Get Featured in Hardcore Gamer

Getting a gaming outlet such as Hardcore Gamer to write about a title usually takes timing, a build worth showing and a relationship with the people who cover the beat. Small teams finishing a game seldom have the hours to pursue all three. With a guaranteed placement, the outlet is confirmed first, you approve every word, and the article publishes on hardcoregamer.com inside the window written into your scope, usually one week. It is a real article on the site that you can put in a proposal, a deck or a profile.

What Hardcore Gamer covers

As a gaming publication with an audience in the United States, Hardcore Gamer belongs to a category that treats games as both entertainment and craft. Outlets of this kind write about releases and updates, studio news, design and art, esports competition, streaming personalities, peripherals and the wider culture of play. A story can center on a game, the team that built it, a community that grew around it or the equipment that makes playing better.

Readers come to the gaming press for discovery. The tone that fits is knowledgeable and direct, written for people who play. A release date, a new trailer, a demo, a major update, a tournament result, a studio’s origin or a designer’s view on where a genre is going can each make a strong piece, provided the story is concrete and the enthusiasm is earned.

Who reads Hardcore Gamer

The readership of a gaming outlet is broader than the stereotype suggests. In the United States, it typically spans students and working adults, parents who play with their children, long-time hobbyists, competitive players, collectors and industry professionals. Hardcore Gamer gives each of them a reason to notice a game, a team or a product they might otherwise have scrolled past.

Visibility is one of the hardest parts of making games. A developer can spend years on a title and still struggle to get it seen in a crowded store. Coverage in a gaming outlet helps with players, and it also helps with publishers, event organizers, partners and future hires, who often treat press as a sign that a studio is serious about its work.

What a national audience in the United States offers

National readers in the United States often meet a company for the first time through the publications they follow. A feature in Hardcore Gamer gives that introduction a setting people across the country know. It can help in conversations with distributors, retailers, lenders and prospective hires, and it gives anyone in the United States who researches your name a recognizable source to read.

National coverage in the United States is usually sought by companies that sell online or across many states, including consumer brands, software firms, financial and health services, and franchise systems. Founders, executives, authors and experts building a nationwide profile ask for it as well, as do foreign companies introducing a product to American buyers.

Before a feature is written, it helps to decide what a reader should walk away with. For a studio, a team or a gaming brand that is usually one idea: a mechanic, a look, a rivalry, a design principle or a personal story. A piece built on that one idea is easier to share, and players repeat it to each other.

Most games, teams and brands could tell several of the stories below. We choose the one that is most specific to you, because a story only you could tell is the one players remember.

What weakens a pitch

• Genre labels with nothing else. “An action-adventure with RPG elements” describes a great many games, and Hardcore Gamer readers have seen the phrase too often.
• Promises the game cannot keep. Players remember overstatement, and everything we write about your title has to be true on release day.
• A feature list with no feeling. Readers want to know what playing is like, not how many levels, weapons or modes are included.
• Trying to cover everything. One hook, one story or one idea, told well, stays with players longer than a complete tour of the game.