Video Game Journalism: Scoring That Interview

For the past week, we’ve been looking at why Quotes are important, how to obtain them and also how to use them in video game journalism. Today we’ll be looking at one method to obtain quotes: interviews.

Specifically, we’re looking at how to get an interview so you might be able to grab some quotes for your article. Of course, you don’t just need to interview someone to get a quote since that takes a lot of time. Just emailing them and requesting a short quote on a subject is more than sufficient for an article. However, if you want a more detailed response then you’ll probably want to interview your subject.

Asking for an interview

When contacting someone to ask for an interview, be sure to use the targets first name. Or if you don’t have a target subject then ask to speak with someone from the development team/ publishing team/ whoever you’re looking to target. It’s still possible to score an interview even if you don’t have a specific person in mind. Most developers are happy to help and will suggest people for you to interview from within their teams such as the lead designer or the director of a specific project.

When you contact them for an interview remember to be polite but friendly. Also, keep in mind that the person or company you’ve contacted is very busy so they might not respond immediately. If there’s no reply after a week then it’s fine to send another email mentioning you sent them something last week but haven’t had a response yet. Just don’t spam them with emails if there’s no response since that reduces the chance they’ll be willing to work with you again.

In short:

• Name the person(s) you’re hoping to speak to
• Be polite but friendly
• Don’t spam them with emails but sending one email after a week of no response is okay
• Sometimes a telephone call works better than an email when trying to secure an interview

This post was provided by Clare from Lunawolf Gaming