After about a week and a half in the incubator, USGamer published my fighting game article about the (somewhat) notorious 3rd Strike toll, ufcgym. They really liked it, those sassy USGamer editors; traffic looks like it was good, there were 20+ reactions to the story on the site, and comments were generally positive. I suppose it helps that I plugged it on the Facebook 3rd Strike pages and to my other FGC buddies, but I'm not above that.
Having not been published for over a year, it was pretty thrilling to be back at it after my little hiatus. Actually, it's always a bit of a jolt when you see your name attached to work that you're proud of, and this article was definitely something I was happy with. A bit more journalistic than my usual stuff, I actually didn't think it was going to be a very good fit for USG, but I'm definitely happy that they didn't see it that way. But things just kept getting better. EIC (and cool guy) Jeremy Parish paid me a hell of a compliment on Twitter and even followed me as the week went on (which is funny because I almost never do the tweets). Kat Bailey, the editor that I was working with for the story, was very encouraging for future stories. Keep them coming, she said.
So I gave it some thought, and pitched her a story that had been picking at my brain for months. After growing up as Catholic as a Catholic can Catholic, I decided to write a story about how hard it was to reconcile those beliefs when most video games treat organized religion --and specifically Christianity-- as antagonistic at best. It was sort of nebulous until I actually had some words down, but knowing that the Dragon Age games were a little more even handed and level headed with their portrayal of faith, I thought I had something there if I could get in touch with the BioWare guys. The editors dug it, and I was off to the races.
Blam. One in the can and another assignment ready to go. I rewarded my good fortune with a little eBay adventuring, finally pulling the trigger on a Master System game exclusive to Europe that I had been eyeballing for years (as the price steadily rose). Pride in a job well done.
So, there I was. 75% of this story pounded it out in an afternoon. A little back and forth with some PR reps from BioWare, and I was just waiting on an email with some questions answered. Slam dunk.
Then this happened.
I was sick to my stomach. The exact same story taking the exact same angle. While clearly written from the perspective of someone in his 20s (what I had written was definitely from the perspective of me in my 30s), it was close enough to a duplicate as there could ever be. Even using Final Fantasy X as a clear example. I was incredulous. I read it and reread it, beside myself with one part fury and three parts amazement. I talked it over with friends, and thought that the best move was to bail, even though I could have taken the Q/A with the BioWare writers and spun it into a straight interview. In good conscience, I just couldn't redo the same story and gamble on being accused of plagiarism.
This ate at me the whole weekend. Years ago, at another site I freelanced with, I would pitch stories that were frequently turned down only to have them wind up being written by an in-house staffer a month later. Since freelance games writers are more expendable napkins, I never called them out on it, just kept pitching them stories they would either mangle or rework for their own teams, and it pissed me off to no end. Now, this couldn't possibly have been what was happening, but those same feelings can't help but come back in a situation like this. I wrote back to USG to let them know what was up, and they were glad to accept a new pitch for March, but the wind got knocked out of me, so I didn't have anything off the top of my head to throw their way.
In the realm of huge deals, this is kind of low on the list. Our Jung-ian group think got the better of me, and some other writer someplace else had the same idea I had. Ho hum. I spent a good chunk of yesterday in a bar with a laptop trying to cook up some other leads, and I still have some work to do and inspiration to gather.
But, man, that Sega game can't get here fast enough.
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