Writing Samples

These are a few of the articles I've written for various magazines. The majority of the freelance writing I've done was for Computer Games Strategy Plus which has since changed it's name to Computer Games Magazine. I wrote mostly strategy guides and campaign walkthroughs, although from time to time I would write reviews of games.

Age of Empires II: Age of Kings - Tips
This was a general tips piece I wrote for the game Age of Kings. Tips pieces were general medium length (between 500-1000 words), and consisted of general tricks and ideas for improving a player's success in a game. These were my favorite pieces to write as I really enjoy deconstructing game AI as well as competing with other players. I also enjoy helping others improve, and this type of article uses both those skills.

Dungeon Keeper II
This was a campaign walkthrough. Walkthroughs have both a general tips section at the beginning as well as specific instructions on each specific section of the game. These articles took a lot longer to write since unlike reviews or general tips pieces, you actually had to finish the entire game before you could actually write the thing.

Age of Empires II: Age of Kings - Review
I didn't write a lot of reviews while I was a freelancer. Mostly because I spent so much time writing tips and walkthrough articles, but also because I quickly became popular with my editor since he didn't actually have to do much editting on my stuff. This meant I got to pick and choose which games I covered, and hence, I wrote mostly about games I really enjoyed and my reviews would have all been positive. However, I was asked a few times to write about either bad or mediocre games, but this review was not one of those.

(as an aside - I was never, ever asked to change a review or rating for marketting purposes. I used to get asked that a lot. I'm sure it would have made things easier for the marketting people to sell ad space in the magazine if the game was going to get a 5 star review, but it also would have eventually killed the magazine's credibility.)