[Video Game Website COVER LETTER and SUBMISSION SAMPLE]

Let’s be honest.

Most of the applicants for this job will be bringing you an incredible amount of expertise
in video games. I’m speaking specifically of high scores and achievements – capabilities of playing
any particular game with aplomb and talent.

I will not be bringing that to this job.

I am not great at playing video games. I use the term GREAT in its fully superlative
definition. I am GOOD at some games, but I would be hard pressed to name a game which I could
run roughshod over my competitors – except maybe “Bubble Bobble,” MAYBE, and that’s
probably only because I’d be the only one who’s ever in fact played it before. Certainly not a fair
contest. Advanced age is not usually an advantage when it comes to video game feats of fancy.

What I can bring to this job, instead of expertise, is insight. The one thing I feel almost
totally secure in knowing is that I can nearly guarantee to be the only accredited philosophy major
to apply for this job.

If you are looking for pretentiously written reviews, and thematic & literary analysis, you
have found them.

If you are looking for pretentious and stupidly written reviews, and thematic & literary
analysis, I will reiterate my over 10 years’ experience as a near-full time 3rd rate stand-up
comedian in Minnesota’s finest of Twin Cities.

If you are looking for someone to write an essay about how PowerWash Simulator relates
to Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation, I can be that man. You don’t even need to worry
that your demographic hasn’t read that book, because I haven’t read it either, but I can sound like
I have.

This all leads me to congratulate you on finding me, possibly the most out-of-left-field
applicant for this job. What is life without taking a chance on a stupid idea every once in a while?

I look forward to the opportunity to write dumb-smart articles about smart-dumb interactive media, and I hope to hear from you soon. Thank you for your time.

****************************

KATAMARI DAMACY - THE MAW OF KTHULU

The morose toxicity of Late-Stage Capitalism, which is on display in the 2004 release

known as Katamari Damacy (taken from the Ukrainian phrase karta myra do masi, or, “map of the

world to mass”), is beheld in the incessant devouring of everything around it, throughout several

levels as the Kthulian visage of the giant ball which eats all in its path – and the insatiably

accumulative demon which steers it – grows from each of the game’s allegorical levels. First

beginning in a domestic home – showing how the Ouroboros monster of profit first destroys the

family unit – before moving on to the surrounding neighborhood and suburbs, even consuming

metropolises and factory zones, before growing to such as size as to envelop all who might’ve

stood in its way if only they’d noticed its horror sooner, defeating all the world’s militaries, kaiju

monsters (ostensibly the Prince of Space’s only natural enemies), and even god and all his

archangels.

The first and only aphorism that you must live by when playing this game: You must have

no moral qualms, for you have no true friends. The world is only there for your taking, and use,

and only YOUR growth is the righteous justification. In fact the only one you ever need.

Everything is for you. The Katamari is only a reflection of your Will, and it will only grow to the

extent you accept your own power. If something is at first too large to be grasped, you mark that

enemy for vengeance later, and you cast off – gathering safety pins and Legos and such – biding

your time until you have grown into an irrefutable and unstoppable power, and that smug table

lamp who thought it would never have to fear you does come tumbling down like the walls of

Jericho that had been previously erected to a false and pathetic defeated god.

Pay no attention to the incredibly adorable nonsensical J-Pop techno soundtrack which

permeates this dark undertaking. That is but the false strains of propaganda, trying to blind you to

the true terror that is this Ball of Horror that eats everything in its path. My advice to you is to mute the TV and play black speed metal, starting first and foremost fittingly with Metallica’s “The

Thing That Should Not Be.” That will put you in the right mindset, to live the life of a creature who

is clearly an affront to creation and is only meant crush all who stand before you. To live as the

face of oblivion.

This is not a game of subtlety. Not of delicate controls and miniscule increments of chess-like movements. This is rolling flattened scorched earth, absorbing all who would claim to stand

in your way. Except those two bullshit constellation levels, that suddenly end whenever you

accidentally touch the very first Bear or Cow you run into. Which that stupid King of the Cosmos

doesn’t even specify beforehand. So be on the lookout for that.

Never forget, you are the stuff of nightmares. Ask not for forgiveness, because there’s no

god to judge you, just as there is none to hear the cries of those you consume. And because you

know that even if there were A Creator, you’d just end up swallowing him too, throne and all.