Att spela ett yrke
En kvantitativ studie om svenska speljournalister och deras professionalisering
This work aims to improve our knowledge about Swedish video game journalists, a new occupation in a quickly expanding business. Through a survey sent out to over 50 Swedish video game journalists, the result indicate some unexpected facts. Men largely dominate the profession; just 10 % of the work forces are females. This relation was notable in our survey, as well as in earlier studies. Video game journalists between 26 and 35 years old seems to be the largest age group, which we think is a bit surprising considering how new this form of journalism is, and the fact the internet provides opportunities for every enthusiastic video game writer. The professionalism of video game journalists has been debated over a long time, with many people arguing that this type of work has little to do with traditional journalism. In our survey, a large part of the respondents made clear that they consider themselves to be writers rather than journalists. The majority of the Swedish video game journalists don't have a journalistic education, whether it's from high school or university. Most of them don't value education as much as writing skill, talent, passion and knowledge about video games. The minority arguing about the importance of education motivates their standpoint with arguments of classical journalistic ethics and values. One respondent told us that the whole industry would benefit from more highly educated journalists, another one pointed out that a lot of ground has been covered in the last 5-6 years, although there ?s still a great distance compared to traditional journalism.