Gamer battles dark forces

It's not all fun and games --
especially when you keep getting killed

By Wes Lafortune

oug Trueman pummels bad guys and battles dark forces for a living.
As a video game reviewer for several well-known gaming magazines, Trueman, 29, spends many hours in front of his television playing games. While it may sound like a dream job for some, Trueman says it’s not all fun.

“ Like any job it has its ups and downs. There’s nothing worse than reviewing a game you hate. It’s one thing to review a film that you don’t like; in a few hours it’s over. But if you’re playing a terrible game you have to actually make an effort to engage the game on its own level if you want to succeed. Having the game repeatedly kill you when you don’t want to play it but you must is not as fun as it might seem.”

Trueman said he typically plays a video game for 12 to 20 hours before writing a review. Some more complex games, such as Final Fantasy X, require up to 50 hours of play.

As a teenager, Trueman didn’t have a clear direction for his future but he knew he wanted a formal education. In 1993 he enrolled at the U of C, and four years’ later, armed with a degree and an intimate knowledge of gaming – gleaned from thousands of hours of practice – Trueman landed a job with a small website to write reviews.

His breakthrough into the big leagues of gaming critique happened in 1999 when he travelled to Los Angeles for a gaming expo. At that event, with representatives from all of the industry’s best selling magazines present, Trueman began to hand out his business card.

“I said, ‘I’m a good writer and I have an English degree from the University of Calgary,’” he recalls. “I told them, ‘I’m Canadian, but don’t hold that against me.’”

Today the Calgary-based reviewer regularly writes for magazines such as GMR (Gamer) and PSM (Playstation 2 Magazine) both California-based publications with a combined monthly subscription base of over a million readers.

“ Almost everything I’ve done has come out of gaming,” says Trueman. “It lets you explore a world without leaving your world,” he says, explaining the popularity of gaming. “You can be a martial artist, a football player, even Jarome Iginla.”

Trueman said there was no avoiding a career that somehow involved video games.
“ I didn’t really have a chance. Here were worlds that had mystery, life, death, romance, action, adventure, heroes, villains, music, magic, and high technology. And for just twenty-five cents I could experience this first-hand. There was no way I could refuse. I still can’t.”

When he’s not working, Trueman is writing a second novel that he describes as a cross between Lord of the Rings and Indiana Jones. He also trains in jiu-jitsu, works out, reads, and heads to the Cineplex. And of course, he plays games for fun, too.

Doug Trueman can be reached at dtrueman@shaw.ca

OnCampus regularly profiles University of Calgary alumni