Playing video games is fun for a lot of college students, but University of Rhode Island's junior Scott Robertson, is helping the owner a video gaming website make a career out of it.

 

Robertson grew up playing video games and wanted to review his own games.  He didn't have the money to buy the new games to review and lacked the equipment necessary, he started a website of his own. On the Web site he practiced writing reviews of some older games that he played while growing up.

 

He began to search the  World Wide Web for small Web sites looking for volunteer writers. The first article he wrote was for a website called LucasArts, - a Star Wars company. Robertson wrote an article about what Star Wars games consumers should play. while they were waiting for the new Star War’s 1313 game to be released.

 

Robertson also wrote a feature article discussing the "best and worst uses of Hollywood actors in video games." A website called HalfBeard's HUD saw his work and asked him to write once a week for its Web site. Currently, Robertson still does volunteer work for the Web Site.

 

HalfBeard's HUD is a small review company which receives its games from independent developers. The Web site does not get review copies for what is to referred to as the "Triple A" releases, such as Call of Duty, Gears of WAr, or Grand Theft Auto.

 

Halfbeard's HUD appreciates the work of independent developers.

 

"We love independent developers because, they’re not the people who take the same game and make it prettier, and say, ‘here you go, $60 please”. Robertson said. “They actually put a lot of heart and a lot of effort into those games, we appreciate that, so we'll give them good review scores, and try to give them a lot of publicity, as much as we can.”

 

It works both ways, said Robertson.  If the independent developers make it big, they will try and give publicity to  the company that helped them get started. 

 

The "Triple A" releases are all released at about $60, while the independent developers' sell their games for about $20. The elite game reviewers IGN and Game Informer are given the "Triple A" games for review .  The independent developers don't mind giving games to small review sites like HalfBeard's HUD, because they can gain publicity trhough the Web site. 

 

Currently, HalfBeard's Hud only makes enough ad money for the owner of the Web site to get paid.  Most games are released in November, December, and during the summer.  But times like January and February nothing is coming out, So the independent developers release their games. 

 

Eventually HalfBeard's Hud will try to bring back a podcast. Robertson believes that taking a mulitmedia reporting course will help him develop skills that will help him work on the Web site and the podcast. 

 

Robertson lives on campus during the school year. He is currently employed at URI's enrollment services doing tech support. Last summer, instead of going home for the summer break, Robertson stayed in Rhode Island for the first time. During the summer while living in Narragansett, Robertson worked two different tech support jobs, one at the University's Kingston campus, and the other on the Bay Campus in Narragansett. 

 

His work consisted of performing tech support/web maintenance for enrollment services on campus. Also, he worked on the Metcalf Institute for Marine Environomental Reporting, which runs seminars to teach journalists how to cover environmental topics. 

 

Robertson's life is full of variety. Besides his tech support job, his schedule includes a major in conservation biology, and a minor in journalism. His favorite game is Awesomenauts.

 

Robertson enjoys writing feature stories for video games and believes that while magazines are dying in many fields, there are still opportunituties in the gaming magazine industry. 

 

He did a feature article about the Best and worst uses of Hollywood actors in video games.  Other sites like it and they took his article and linked back to Scott's site.

 

Scott says ( it is easy to get interested in feature writing for video games but says it’s hard to make a career out of it. He said it was important to put your own style on it. He is minoring in journalism because he thinks that that it is a good compliment to any major.

 

Robertson is a Wildlife and Conservation major with a journalism minor. He is 20 years old and from the southern suburbs of Chicago, Illinois, where he attended Homewood Flossmoor high school. Robertson is an avid NBA basketball fan, his favorite team is the Bulls.

 

Robertson was accepted to many colleges across the country but he chose the University of Rhode Island because he was intrigued by the universities' marine wildlife conservation major. Robertson is expected to graduate in May 2015.