though it's
about a leisure activity, it is work, and no amount of insinuation or guessing from less-informed external sources has changed that yet. It's a really insulting insinuation, especially without any experience with or insight into the process you're criticizing.
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