Joe Martin – Product Marketing for Startups

“If I can give you the words you need it will be a great victory”

May was a difficult month as, again, I spent a large portion of the month away from London, unable to work and caught up in so much family drama that I wasn’t able to even chase new work properly. My output was less than I wanted it to be as a result and the fact that I launched a new podcast didn’t help me focus on paying the bills either.

The good news though is that, by focusing towards the end of the month, I recovered lost ground at the same time as launching the podcast more successfully than I had hoped would be possible. Within two days I’d blown through the download limit for new shows, thanks to simultaneously hitting the front pages of Reddit and SomethingAwful.

But this isn’t the place for talking about Unlimited Hyperbole; this is the place for saying what work I did last month.

Sadly, as much of what I did was in print, I can’t link directly to it here. My biggest piece, for example, was a special feature for Custom PC Magazine which compared modern game marketing to the methods we saw in 1990. I ended up recruiting some anonymous sources for this piece in order to get some special information, which was pretty interesting.

Between collecting interviews for that piece, I also continued my work as freelance games editor for Custom PC, reviewing titles such as Diablo 3 and previewing Crysis 3 on top of the usual column, interview and image exclusive slots.

Elsewhere in print, I submitted my first piece of work for PC Gamer; a small review to start with, with more to come in the future. It was a particularly savage review of an especially awful game, but I’ll say no more on that for now.

Videogamer took me on for another feature this month as well, this time discussing with indie developers EA’s move to release an EA Indie Bundle. I spoke to Mode7, Positech, Klei Entertainment, Sports Interactive and more for that one.

Also online there was my usual stuff for Bit-tech, of which I was most pleased with my previews of Dishonored and XCOM: Enemy Unknown. I also did an extra column for them this month, lambasting Activision for not using the Call of Duty franchise to add a single innovation to the industry. I get so tired of that series, but at least it’s a popular talking point.

What else? Well, I wrote my first piece for Pocket Gamer too, chatting to gamebook authors and mobile developers Neil Rennisson and Dave Morris about how the iPad is bringing some genres back from the dead. I was quite pleased with that, especially as Dave and Neil continued to discuss it after the article was published.

Lastly, I guested on BBC Radio twice this month; talking about The Witcher 2 firstly, then discussing Diablo 3 with Nick Cowen and James Swallow more recently.

Secret indie-game projects continue slowly but, as always, I must remain tight-lipped.

Joe, Out.