Brandon Sheffield co-founded this danged website right here, round about a decade ago. Nowadays he’s editor-in-chief of Game Developer magazine, and is senior contributing editor of Gamasutra.com. He writes and designs video games as well, for a variety of weirdo companies. He lives in Oakland and thinks it’s pretty boss, because it is the best place. Follow him on the twitters, or email him at brandon at this website dot com.He is basically the editor in chief of insert credit, so if you have questions about that, you should probably ask him. To all the people trying to give us venture capital and “fund” us right now, it’s flattering, but you realize there’s no business plan here, right?

Christian Nutt is the features director of Gamasutra, where he takes considerable pleasure in interviewing creative people. He has a long history as a consumer-focused games journalist — something he used to take considerable pleasure in until he ground to a halt.

Just some dude.

Eric-Jon Rössel Tairne has been here for a while. When he’s not
collecting names, he spends his time unraveling the ins and outs and
probablies of stuff and games and life. Detective work and game
design; philosophy and good root beer. Sop up bits of projects past
and sometimes new right here.

Frank wrote like one thing for the old Insert Credit, but since he hangs out with Brandon and Tim so much everyone just kind of assumes he was a Major Player. He founded a website he never updates called Lost Levels, and has worked at places that include Gamasutra, GameTap and 1UP. He is currently working as a freelance writer, check out his portfolio here and then offer him a job.

Alex “Gorblax” Jaffe probably isn’t going to write any colossal twenty thousand word articles, but he does host the weekly Insert Credit Podcast. He can usually be found at select button dot net, writing and curating elaborate video game lists. Often introduced as “the future ceo of action button entertainment“, Alex works full-time as a level designer under the guidance of Tim Rogers. Honestly, he’s just happy to be here.

Journalist. Consultant. Aesthete. Visionary. Man of action. Black swan. These are a mere few of the superlative descriptors used to categorize the life’s work of Jeysen Jürgensen. Equally at home in a Turkish heroin den or a Moscone Center continental breakfast queue, Jeysen is never shy of life on the bleeding edge and never afraid to speak in the third person. A career Industry Insider and gonzo auteur, his determination to shatter the dominant paradigm is rivaled only by his desperation to make rent on his spacious South of Market loft.

Leigh Alexander covers the art and business of video games at Gamasutra, and writes a monthly column on the culture surrounding games and gamers at Kotaku, as well as a monthly column on industry issues at EDGE Magazine. She is editor of the games section at NYLON Guys magazine, maintains her Sexy Videogameland weblog and is a contributor to Thought Catalog, where she often focuses on the social media and internet culture landscape. Her work has appeared in Slate, Variety, the Los Angeles Times, The Escapist, Wired, Paste and a host of other publications, and she frequently speaks at events on the business and design of social media and the intersection of interactive design with the real world.

Patrick Miller writes (and edits) about boring stuff like HDTVs and How-Tos for PCWorld, but he’d rather write about video games, pro gaming/eSports, MMA, and other Google-friendly keywords with you. Check out his PCWorld work and his Escapist Magazine work, read his disorganized ramblings about games at Palette Swaps, or hit him up on Twitter. (If you insist on using primitive email for communication, try pattheflip at gmail dot com.

tim rogers is an attempted novelist, professional game designer, and creative director of Action Button Entertainment. His writing career started here, and since then his work has appeared in EDGE, Wired, Korean GQ, Vogue Australia, Esquire Malaysia, New Yorker Sri Lanka Edition, and South African Electronic Gaming Monthly.Some of the publications in the previous sentence are ones he has really written for — the others might not actually exist. In the real world, his writing actually appeared on Kotaku.com, 1up.com, IGN.com, Next-Gen.biz (formerly Edge Online (formerly Next-Gen.biz (currently Edge Online, accessible from the URL Next-Gen.biz))).Most importantly as far as writing goes, he is the founder, editor-in-chief, and master personality of the hivewritten videogame review web log Action Button Dot Net. His e-sports online one-on-one deathmatch fighting-FPS-RTS ZIGGURAT will be released at some point in the future of the human animal. His novel the new adult’s guide to sweating and breathing in the twenty-first century might be published in actual bookstores before they all disappear. He lives in Oakland, California, and looks, for the most part, like this. Follow him on twitter here.

Note: this is super old, and from the original site, but it’s still sort of funny, so it’s getting left here for now. The real answer to how to write for insert credit is “be brandon’s friend.”

These days, it seems like everyone and their brother wants to write for insert credit, but they don’t quite have what it takes to join our elite crew. With this in mind, I figured I’d write up a handy guide which will assist your molding yourselves in our image.

First, make sure you tackle your subject in a way that illustrates some glaring hole in the horrible well of sadness that is the gaming media. Harp on this point throughout your piece.

Begin with a long, sprawling anecdote of some kind. This should ideally be related in some way to the game you’re reviewing, or idea you’re discussing. If it’s not, well that’s hardly a problem. Call anyone who doesn’t get it an imbecile. Try to make it intensely personal, so that almost no one can connect with it. If you’ve not touched your actual topic by the 1,000 word mark, you’ll know you’re doing fine.

Next, while discussing the game or idea you’ve chosen, be sure to add lots of obscure references that nobody will understand. It helps if you choose something that’s only been released in Japan, or a concept you learned in your college philosophy class. Try to alienate your audience with complex sentence structure.

Use short paragraphs.

Like this one.

They’re edgy and cool.

If you’re going for the Tim style, be sure to fabricate some element of your piece. It doesn’t matter how small; the desire is merely to see how many emails you can get. Constant self-reference and inside joking is the way to play here. Drop as many names as possible. Make supplemental videos with lots of screaming and bizarre word pairings. Devise new names for all of your friends, and tell the world about it!

If you’re going for the Eric-Jon style, delve completely into one subject at a time, analyzing it to a ridiculous degree. Make sure that any review is at least seven pages long, and takes to task the upbringings of each member of the development team. Don’t be afraid to break out the thesaurus.

If you’re going for the Brandon style, be sure to make several glaring errors or omissions, and then accuse others of doing the same. This helps you relate with your peers in fun and exciting ways! Makeificating new words is not out of the question. The more schizophrenic you sound, the better off you’ll be. Insert touchy-feely words like ‘soul’, ‘essence’, and lots of textual cliffhangers if you run out of ideas.

If you’re going for the Chris Woodard style, start a bunch of really cool, well thought out articles, and never finish them. This method is particularly effective if you want to avoid criticism from the gaming press. Only write drunk.

Now that you’ve written the body of your article, come up with a snappy conclusion that makes your audience think that you know what you’re talking about, even if you don’t. The more confident you are in your mistakes, the fewer people will notice!

So now you’ve finished your article. Run over the checklist to make sure you’ve covered all your bases:

Did you make an obscure slanderous reference to someone that may have slighted you as a child?

Did you vent your frustrations with the current state of everything?

Was your humor sufficiently obscure?

Did you use clever wordplay that only your fellow staff members would appreciate?

Did you get slashdotted?

Good! You’ve completed an insert credit article! Remember now – the more people you’ve offended, the more you know you’ve done your job. When the threatening emails start rolling in, that’s when you’ve hit journalistic gold.

Best of luck to all, and happy writing!

Brandon Sheffield