Via my Facebook and Twitter feeds I've seen a few comments recently from bloggers and online journalists talking about what heroes they are for their feats of prowess and everything they have to put up with on their game/film/whatever websites. These young whippersnappers don't know they're born! Like an embittered war veteran I don't often talk about the early days of my own games journalism career, but allow me to put the hardships and heroics of today's young web journalist generation into perspective by detailing some of the things my generation had to put up with to put out a monthly games magazine.
I started writing about games professionally in early 1988, first for Commodore User and then The One for 16-Bit Games. Back then, this is what it was like:
* Word processing? LOL! It wasn't until the early 1990s when the first Macintoshes arrived in the office and we marveled in awe at the technological luxuries that the current generation was born taking for granted. Before then, back in my day, we wrote our game reviews on an electric typewriter which may or may not have had error correction (the few that did were highly coveted and fiercely fought over - the rest of us had to do make do with liquid paper). Once it's all written out, pull out your red pen and go through it to correct all the mistakes you missed while the paper was still in the typewriter, as well as any notations for bold, italics etc. Don't forget to use the correct typographical notation marks or the typesetters won't have a clue what you mean.
* Desktop publishing? ROFL! No. After the raw copy is approved it is faxed (a wonder of the modern age) to the typesetters hundreds of miles away, who a day or two later (if you're lucky) will send you galleys with the text formatted into (if you're lucky) the correct typeface and column widths. (Hope that there are no mistakes because there's no way to fix 'em without having the whole thing typeset over again.) Now it's time to take those long strips of text and lay them out. Of course, you can forget about using Quark XPress (or whatever the pros use these days, I don't even know) with all those neat text flow/wraparound tools and other things that make basic magazine layouts so fast and easy. Here, take this razor-sharp exacto-knife and this can of 3M Spray Mount. Try not to cut yourself or inhale too many of the highly carcinogenic fumes as you cut and paste (yes, that's not some imaginary term, there was real cutting and there was actual paste) the text galleys around boxes of the 35mm transparencies of screenshots that you hope will look okay when blown up later - who knows?
* Capturing screenshots using state-of-the-art screengrab utilities and hardware? LMAO! Here's how we did it - go into the "dark room" (usually a small cupboard-like room with garbage bags taped over the windows to keep out the sunlight), set up your 35mm film camera so it's pointing at the game you want to screenshot, then assemble your home-made tent of more garbage bags and scotch tape (because the ones over the window don't really keep out all the light) and hope to God the game has a pause mode that doesn't splatter the word PAUSE all over the screen. Or maybe it does but PAUSE flashes on and off so you have to snap your screenshots in the little half-second windows when it's not there. Or maybe it doesn't at all and you just have to take super fast-exposure pics and hope they're not too blurry after the roll of film comes back from the developers a day later - if you're lucky. Oh, and did I say after it comes back? I meant after you've walked six blocks to the developers to pick it up yourself.
* Internet? ROFLMAO! If you want to talk to someone or send them a message, pick up the phone. If you need to research something, get down to the library. Try just for a moment, tender young weblings, to imagine doing your job in a world where Google and Wikipedia don't exist. Where email doesn't exist. Where none of the internet exists. Yeah. And even after word processing came in, forget about even moving files electronically around the office using some fancy-schmancy file-sharing network because that shit ain't been invented yet; or if it had our office didn't have it. Dump that copy onto a floppy, son, and walk it over to whomever needs it, or put it in a little envelope marked up with the correct info (article title, author, revision number, etc) and leave it in the correct tray for collection.
* Finally, it's time to publish. What is it you kids today do again? Oh right, you press the button that says "Publish". As opposed to staying up all night waiting for the acetate film sheets of the final layouts to come back from the color house then going painstakingly through the C, M, Y and K separations (because full-color Chromalines were a luxury affordable only for the front cover and a few select pages) looking for errors.
There's more, much more, but the more of this I type, the older I feel.
Kids today, I swear.