10 Game Journalism Industry Questions - Mark Serrels

10 Questions from Cav - Friday, 06 November 2009 @ 2:55pm

Fullname: Mark Serrels Nickname: Boris Gender: Male Age: 28 Current Company: Future Publishing Australia Current Position: Editor of The Official Nintendo Magazine (Facebook | Twitter) Gaming systems owned: Wii, PS3, Xbox360, DS, PSP, PC

1.What is your job role where you work and can you explain what it entails?

What’s happening chaps? My name is Mark Serrels and I’m the Editor of the Australian Official Nintendo magazine.

An average day in my life usually goes down thusly – I get off the train and think, bugger it, I’m hungry I want a Sausage and Egg McMuffin, so I go to McDonalds then turn up for work 15 minutes late. Soooo worth it.

Then I’ll check my mail, and reply to everyone. I prefer to deal with the interwebs when it comes to communication, because when I use the phone people hear my broad Scottish accent and assume that Zombie William Wallace has been raised from the dead and decided to give them a quick buzz. Either that or they don’t understand a single solitary word I say.

“I keeeed... I keeeed!” Except for the Sausage and Egg McMuffin part – that truly is the breakfast of champions.

Actually my day to day responsibilities are quite varied – I play a lot less videogames than you might imagine. A lot of my time is spent planning the magazine, writing the magazine, telling other people what to write for the magazine, going back and forth to the toilet, talking to various people in the games industry asking “where the f*ck ‘game x’ is” because I need to review it before deadline.

2.What other media have you been directly involved with previously?

I’ve written for a whole heap of different media ‘outlets’ (god damn that word sounds wanky), both online and in print: IGN, Games TM, Play, Hyper, Gameplayer, Popmatters, blah blah blah. I worked full time on the Official PlayStation Magazine for a good 18 months before moving across to work on Australian 360 magazine at the beginning of this year. I just started on the Official Nintendo Magazine three weeks ago!

3.How did you get your start in the industry?

Er, it’s a tough one to answer really. My first gig, like most ‘first gigs’, was ‘for the love’ – ie for absolutely no money whatsoever! Of course, I didn’t mind, I loved the work. From there I started writing freelance for a couple of magazines in the UK. It was at that point that I retardedly asked my Australian girlfriend to marry me, meaning that I had to move to Australia. Before I moved across I got in contact with a bunch of editors, mainly Narayan Pattison (then Editor of the Official PlayStation Magazine, now Editor in Chief at IGN Australia), and got offered work there.

4.What has been the most positive experience of working in the games industry so far?

It’s been mostly positive to be honest – I’ll complain now and then, but it really is one of the best jobs in the world. I’ve always loved writing, and it goes without saying that I’ve always loved video games – combining the two is like an awesome toasted sandwich crafted by the hands of Jeebus Christ himself, featuring steak, chicken, bacon, and BBQ awesome-sauce.

If I had to choose one thing it would be getting your magazine for the first time, after you’ve slaved and worked your ginger (in my case) balls over it for weeks. It’s really satisfying to flick through it, and check out what you wrote, how it all looks, how it all comes together. It’s really rewarding, and keeps me coming into work in the morning.

Apparently a typical Mr Serrels lunchbreak

5. What has been the most negative experience of working in the games industry so far?

I won’t name names, but easily the most negative experience of working in the games industry is dealing with flak from review scores. Most take it well, but a vocal minority have their little tantrums, demanding re-reviews and the like. I hope I don’t sound too arrogant when I say this, but what I hate more than anything is having my integrity questioned – ie someone claiming I have some agenda by giving their game a low score. That’s just bullshit at its utmost smelliest.

I’ve had people emailing me a bunch of review scores from other mags/websites that are higher than the one I’ve given, or bitched because my score is lower than the metacritic average – as if game journos are supposed to congeal together into some ‘effed’ up hybrid Hivemind when we review games. It irks me no end.

People have to take the good with the bad!

6. What advice can you give to other people looking to get into a position such as yours?

I get asked this quite a lot – to be honest I think I got lucky! That, and I happened to get in contact with an Editor who was super helpful and accommodating when it came to helping people get into games writing (Narayan Pattison – living legend). I’ve tried to be like that whenever someone asks me if they can write for our mag.

What I would say, though, is that you have to write for free – to begin with at least. There are plenty of websites out there that’ll be happy to put your work out there and help you build up a portfolio of decent articles, and that’s the best place to start.

But you have to be able to write, and willing to learn. You have to start emailing people and showing them your stuff. You have to be on time and work to strict deadlines. From there you can start getting some freelance gigs and, when the opportunity arises, you can get yourself a full time gig – if you want one!

Honestly – if you email me with some examples of your work, and maybe a resume, I’ll get back to you.

7. How do you see Print Media as a market when compared to the Online world?

It’s different, more different than people realise. Print has plenty of strengths which I really tried to play to.

With online it’s all about hits, and sometimes that leads to a loss of quality when it comes to content – fanboy baiting stories, rubbish opinion pieces, recycled news, etc – and it’s pretty easy to resort to that, especially if there’s pressure. I really admire sites like Eurogamer and 1up who have managed to build up a solid reputation and community, because it’s cutthroat, and a lot tougher than you’d think.

The great thing about print is that, once someone has bought the magazine, you essentially have a captive audience; which means that while reader X bought the magazine for the Zelda cover story, they’ll read the in-depth feature on WiiWare developers – because they’ve already bought the magazine! They’ll read it on the toilet or something! That’s not something you would click on in a website at all.

That’s what I tried to do a bit more with print: give people the exclusive reviews, the previews on the big games, the things people will buy the magazine for; but then provide something with more depth – big quality features that people will slowly start to identify the magazine with. My hope is that readers will come for the games, for the reviews, for the big reveals, then stay for the features kind of thing!

8. Got any good stories you want to share?

I’ve got loads, but plenty involve people I still have to work with! And they’d probably be a bit boring unless you actually knew the people involved.

The best one I can think of right now is the fact that I’ve actually pissed next to Hideo Kojima in a urinal on two separate occasions!

First time was during a Metal Gear Solid 4 press event in Japan in a mental Konami holiday hideaway which can only be described as a Japanese Bond villain lair (if you have the special edition of MGS4 this trip is documented on the special features disc). I was about halfway through the game, loaded up on Diet Coke, so I needed a piss – real bad. I went in to the toilet, and a couple of minutes later, as I was mid stream, Kojima shuffles in, and starts going right next to me.

It was crazy awkward, cause I’m obviously a fan of his work – but this was hardly the best time to spark up a conversation in my dreadful 20 word Japanese vocabulary, so I just continued pissing in silence, washed my hands and got back to the game!

Then about 14-15 months later, at this year’s E3, I was heading into the Ubisoft conference, and after waiting in a huge queue to get my pass, ran quickly to the toilet for a quick slash. I couldn’t believe it – there was Hideo Kojima, pissing in the urinal. This time, he finished before me, but the coincidence was pretty staggering.

It seems as though, across oceans and time differences, Hideo Kojima and I are somehow on the exact same piss cycle.

Hideo Kojima and Mark Serrels - bathroom buddies

9. What are your favourite games and why?

I could write about this forever! My favourite game of this generation is probably Metal Gear Solid 4 – yep, bizarre considering I work on a Nintendo mag. The game is flawed, no doubt about it – but the level of detail that has gone into every aspect of MGS4 is staggering. On my fourth playthrough I was still noticing new things. I found that pretty astounding. It bugs the hell out of me when people say there’s no game in MGS4, when that is simply not true – there’s more going on in a couple of minutes of gameplay in Metal Gear than most games have period.

One of my favourite games of this decade, and one that seems to get overlooked a little, is Metroid Prime – the first one on the Gamecube. I’m a sucker for expert pacing and superbly woven level design, so this game just had me on my knees begging to father its children! I loved the fact that it had the brass balls to be innovative in so many different areas, yet managed to stay true to the Metroid franchise! Such an incredible achievement.

I’ve loved loads of games obviously – other standouts are Zelda: A Link to the Past, Yoshi’s Island, Halo, Monkey Island, man I could go on all day. Strangely enough, my favourite game of 2009 so far would probably be Flower on the PSN. I think that’s probably the most seamlessly executed video game I’ve played this year.

10. If you could meet any gaming character in real life, who would it be and why?

Tough call! I think it’d be fun to have a chaff with Andrew Ryan from Bioshock, then hit him over the head with a putter. I’d love to duke it out in a sword fighting insult contest with Guybrush Threepwood (“how appropriate! You fight like a cow!”). If I had to choose one, though, I’d probably like to partake in a three hour long, utterly self indulgent Codec chat with Solid Snake.