Temporarily Leaving The Games Industry Has Returned Erik Campuzano To Earth Again | Winter Spectacular 2025
For those whose inboxes I didn’t fill up with press releases, I’m Erik. I was in the video game PR field for three years, first at Ubisoft as an intern, then jumping to a gaming PR agency, Dead Good PR—starting as a PR Consultant and eventually being promoted to Senior PR Consultant.
Doing the PR for Hell is Us was easily one of my highlights of 2025
I had a pretty set morning routine when I was in PR; wake up, check headlines across various video game outlets in my bed, see the discourse on Bluesky while frying eggs for breakfast, and tune into a gaming news podcast during my daily walk before work, usually listening to Kinda Funny Games Daily or Game Mess Mornings. I spent more time watching and reading video game news than actually playing video games.
Then, earlier this year, I was accepted into the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies—a rigorous Japanese studies program located in Yokohama, Japan. The program requires students to fully dedicate themselves to their studies, which meant I had to leave my job in PR and the games industry, a slightly scary idea considering the current games industry landscape, but I knew attending the IUC was an opportunity that I couldn’t turn down.
(Side Note: The people at Dead Good PR are absolutely lovely people, and I do miss working there. When I turned in my resignation notice, the founders, Stu and Carly were very understanding and encouraged me in this new adventure. Live. Laugh. Love. Dead Good Forever.)
I'm now a few months into the program, and the majority of my time has been spent refining my Japanese skills. Unsurprisingly, my video game media consumption habits have changed. Basically, I’ve returned to a normie life—a life of someone who doesn’t consume a gluttony of video game news headlines, reviews, and previews first thing in the morning. Now in Japan, I’m scrambling every morning to make breakfast and run down to my nearest station to make it to my school’s campus.
Living my JRPG Dreams and slumming it in the same City as Best Boy Ichiban Kasuga.
However, the return to a normie life has led me to reflect on my relationship with video game media, particularly how I interact with video game outlets in a country outside of the United States.
It took me a while to get used to embargo times after moving to Japan. Back in the United States, embargoes for reviews and previews usually dropped around 6 am or 8 am Pacific. But in Japan, embargoes usually drop around 10:00 or 11:00 pm JST. I remember brushing my teeth for the night while scrolling social media and being surprised when I saw a flurry of reviews for Ghost of Yotei drop as soon as it turned to 10:00 pm. I might be exposing my “everything revolves around the United States” privilege—and folks in Europe might be already used to embargoes dropping deep in the night—but the late-night Ghost of Yotei drop was one of the first moments during my time in Japan where I realized how much video game embargoes revolve around the United States and Europe.
Embargoes dropping deep into the night affect what news and coverage I see. I spend way too much time on social media, and it’s regrettably the thing that drives me the most to visit video game news sites. With embargoes dropping deep at night in Japan, any coverage posted to social media doesn’t arrive at the top of my feed when I check in the morning unless I scroll pretty far down or the coverage gets reposted by someone I’m following.
For example, the embargo for Kirby Air Riders dropped around 11:00 PM my time, but by that time, I had already fallen asleep for the day. So by the time I woke up, all the reviews that would’ve appeared on my feed had already been brushed aside for the next news story that day. I didn’t know that reviews had dropped until the following evening after the embargo drop; something that would’ve never happened while I was in the land of video game PR. The reason I found out reviews had dropped was because a mutual on BlueSky had reposted a review on social media.
And I kind of hate to admit it, but I'm not typing in the name of video game outlets into search engines and directly visiting homepages like I used to. Now that I’m in this rigorous acedemic schedule, the amount of time I have is limited, and I have to pick and choose which articles I read.
So what keeps me coming back? It’s the writers and personalities at each outlet. Jessica Cogswell, Blessing Adoye Jr, Will Borger, Kate Sánchez, and Cale Micheal, are some of my favorite writers, and their unique voices are what make me come back to each of their respective sites.
Of course, during my time in PR, I learned a lot about what journalists cover, which genres, and what their writing styles are like. But now that I’m outside the PR world, I utilize that knowledge differently, and knowing which writers cover which beats, and how much I identify with their opinions, or appreciate their unique perspective, and this helps me choose what articles I dedicate time to reading.
I also had the extreme pleasure of meeting the editor-in-chief of startmenu, Lex Luddy, and Japan industry specialist Alicia Haddick in Tokyo earlier this year and watching them play Taiko no Tatsujin. [Editor’s note: I was very bad at Taiko no Tatsujin.]
What I’m saying isn’t some shocking revelation to the majority of those working in the PR/journalism field, especially those running independent outlets. But with the amount of layoffs at mainstream gaming outlets, it’s frustrating to see so many outlets throw away the writers that define a site’s tone, level of insight, and why I like visiting them in the first place.
With that said, the PR side will need to adapt as well. As the number of writers at established sites goes down, more independent outlets are popping up. While these outlets may not get the numbers like an IGN or GameSpot, there’s value in sending review codes and preview opportunities to writers who have established themselves in the field. While I may not directly go to a video game site as much as I used to, if I see a review or a preview from a writer whose writing I’m a fan of, I’ll go check it out, regardless of the site.
I don’t mean to call anyone out; there are a lot of great PRs who already know this and are out there already doing the great work of supporting independent outlets. However, leaving the video game PR and media field temporarily reinforced to me the importance of the writer underneath the masthead, and it’s something that I’ll hold on to whenever I get back into the video game PR field.
For now, I’ll be diving back into my Japanese studies for a bit longer. My current focus is getting better at talking and writing about the video games industry and its challenges in Japanese, and attending the IUC has been amazing for that. If you’d like to follow me, you can find me on Bluesky @yabunai.bsky.social.
