Part of a continuing series of Profiles in Game Journalism:

JC Herz wrote an early book examining the emergence of electronic gaming as a medium, Joystick Nation. Her Game Theory review columns in the New York Times were among the first popular intelligent game commentary. Now a freelancer and consultant on massively-multiplayer online games, she shares her brief history of timing and the importance of critique:

J.C. Herz - Journalist, Author of Joystick Nation

My path to game journalism was greatly eased by the fact that I never considered myself a journalist. I was a rock critic, contributing to the local alternative weekly in college (pizza money and free cd's for prose seemed like a good deal to me). Being at the right place at the right time with my eyes open, I penned a book about online culture circa 1993, and followed the book-writing path to produce a tome on the history of games, published in 1997 - just at the moment when the New York Times was starting its Thursday technology section and asked me to write about game design. So, a lot of momentum, good luck and timing went into the mix - and I've moved away from the publishing world since, to build and make stuff rather than just critique. But I would recommend to anyone who's interested in covering games, to look at the medium as a critic, not as a reporter. The meat of a good game story is not about how much money a publisher spends to promote a title, or the various boondoggles and events, or the flack's spin or trend of the moment. It's about a piece of design that has a place (exalted, ridiculed or ignored) in the pantheon of game design, and in the culture in general. Don't take your cues from the publicists. Look at sharp criticism in other design fields - architecture, industrial design, car design, fashion, restaurants - and be just as sharp, and just as nuanced in your writing.