Everything you need to know about guides with editor Lottie Lynn
See what I did there?
I can't believe she flipped a coin to decide the degree she'd do. If it had fallen differently, she might have been on an archaeological dig somewhere now, in Egypt, looking at ancient bones. But instead she's here as the guides editor of Eurogamer, looking at ancient writers like me.
She is Lottie Lynn and much to our benefit, the coin she flipped landed on 'writing', something that's been a driving force in her life. She's published short stories and is working on not one but two novels now, at the same time, as you do. Moreover, she's one of the only people I know to still write a lot of this by hand. She fills piles of notebooks with meticulous handwriting even while sitting by her computer in the office - a hybrid approach, I suppose she'd call it.
So how does that land her in guides? Well, I was surprised to discover she'd written some as a teenager for GameFAQs, though they don't exist any more. Apparently she'd always had an eye on games journalism, and when working as a farm labourer (!) wasn't quite ticking the box, she gave herself a year to pursue a dream instead. And look how it turned out.
Lottie is a font of knowledge on all things guides, of course. She talks me through how they come together, what makes a good guide, and shares lots of really useful advice for anyone considering that avenue into games.
Lottie is also a font of knowledge about RuneScape, a defining game in her life, one she's played for 16 years now. It's even partially responsible for jump-starting her career. And it's a curious game, one I'll admit I didn't fully understand, as I looked down my nose at it from my other-MMO background - not until I started to appreciate the way people actually play it. Lottie, of course, explains it better.
So this is Lottie Lynn and this is episode 17 of One-to-one (the series formerly known as The New Eurogamer Podcast), now available on all podcasting platforms I have ever seen - please let me know if you use one and can't find it. Here are some handy links:
You can find all previous episodes of One-to-one in our podcast archive.