Interview: Grant Gaines | Managing Editor, JustPushStart

We spoke to Grant Gaines, Managing Editor at JustPushStart, Freelance Game Journalist and YouTube personality. Former Community Manager at VividGamer and Editor at Hardcore Gamer. Let’s hear what Grant had to say about being part of the video game industry!

 

NoobFeed: Tell us a little about yourself and your background.

Grant Gaines: Sure! My name is Grant, though most people call me Vic. I started gaming in the early ‘90s and quickly grew to be an important part of my life. Eventually it led to an opportunity to write about them professionally and ultimately changed my career path. Originally, I planned on going to school for marketing but after my first E3 I changed over to public relations, which I now have a degree in.

 

NoobFeed: What are your duties at JustPushStart? Tell us why you decided to establish JustPushStart and how is it going for you so far?

Grant Gaines: I wear a lot of hats. While I don’t post a lot of news, I do have specific articles I need to write. I also do some PR work for the site, am the head reviewer and train new hires. I take the last one very seriously, since I think anyone can be an amazing writer if they have passion and have a basic understanding of what is expected of them.

As for sticking around, I just find it fun. I enjoy sharing my passion with others and there are a lot of opportunities to improve. For instance, it didn’t take long to realize I can’t approach every training the same way and that challenge has prompted me to improve in other ways.

 

NoobFeed: What in gaming excites you the most? Outside of work, how much time do you spend playing video games in an average week?

Grant Gaines: Probably challenges. It doesn’t matter if it’s a really hard trial or just a weird trophy, I love challenging myself to complete it. That being said, I rarely have time to play things for fun these days. Typically I finish one task just in time to start another. To give you an idea, I think I have five projects I need to complete by early Sept.

 

NoobFeed: What experiences would you personally like video games to deliver in the future?

Grant Gaines: I would love to see VR finally become so real you can’t tell the difference between a game and real life.

 

NoobFeed: As the Managing Editor of a gaming website and YouTube personality, what trends have you noticed in the gaming industry recently? Do you support where it’s heading?

Grant Gaines: For the most part, it seems like everyone wants to see how much they can get away with. I assume anyone reading this knows about things like microtransactions, day one DLC and the like, but it’s so much more. As more outlets and people step into the field, it makes it harder to establish yourself. This results in a lot of low effort content designed to target popular opinions. At one point it was so bad that some people write an article that merely suggests something controversial and it would get a lot of attention because people want to discuss it.

These were things like, was The Last of Us really that great or does Nintendo honestly make good games and there would be so many arguments. Don’t get me wrong, everyone is allowed to have their controversial opinion, I know I have many, it’s just that it’s obvious that these articles were designed to spark conversation, not actually express an opinion.

 

NoobFeed: Esports focuses on its social aspect a lot these days. Do you think there’s a lot more potential in terms of the social aspect of Esports than there currently is?

Grant Gaines: This is a tough one. On one hand, I’m surprised by how much Esports has grown but on the other hand I can’t imagine there being much room to expand. We’re already at the point where most major players have some kind of network and streaming has hit a point where we can communicate instantly, so I imagine we will see more ways to bring everyone together, but how or what that entails I have no clue.

 

NoobFeed: What is an effective approach to prepare, rewrite and edit copy to improve readability? Have supervise others in doing this?

Grant Gaines: The most effective approach I’ve had is to tell people to write it however they want and then I tell them to read it over and simplify whenever possible. It tends to work well, though I find people struggle with explanations. What I often say is try to find common ground and then branch out from there. This, sadly, leads to the often complained about overuse of things like Monster Hunter or Dark Souls-esque titles. However, it still makes these concepts easier to understand. Even if, say, Freedom Wars is much closer to God Eater in terms of gameplay, the average user isn’t going to have that association the same way they would with Monster Hunter. And, once they have an idea of what it’s like, you can start to explain what makes Freedom Wars, God Eater, Toukiden, Lord of Apocalypse, Soul Sacrifice, or whatever unique.

  

NoobFeed: What is the most challenging part of writing, especially when it comes to editorials and reviews?

Grant Gaines: Without question the opening and score.

Whenever I write a review, I have a vague idea of what I want to say and where I’m going. Take my review of KILL la KILL – IF. I knew I wanted to cover the fundamental elements of the story, talk about how one-sided combat can be and the lack of modes now associated with the genre. However, before I get to any of this, I have to say something to draw people in. Thankfully, reviews are different than editorials, in that you don’t need an exciting opening for people to read it. So, usually I start with a general overview, sum up my feelings in a single statement, along with a contrasting one and allow people to read to see which of the two matches my feelings.

As for scores, a good game is so much more than checking as many boxes as possible. Often times a title might be objectively bad or lacking, yet it still manages to have a cultural impact. Destiny is the perfect example of that. The hard part is finding that sweet spot where the negatives have an impact, it’s just not enough to completely take away from whatever the title does right or vice versa. 

 

NoobFeed: Have you ever gone above and beyond the "call of duty" for publishing any piece?

Grant Gaines: I suppose this depends on your idea of what is and is not expected. Speaking for myself, I would say one of my recent impressions fits in that category. For my article I didn’t just test the device on my television, I tested it on close to 20 different units, from entry level all the way up to a $7,000 OLED. If that wasn’t enough, I partnered with my friend who has a lot of experience with televisions and anyone I could find and actually asked their opinion on the product.

For some this might sound outlandish, but one thing you learn when selling televisions is people like different things. Just because I didn’t care for what the product was doing, doesn’t mean the product itself is bad, especially since it causes a measurable difference. I can point to something and say “it does this,” it’s just a matter of whether that something is worth the cost of entry. For most the answer was, unsurprisingly, no, though I did find some people who liked what it did.

The funny thing is, a lot of this is not actually reflected in the article itself. It was more about wanting to do the right thing for both the product and our readers.

 

NoobFeed: Have you ever received negative feedback on a piece of writing? What was your response?

Grant Gaines: For the most part my written articles are fine. I’ve had some people disagree with an assessment or score, some of which were really well thought out and fascinating comments, leading to rather interesting discussions. More often than not, even if I don’t agree with someone else’s opinion, I can respect anyone who takes the time to say why they disagree.

It’s easy to understand why someone might like Dead Cells or One Piece: World Seeker and I encourage people to offer a different viewpoint if they don’t agree. I just suggest focusing on the game, rather than what the person said. This is why 10, 20, 100 different people write a review. And, who knows, maybe this will be the start of your career.

 

NoobFeed: What have you found to be the best way to monitor the performance of your work and/or the work of your team?

Grant Gaines: While metrics will give you objective data, I find reactions paint a better picture. Anyone can post a popular article or get that one good video. The important thing is figuring out what makes that content special and try to replicate it. Some of my most popular articles were things I knew from previous examples would go over well.

 

NoobFeed: Can you tell us about a time when you developed your own way of doing things other than following others?

Grant Gaines: As an avoid trophy collector, I’ve read more than a few guides and I found a lot of guides gloss over key things. Sometimes it’s a mechanic that makes it significantly easier, other times it’s just poorly explained, so I tried to write my guides with everything I thought someone could need. This could be as simple as a picture of the location on a map to actually mapping out the task.

 

NoobFeed: We all have experienced this at least once. Will you share an experience when your ethics and patience were tested? How did you keep your emotions in check?

Grant Gaines: I once had a company ask me to pull an article they didn’t like. I was flabbergasted anyone would think this is an acceptable thing to ask and outright refused. They weren’t pleased, I recall getting blacklisted for some time and more happening. Sadly, it has been so long that I can’t recall if we ever did any other reviews for that company. Looking at the games associated with the publisher, I think they just switched representation like four years ago.

In any case, I kept my cool by remembering I have the power in this situation. No game is worth pulling an article to obtain.

 

NoobFeed: As a Journalist, you get a lot of developers trying to get your attention and to play their games, but they may not know the best ways. Do you have any tips that you can impart to make their pitches towards you and other journalists more effective?

Grant Gaines: There are two things I would say are effective at getting my attention. The first is a weird marketing campaign. If I get something in the mail that seems out of place, I’ll be more invested than an e-mail trying to do the same thing. I also find any e-mail that looks intriguing at a glance will get me to read it. I might not do anything with it, but I found a couple really interesting games through e-mails like that.

 

NoobFeed: With so many gaming websites and independent journalists trying to reach the same target audience segment, do you think the correct messages are being spread across?

Grant Gaines: Well, yes and no. I think there are a lot of issues most people agree on, the issue is this will only go so far. Now we have a lot of articles focusing on relatively unimportant things and making them into massive problems. Like, there was a point when I recall people theorizing game quality based off trivial things like the number of trophies it had or the way they were phrased. Even if some were right on the money, I feel like the business side sometimes gets the best of some people.

 

NoobFeed: Why is it important for gamers to maintain a healthy lifestyle? What advice would you have for a gamer looking to take the first steps towards a healthier lifestyle?

Grant Gaines: About 12 years ago I started college and that gave me more time to play games. While they dominated my free time and it never hit a point where it negatively impacted my life, I find a balanced lifestyle more rewarding. Even simple things, like I find I regret not hearing from my best friend way more than a day where I don’t play anything. Not to mention, a lot of these experiences are better when taken slowly.

For me, it was simply asking what you want to get out of life. Odds are you won’t regret not killing that boss or conquering a dungeon five years from now, where as you might regret not heading out, staying in shape or simply doing something else once in a while.

 

NoobFeed: What are the future plans for Grant Gaines?

Grant Gaines: Believe it or not, I would love to move from the journalism to public relations side of things. I have a public relations degree and it’s a field I enjoy working in, so I would love to see these two things come together at some point.

 

Tons of thanks to Grant for doing the interview with us. We wish him all the very best with all of his ventures. Keep up with Grant Gaines in YouTube and follow him on Twitter.

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