Call for Writers: MMOs, Comics, Opinion

Just a quick post to let you know we’re always keen to expand our writing team. In particular we’re wanting to expand our MMO coverage as well as move into the comics area, a 30+ year passion of mine.

So, here’s who we’re looking for:

1a. Gaming writers: Someone who plays an MMO regularly – you don’t need to be hard-core by any means, but a good familiarity with the game is a must. Which game doesn’t really matter, as long as it’s got an active community. Whether it’s WoW, Rift, TSW, GW2, World of Tanks or anything in between, we’re interested.

1b. Comics writers: Someone who reads comics regularly. Doesn’t matter if it’s superheroes, graphic novels, independent, web comics – you just need to love writing about comics, including reviewing comics you’re excited about.

2. Someone who writes well – don’t be hard on yourself here. Your work will be edited for the odd typo or grammatical error, which is fine. All we ask is that you can string sentences together in an engaging way and not require extensive re-writing / correction by your friendly editor. Nearly every writer we have on our team was convinced that they may not have been up to the task – I’m yet to have one person who hasn’t turned out to be a good writer.

3. Someone who writes regularly – we’d be looking for people that can contribute a minimum of a 400-600 word article each week. Fortnightly gigs will be seriously considered as well, as will guest reviews or opinion pieces if you can’t commit regularly.

4. Someone who has a volunteer sense of spirit: unfortunately TOG is financially a loss-making outfit, albeit a successful one with lots of traffic. If revenue increases, you WILL be sharing in that equally with the other writers on the team. In the meantime, expect the odd bit of swag or attendance at a game-related event representing The Oceanic Gamer, if the opportunity arises. And yes, you do have a byline to tout to much richer publications than our humble selves. Finally, you’re welcome to have a link back to your own blog or related web undertaking in each of your articles.

As far as topics go, we’re looking for people interested in writing on:

1. Games:

– Guild Wars 2: any topic area you like

– WoW: any topic area, would love some class columns but opinion / strategy and the like is always welcome. Will be working with our current WoW guru Luke to cover this game.

– SWTOR: still very keen on class columns, opinion, strategy, guild news

– The Secret World: lore, tips, opinion, news – anything really

– Project Titan / other Blizzard projects: news, opinion etc

– any other MMO: let us know what you’d like to do!

2. Comics: we’re really open on this. In an ideal world we’d love some regular comic reviews or opinion pieces on the industry. We’d also like to give some love to the local creators in addition to covering the big players.

So if you’d like to express interest, here’s what you do:

1. Use our contact form and provide the following info:

– ideally submit a sample of your writing or at least a pitch on what you’d like to write and why

– tell us a little bit about yourself – similar in vein to the bios on our About page. You do not need to be based in Australia or New Zealand.

– what day and time of the week is best for you to submit a column

2. Wait patiently for us to get back to you – it should only take a day or two.

3. See points 1 and 2.

Please, have a think about getting involved – and again, don’t be too harsh on your writing ability. Leave that to us!

[Pic via Cheezburger of course!]