1. Do Your Job Properly
There are plenty of blogs and tweets out there to remind you that being a games journalist doesnt mean you get to just play games all day. But playing games all day is almost exclusively what a hands-on press event is for: your boss has ordered you to sit in front of a games console and play Ed Smith Sim 2000 for eight whole hours, and he wants to pay you for it. Once this happens, its easy to lose track of what work is; reality and dreams swap places like some cosmic tag-team, and all of sudden youre living every schoolboys non-Megan Fox related fantasy. Youll be tempted to just piss about: youve entered a dream world where none of the normal rules about going to work apply. If youre being given money to play videogames, it seems like anything can happen. Maybe you can get a knighthood for eating ice-cream. Maybe you can download a Ferrari. Maybeyou can leave a few hours early and just wing the review. No, you cant. Be a professional; even if youre there on a voluntary basis for a non-paying site, you have an obligation to your editor and your readers (not to mention your personal standards) to play the game, talk to the developer and stay the duration. If in doubt, think of Louis Theroux. Imagine him going to stay with some neo-Nazis for a documentary about bastards. Imagine him asking questions, listening to answers and reporting back to the viewer. Now imagine him getting halfway through and saying sod this, Im off for a steak bake. Its two fingers to the readership and a slap round the face to everyone out there who dreams of having your job. So do things properly; dont get bored, dont leave early and dont think you can just coast through. Get all this right, and you might get lucky enough to play Ed Smith Sim 2000: 2.