How to pitch freelance Polygon features
To clarify up-front, this page is only for feature pitches, which generally means ideas for lengthy reported stories about people in and around the game industry, based on interviews and research without author opinion. If you want to write opinion pieces about games, find Ben here. If you want to write game reviews, hey here’s Arthur. If you want to write strategy guides, Dave won’t bite. And if you want to write for our entertainment section, Susana knows more than anyone.
With that out of the way, let’s have some fun.
[Please note that we replaced an older version of this page in September 2016, and details/contact information from that version may be outdated.]
What we’re looking for
We’re looking for stories that show what’s happening behind the scenes in the video game industry and its related culture. We like stories that reveal how specific aspects of the industry work, and that put a focus on people rather than products. We like rare interviews with important and fascinating people. We like stories that reveal substantial new information about their given topics. We like story angles that haven’t appeared elsewhere in any form. We like stories that speak honestly about challenges and don’t let their subjects off the hook. We like stories that take creative and ambitious approaches to their reporting and structure.
An ideal pitch would include everything mentioned above, though we realize that’s not always possible and that each topic requires its own approach.
We’re generally looking for stories that range from 1,000 to 5,000 words, and we pay partially based on word count and partially based on the amount of effort involved. If we assign a story that requires 20 interviews and runs 4,000 words, we’ll pay more for that than we will for a similar story that requires one interview and runs 5,000 words. It’s also extremely unlikely that we’d assign a 5,000 word story with only one interview folded in.
Our rates are competitive and designed to allow freelancers leeway to sink their teeth into stories, sometimes spending months pursuing particular interviews or background information. If you have a dream reporting project that you’ve always wanted to do but haven’t been able to get funding for, let’s talk.
How to pitch
We try to keep pitching as simple as possible. If you have a story idea, send it to Matt along with a few links to previous work and a few references. Feel free to include as much detail as you like in your pitches, but we generally only need a few sentences for each idea.
We get far more pitches than we are able to accept, so we recommend you save your time and not commit too much time to a single idea until we decide to move forward with it. We also highly recommend that you pitch an idea for a story rather than a completed story, in case we have suggestions up-front.
If we accept one of your ideas, we will let you know via email and give you a word count, date and price. At that point, we will offer help if you need it, but mostly leave you alone until you submit a first draft. Then we will go through a few editing passes with you, before eventually posting the story on the site.
In some cases, we may ask you to submit photographs, screenshots, artwork, audio clips or video footage along with your text. We will specify this over email depending on the story.
If you have any questions, feel free to reach out. 