screwed by the New York Times culture department

After eight years as the New York Times' video game reviewer, I have been unceremoniously dumped as of one month from now. The reason given is that the Culture Department, a.k.a. Arts & Entertainment, convinced the powers that be that video game reviews should be in their section rather than in Circuits, which is part of the Business section.

This infuriates me, because at one point my column was in Culture and the editors treated me like shit.

I was in Circuits for years, but when it stopped being its own section and was made a part of Business I was tossed to Culture. I ran on Fridays in Arts & Entertainment. Arts & Entertainment was, and probably still is, in two sections, the top section, with movies and TV, and the other section with opera, classical music and restaurant reviews. Culture put my column on the back page of the second section, right beside the restaurant review. That pretty much guaranteed it was going to be ignored, but that's what they did.

But I kept writing, occasionally sending email questions and requests to an editor who absolutely never replied (and who, when I started, told me how he was determined to make the Times as important to video games as it was to Broadway).

Then one day I was told that I was being transferred to the Sports section where my column would be paired with one on poker.

That's right, Culture, which just took my job because they had to have video game reviews for themselves, once had video game reviews and tossed them away.

Sports hated me even more than Culture. On the website they never even bothered to tout my column. There would be a tout for the poker column describing what it was about, and then below that a link that just said "video game column." Then the poker column was canceled, because WHO THE FUCK WANTS TO READ A POKER COLUMN, and thankfully, I was transferred back to Circuits, where I had a few more good years.

I think the problem is that Culture didn't want me, they wanted Seth Schiesel, because he's their guy. Seth is a good reporter, but is he as good a columnist as I am? Circuits didn't think so; he was one of the applicants for the game review position and they hired me (and Peter Olafson, with whom I alternated the column until it was turned biweekly and Peter was let go) rather than him. I'll admit I'm biased, but compare my review of God of War II with Seth's and decide for yourself.

So what's in my future? Fuck if I know. If anyone knows of any openings for video game reviewers, or, for that matter, television or movie reviewers (which is what I wanted to be years ago before I ever played video games), let me know.

Maybe I should just finally sit down and write that book on storytelling in video games I've been talking about for the last 9 years?