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Unfinished Business Pt. I: Where I've been, where I'm going, and why I'm back
Posted: Tue, 20 Jan 2009 00:10:48 PST
All right. This is that blog. The one I promised to write, but waited to pen until the newness of EGM's closing had worn off, until the sting that comes with seeing so many friends pack their boxes has dulled. Now, after a few slightly surreal weeks, I can recap my time at Ziff Davis with a clearer head and proper perspective. But instead of my usual, elongated build-up, I'll get right to it.
I've been playing video games since they basically existed. No, I didn't play PONG in the arcades, but I did play PONG once Radio Shack (or maybe it was Tandy) made a television-ready version, complete with detachable game paddle so that two people could play at once. Amazing how a single ball and two white bars could keep me fascinated for hours at a time. It wasn't long after that that my uncles and aunts in Japan started to send me Game & Watch games, Bandai handhelds (Packri Monster was one), and all sorts of digital gadgets, like digital Mickey Mouse watches, Casio watches, and other types of electronic stuff by the box full at Christmas and my birthday. What made these extra special was that none of this existed in the States at the time, so whenever I brought one of these games to school, it was practically a riot when I pulled a game out of my backpack. So, long story short, I've been exposed to video games all my life. First that PONG system, then the handhelds, then the Atari 2600, Intellivision (hated the controller), Colecovision, NES, Sega Master System, Genesis, Super Nintendo, and so on, through the Saturn and PlayStation years and everything that followed. And while I always loved video games, I wasn't able to afford a lot of them in my early 20s. Cartridges were $60 a pop (and up depending on the game), and I was already working four jobs at a time in New York City in order to pay my rent.
But once the Saturn and PlayStation came out, I really began to explore the import scene, shopping regularly at a small store on 7th Avenue and 40th Street in New York City called 'Games & James,' which was named after the store's owner, James (who, years later, died of an unexpected heart attack, which was sad, since he was probably the same age as me). Having moved onto some better bartending gigs, and having had a nice streak of freelance illustration assignments (specifically a brief period of productivity at Marvel Comics) I found myself with more money on hand than I'd had in the earlier parts of the 90s. At the time I was reading magazines like Ultra Game Players and GameFan and GamePro and EGM and EGM2, although, I have to admit, GameFan was my favorite magazine, with UGP being a close second. GameFan helped expose me to the peculiar delights of Japan's more esoteric offerings, and thanks to Games & James, which stocked a pretty comprehensive selection of these games, I dipped my toes in the import waters, waters I had previously been reluctant to enter. I remember once seeing a regular patron of the place pick up his import copy of Virtua Fighter 2 for Sega Saturn, at $20 over the price of the domestic version, which had arrived on the same day. I was perplexed at why someone would pay more for a Japanese version of a game when the domestic version was just fine. Of course, I didn't take into account that maybe he simply had a Japanese Saturn, or preferred the Japanese cover art and compact sized of the import over the large Saturn game boxes. I would soon learn.
By the time the PlayStation generation was in full swing, I was buying around three or four import games a week, in addition to whatever domestic releases came out. In addition to this, I was importing, via airmail, Sega Saturn Weekly and PlayStation Weekly (which covered all the stuff Famitsu would cover, and then some) from Japan every week. I was inundated with games, and believe it or not, I finished most everything I bought, unless of course, it was a horrible game. If it sucked that bad, I returned it the next day for max trade-in credit towards another game. On slow nights where I was bartending, I'd have a small PlayStation and a 3rd-party monitor with me to help kill the downtime. My barbacks and I would sit there and play Tekken 3 or NHL '08 all night long to help reduce the boredom, while the cocktail waitresses read People magazine. Around this time, I had decided to try my hand at writing game reviews the way I'd imagined a 'professional' game reviewer might. I wasn't looking to UGP or GameFan for inspiration, though. I was more interested in writing things along the lines of how I'd read a music review or movie review. There were two websites I read at the time. One was called AnimePlaystation.com, and they posted user reviews with screenshots, in a relatively clean and easy to read fashion. Considering that most of the fansites at that time were shitty, Geocities websites, AnimePlaystation.com was a good place to check out impressions of the recent import games. The other site I read, and eventually sent information into was Dustin's Sega Saturn Page. After e-mailing Dustin various tidbits I'd read in Sega Saturn Weekly, I started to send him stuff more regularly, thrilled with simply seeing my name on some tips and articles. But it was with AnimePlaystation.com that I decided to try my hand at writing a review, the first game of which was Bandai's Ultraman Fighting Evolution. Not a great game, but it was something to dig my teeth into. It's easy to write a review about a great game, but try putting words together for a piece of crap like UFE. The second game I wrote a review on, however, is the one that changed my life.
Bushido Blade 2, to most people, was inferior to the innovative original. I, on the other hand, really enjoyed it. The first game had great ideas, but every character was a palette swap of each other, with the same damn course layout and trigger points. Even the animations were identical on each character, whether they were male or female, and while the open-ended battlefields were a nice idea, all you really could do was run around on them, which instead of promoting widescale, tactical battles, really just prolonged the inevitable. The sequel reeled in some of the first game's conceits, making it more playable, in my opinion, and so I wrote about it on AnimePlaystation.com. Less than a week after the review got posted, an e-mail appeared in my inbox (AnimePlaystation.com linked to your e-mail in the author's credit) from Joe Fielder from Videogames.com (then the console half of Gamespot.com). He said he liked my review a lot and wondered if I'd contribute to the reader reviews on Gamespot. I was thrilled he'd asked and said I'd be happy to. I think I wrote maybe one reader review for the site by the time I asked him, personally, if he'd had a chance to try Theme Hospital for PlayStation. He said that he had not, and that EA was lax in sending Gamespot a review copy, and asked me if I'd write the official review for the site. He told me it'd pay $50. "Hell yeah" was more or less my response. I figured writing the review pretty much paid for the game itself, so why the hell not? I wrote it, sent it in, and also sent in some Sega Saturn and PlayStation news, just for the fun of it.
Eventually my submissions became so prolific that Joe decided that he ought to put me on retainer, partly to compensate me on a more meaningful basis than a regular freelancer, and also to keep me from working for the competition (a friend at Future was asking me to write for them at E3). I was more than happy to. The thing, though, that really set my unsolicited career in this industry rolling was Gamespot's connection to Electronic Gaming Monthly. Both were owned, ironically, by Sega Saturn Weekly publisher, Softbank, a Japanese publishing corporation (which now owns the #3 cell phone company in Japan). Having written some feature-length stuff for Gamespot, like a Metal Gear Solid strategy guide (as well as the review, which, in a controversial move, the editors at Gamespot put a lower-than-I-preferred score on, much to the dismay of the industry. Let it now be known that I did not give MGS a 7.0), and something called The Soul Calibur Confidential, Joe Fielder asked me if I'd be interested in heading out to Lombard, IL, to hang out at the EGM headquarters and get some hands-on time with The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, since Nintendo was going to be bringing it by for the EGM guys to write a cover story on. In case you don't know this, Nintendo has some draconian methods of getting preview coverage, inspired by one publication's warezing from some confidential preview code. Ever since that time, Nintendo --particularly at this time-- would send a personal escort along with an N64 'lockbox,' in which was encased a ROM cartridge of Ocarina of Time for the EGM staff to play. The escort was always in the room with the lockbox, and if he had to go to the bathroom, the lockbox went with him, the security was that extreme.
Since this was the only chance for Gamespot (who Nintendo wouldn't even bother to visit until much later in the PR cycle) to even catch a glimpse of the game, and since they wanted me to write the strategy guide, they figured I should go out and get as much of a head start on the game's structure as I could. But in the evenings, after all the play time was over, it was work for the EGM staff, who in those days worked much longer, more poorly managed hours than we have in recent years. Deadline weeks would consist of staying at the office until 2-3am, with many late-night runs to the local eateries, like Basi Thai, California Pizza Kitchen (gross), and some local Greek joint. It was during this visit that Dean Hager and John Davison, the managing editor and editor-in-chief respectively, asked if, since I was out there anyway, would like to do some preview writing for freelance bucks. I said absolutely, who wouldn't want to write for EGM? So they gave me a whole bunch of games to play, take screenshots of, and write previews of. I'm not going to lie and pretend that what I wrote was anything great. I was still new to the business, but I was enthusiastic. I played, took screens of, and wrote something like 12 previews that first night, and had them all in Dean Hager's e-mail box by morning light. No one could believe it. I remember Crispin Boyer coming around to see who the kid was that wrote the 12 previews overnight. This was back when EGM's issues were like phonebooks. Crispin and I eventually formed a friendship over games of NFL Blitz, in which I'd help him knock everyone off the top score list, by deliberately running into my own endzone every time I had possession of the ball, enabling him to score unprecedented points. We laughed a lot. The next evening I wrote even more previews for EGM, and then I went back to San Francisco.
It was maybe a few weeks later when I got an e-mail from Crispin asking if I'd be interested in writing up a special "How To Import Video Games" feature for their Zelda issue. The caveat was that this was a replacement for a feature that had dropped out at the last minute, and that he needed it quick. I told him I could do it, so he called me up. It was a Thursday when we were talking, and he said that he needed it by the following Friday. "No problem," I said, since this was a topic that I, by this point, knew plenty about. "Next Friday," he said. I had it --all 3,000 words of it-- sitting in his inbox by the very next morning.
The issue of EGM in which I made a name for myself.
At that point, I got an e-mail from John Davison himself saying something along the lines of "This is the best feature I've ever read," and from there on, in combination with Gamespot's own overtures, I was getting two full-time job offers from both EGM and Gamespot. What a predicament! The problem was that I had just opened my own bar in New York's East Village, and couldn't bail on my partners, who relied on my connections in the New York nightlife to keep the place pumping every night, with DJs seven nights a week, and my commissioned "London Calling" mural of the Clash's album cover gracing the outside of the club. Nowadays, if you want to fill a spot, it's usually done almost immediately. But back in those days, EGM and Gamespot dangled their job offers in front of me for over a year. That just doesn't happen any more. I remember Joe Fielder being particularly annoyed, because he felt like I was being sniped by EGM, even though I hadn't accepted any offer at this point. The allure of working for a magazine, especially with the tight-knit group out in Chicago, was high, I will admit. While my heart was really pushing me towards Chicago, my brain was telling me to go to San Francisco, which, after over a year of mulling, is where I eventually ended up. With Gamespot. I remember, during that period in which I hadn't made up my mind, Mark MacDonald telling me that I had to come to EGM, that it was where I belonged, which pretty much everyone there agreed with. I'd never felt so wanted before in my life, so it was with a heavy heart that I told John Davison how much the offer meant to me, but that I was going to move to San Francisco. I had other things to take into consideration beyond where my gut told me to go --salary not among them-- and for me, a city boy, it made a lot of sense to go from one city to another.
The initial concept was that, having a background outside of games, and leadership abilities forged from working with large staffs, and having a no-nonsense attitude that comes with being a New Yorker, that I was being groomed to eventually take over Joe Fielder's position at Gamespot, where he was the executive editor (there was no EIC then). This was when Gamespot was still a tiny affair, operating out of a long office on Clement Street in San Francisco. While I had some transitional adjustments to make, as this was my first real, professional job where I had to work with lots of other folks in a more structured, corporate environment, it was still a very fun time. I remember pissing Sega off, or more specifically their PR person, because I wrote an article eviscerating their recent cover art for their first-party Dreamcast titles. She'd CC'ed every high-ranking exec she could, thinking it would intimidate me. Instead of receding in apologies, I fired back, CC'ing everyone I could think of who should see this transaction in progress. Sega, was, along with Capcom, my very favorite game maker, having created or published gems like Panzer Dragoon Saga and Guardian Heroes, two of my all-time favorite games. So for me to call out their shitty cover art was a serious, and constructive, effort. I shot back with my understanding of basic design principles, the gaming market from both an editorial and consumer perspective, and from a corporate responsibility angle I'm sure she was not expecting. I recall that that e-mail thread ended there.
Ironically, it wasn't too long after that I was receiving e-mails from Sega saying how much they loved reading my day-to-day coverage of their title, Seaman, which I was playing the import version of. I recall struggling to figure out what to say to the little tadpole Seamen, to get them to interact with me, and evolve. It took a few days of trial and error, but when those little bastards got eaten up by the nautilus in the fish tank, I was horrified. The entire Gamespot staff circled around my desk to see what had happened to my rapidly diminishing collection of virtual sea monkeys. In complete silence, the entire staff at Gamespot stood around my desk, watching the mollusk that had ingested all of my dudes. But when it began to cough up blood, things got very surreal. We had no idea what was going on, but I can say with complete honesty that shouts and cheers rang out simultaneously when from out of the bloody, sinking shell of the nautilus shot six or seven evolved Seamen, it was like we'd just won the World Series or something. People were hugging each other at this totally bizarre birthing, and little did I know that my life would soon change again.
Knowing that he and Gamespot founder, Vince Brody, had lured me out to California with the intention of grooming me to take over his spot, Joe Fielder pulled me into a conference room to inform me that if he had to move on to new opportunities, that he would feel horrible if he didn't give the spot to Jeff Gerstmann, who had been with the site since Day 1. In hindsight, it became clear that Jeff had probably grown a bit complacent in his position as reviews editor at Gamespot, and that while I may have been recruited with true intentions, that my arrival had lit a fire under Jeff, and that having stepped it up as of late, that he would be the nod if it came down to it. Now, not having any particular timetable or expectations to cloud my vision, I didn't take the news particularly hard, but Sam Kennedy, who was Gamespot's news editor, was pretty pissed. He told me he was looking forward to the day when I took over, because certain editorial policies were beginning to grate on him.
Sam and I were the ones to break the news that Sega were going to be exiting the hardware business. I remember the jeers we received at the time, from Sega fansites and others around the industry who simply could not believe that Sega, a longtime hardware manufacturer, and in the midst of the Dreamcast's lifecycle, would leave the hardware business. But we were told this straight from Isao Okawa's mouth, he the president of CRI, Sega's parent company. Okawa, shortly before he died, told us this during an interview, and everyone who wasn't there, second-guessed us, declaring that that's not what Okawa meant, or that we'd 'obviously' mistranslated the translation. But look what happened. What really got to us, though, was when Sam and I --thanks to some seriously inside information-- were set to reveal why publisher Acclaim had gotten the publishing rights to games like Crazy Taxi and other Sega games at the dawn of the PS2 era. We discovered that thanks to Bernie Stolar's close friendship with then-Acclaim president, Greg Fischbach, that Stolar had in fact promised the --I kid you not-- N64 publishing rights to a version of Virtua Fighter 3. The unfortunate part was that Sega of Japan had no knowledge of this, and Stolar apparently had no idea of how incredulous an idea it was to port a Model 3 game to the N64. Once SOJ got wind of this, these agreements were immediately reversed, but to compensate Acclaim for their 'loss,' they were granted publishing and distribution rights for a few Sega titles in North America.
Where the problem set in was when certain editors at Gamespot wanted Sam and I to name our source, for credibility's sake. Of course, me naming that source would have resulted in someone being fired, and that wasn't going to happen. But we were adamant on running this story, it was too big of a story not to run, and was, naturally, exclusive to us. By the time Sam and I were in Japan, covering Tokyo Game Show, we saw that the story had run on Gamespot, without us knowing, but the tone of the article had changed completely, from an assertive, groundbreaking story, to an apologetic 'Oh we heard this was what happened, but it's too preposterous to believe' type of voice. When we confronted the editor responsible for gutting our story, we were furious, but made even angrier by the 'name your source or you don't get to run it your way' response. There's something in the journalism business called 'protecting your sources,' which happens from all the way up the corporate news channel ladder all the way down to the video game biz. If we name our source, our source loses a job. We weren't going to do that.
Cue: John Davison. Around this time, Dan Hsu, Che Chou, John Ricciardi, and a whole lot of freelancers from around the business moved out West to start a website called Gamers.com. This left EGM (who, truth be told, underpaid their staff by a lot compared to what Future Publishing, and the various websites were paying) with half a staff. Davison asked me if I'd be interested in still working for EGM, and in staying out on the West Coast. Best of both worlds is how I viewed it. I said I'd think about it, and then, in the spirit of full disclosure, informed Joe Fielder about the offer. The reaction from Joe developed in three stages. The first day he said he'd be disappointed if I left, but given his change of heart on my ultimate role on the site, he'd understand. The second day he told me he'd really appreciate it if I didn't take the offer, and on the third day he brought me into a private conference room to tell me that he really needed to know who was on his team for the upcoming year, and that he needed a decision by the next day. Concerned that corporations are usually slow to respond, I told John D that I wasn't sure if he had a salary in mind or whatever, but that I needed to make a decision by the next day. "No problem," he said. "We have an offer." And it was a very, very good offer. The next day, with some sadness, and to Joe's surprise, I told him I'd be leaving Gamespot for EGM. More importantly, I told John Davsion that if he was going to grab me, that he had to grab Sam Kennedy too, because Sam was thinking about leaving Gamespot for Gamers.com after that Sega/Acclaim debacle. I had a gut feeling that Gamers.com wouldn't last, and I talked Sam into coming with me to the print side, where he ended up being news editor on OPM.
It wasn't long after that that Softbank decided to get the hell out of the North American publishing market, and sold off the various pieces, like Gamespot TV to one company, Gamespot to CNET, and EGM/Ziff Davis Media to Willis Stein, the venture capitalists who figured they'd make a killing on our formidable print business. I won't go into the brutal mismanagement of the print business, or how we went from a six-magazine company making $450 million a year in ad revenue to a one-magazine, one-website business making a fraction of that in eight years, but I will tell you it was a long, hard road. Maybe that's why the events of the last month haven't fazed me as much as the newer kids, because I've lived it. Ziff Davis was on the verge of going into bankruptcy for like the entire time, so when we did, it was almost a relief. How many companies that go into Chapter 11 come out of it like we did? Very few! That said, Ziff Davis was always --if not overly generous-- fair to its employees. We traveled a lot for work, we've done a lot of fun things, and our benefits and all that were always taken care of. They may not have managed the business very well, but they managed their staff very well, and as others have said, we've always had the best staff around these parts, and I've worked with some great people over the years. You know who they are.
During my early years at EGM, it was interesting. I was, being the only EGM representative on the West Coast, always in meetings with PR people, who found it a relief that they didn't have to fly out to Oakbrook to show EGM a game. I'd do the meeting, get the assets, write the preview. Of course, many people still did fly out to see the guys, but it wasn't as mandatory any more. The magazine that really suffered at the time was Game Informer, since they were usually only visited if a PR person was already in the area to see EGM. It wasn't easy to get to where they are based. This was, of course, back when their circ was only in the 115k range, before they got bought and became what they are now. But, I remember a couple of the guys I'd worked with thinking I was always freeloading, since I was usually AFK in a demo meeting, and not responding to AIM all day long. It actually became harder for me when Dan Hsu came back (he, who I voted for when we were asked to pick between him and Simon Cox to be the new EIC of EGM when John Davison left to be EIC for OPM) because the gripers suddenly had a sympathetic ear. "Milky's just having free lunches," and "Milky's never around when you need him" were the common misconceptions of those who shall remain nameless, but John Davison put an end to that. He saw just how hard I was working, whether it was meeting with publishers for demos all day, or fulfilling various off-site TV appearances on CNN for the marketing department, or working overtime on Gamers.com V2 (which Ziff acquired for a bit after Gamespot was sold to CNET) with Sam Kennedy, or staying late to help freelancers and former Gamers.com alumni Christian Nutt and Shane Bettenhausen into the office. I usually had to show those guys where to store previews and screenshots that we'd taken onto the servers, which were abysmally slow, since the downloads we put on the server in San Francisco actually were routed to the East Coast, before being bounced back to Chicago. It literally often took something like a 2 meg zip file almost 3 or 4 hours to upload to EGM's server.
But it was John Davison who --in the two weeks he spent in San Francisco a month-- saw how much work I was doing -- and getting no credit for. He set the record straight about my contribution, and shortly after the entire Ziff Davis Game Group were moved out to San Francisco. It didn't get easier for me once they moved out, though. Sam and I were used to being the only console guys in the office, along with the CGW crew, who enjoyed our loud music and good natured ways. The EGM guys were used to much quieter working conditions, which I totally didn't get, since we were in the entertainment business. People would holler at me to turn down my music, and they would play games with headphones on. I distinctly remember John Davison asking me to turn my music up. The EGM staff needed to loosen up, was his (and my) opinion. Games are using surround sound, or 5.1, live a little, guys. Anyway, I didn't mesh well with the suddenly-relocated staff of EGM, and I often clashed with Shoe over random things. He's a very detail-oriented, anal kind of guy, which is great, because EGM under his watch was an immaculately finessed publication. I, on the other hand, didn't like some of his cover choices, the politics of which I won't go into, but even veterans like Jeff Green used to pull me aside and tell me "You're the best thing they've got going for them, why is he giving you such a hard time?" With Jeff and John Davison in my corner, I always managed to get through the day, but the guy who would prove truly pivotal in my career at Ziff was perhaps my least-expected ally. Enter: Simon Cox.
Simon and I attended, by coincidence, an Xbox event in New York City, my hometown, during an media tour that Microsoft coordinated there to show off some upcoming games, like Project Gotham Racing. Since the event only occupied a few hours of our day, the nights were completely open. Aside from one instance, where I took around 14 people to John's Pizza on Bleecker Street for some unreal brick oven pizza, Simon and I had the rare opportunity to get to know each other, when we went out drinking in some of New York's hot spots. Now, Simon did not come to Ziff with a great reputation. Words like 'difficult,' and 'impossible' were among the better words used to describe him, from the informal background check some of us had done when he was up for the EIC spot on EGM. To be honest, Simon would have been a bad fit for EGM. It was too big. He's better with a smaller, more intimate group, like the one he had on Xbox Nation, or GMR. After a few days of getting to know each other, and him having the chance to see me in my element, he was able to see where my interests were, and how much we had in common, which was quite a lot. He also knew I was having issues with Shoe at EGM, and shortly after we got back, he asked me if I'd be his executive editor on Ziff's new magazine, GMR. I jumped at the chance. By the way, I should go on the record that Shoe and I eventually mended our ways, and came to a very nice understanding. But more on that later.
The immediate perk of joining GMR was that I suddenly, for the first time in my magazine life, had an office. That was almost worth it right there, since I could crank my music without anyone complaining. Fortunately, the staff we assembled (featuring Tom Price, my buddy Skip Pfister, and David Chen, along with the lovely Caroline King, and Gerry Serrano, the art team) were down with loud music, and we all universally chipped in on cracking jokes and keeping it lively, which was important, because we were covering more consoles (PC, namely) than EGM, with about half the staff. GMR, in its two glorious years, became the model of efficiency at Ziff Davis, showing just how much could be done with so few. I don't want to spend too much time discussing the economics of making a magazine, but the first few issues were, from a strictly quality-of-the-physical magazine perspective, of a much higher quality than the final few. That's because Simon demanded, and got, a grade of paper on which screenshots would look their best. It was heavy, it was extremely white, and it was expensive. But because our first few issues were of much lower print runs than the last few, we could afford it. Or rather, Electronics Boutique could afford it. But we soon found ourselves with a rapidly increasing subscriber base, to the point where we soon surpassed EGM's installed base. Those numbers are interesting, though, because they were basically given away to anyone with an EDGE card, as an incentive to anyone who wanted to get more back for their used games, and more discount bonuses applied to games bought. We knew there was a very specific reason our circ got so high, so quickly, so we were careful never to gloat about our numbers to anyone. What we did know, however, was that we put out a very well designed, very well written mag. We shot down those 'EB catalogue' notions right away, because what other magazine, co-owned by a retailer, would eviscerate the N-Gage, which had bought so much advertising in GMR and in EB stores everywhere, despite being co-published by EB? We did, and we earned serious credibility for it, because, let's face it, the N-Gage sucked.
Continued in Unfinished Business Pt. II
Unfinished Business Pt. II: You're not rid of me yet!
Posted: Tue, 20 Jan 2009 00:12:59 PST
Continued from Unfinished Business Pt. I
The GMR days were mostly great. I had the chance to design some really outstanding covers while on that mag, especially in the second year, when Simon went back to XBN, and Tom Byron came on as EIC. I will admit that, considering how much I drove that mag, I wouldn't have minded being EIC of GMR, but in our first meeting with Tom as a staff, with Carrie Shepard signing on to replace Dave Chen, he said "Don't worry, Milky's still running the mag. I'm just here to help out." It was a nice gesture on his part, an acknowledgment of my role, and he provided a nice buffer between me and the people who like to have meetings all day. He was almost the exact opposite of Simon, for better or worse. With Simon, I'd often have to go head to head with him on something I might disagree on. Our Metal Gear Solid 3 cover was one instance, where I felt the quality of the assets was something worth celebrating, and using to our advantage, to show off on the cover, whereas Simon wanted to do some avante-garde defy-the-expectations type of cover that I admitted was brave, bold, and unexpected, but not what we should do. I recall, in the days leading up to shipping the very first issue of GMR, when none of us had actually left the office for three days, Simon panicking and saying "we're fucked" in front of our very new, very shocked, and possibly not ready for prime time art team. I took Simon into his office, and told him, calmly, but very firmly "you will never, ever say that crap again in front of our team." I reminded him that he was the leader of GMR, and if the crumbling begins at the very highest level, it will trickle down to the juniorest staff member, and that it would be very, very bad.To his immense credit --and I learned a lot about Simon that day-- is he agreed, and assured me he'd never take that approach again, and he never did, and every deadline got better, every issue's production got smoother, and together we showed that chemistry wins in the end. The thing about Simon is that he is very hard to work with, primarily if you don't have what it takes to get in his face and meet him head on. But, if you do have that quality, which I do, he respects it, and you get on well with him, because all he's really interested in is in being with people who are as passionate as he is in doing the best product possible. If you ever subscribed to GMR, you may have been getting a free magazine, but I will tell you this: It would have been worth whatever price tag they put on the cover.
Don't misunderstand me. Yeah, working with Simon can be challenging, because he demands your best, but that's a great quality to have. It also demands a specific type of staff to mesh well with that attitude. Wallflowers get run over by people like Simon, but with the GMR staff, our working relationship was awesome. With Tom Byron, he pretty much let me run the mag the way I saw fit, which I appreciated. Tom is a former LucasArts vet, who knows the family-friendly consumer side of things, so his presence was definitely felt, don't get me wrong. But he push you as hard as Simon does. We had to push ourselves as a result.
This all came crashing down around us when, one day over Christmas break, I was playing World of Warcraft, when a friend of mine who managed an EB in Texas or something sent me a whisper saying "Are you all right?" I asked why wouldn't I be, and she said "I heard the news." I immediately realized something was up, and asked her what she was talking about. "I heard about GMR," she said. A few more minutes of chatting and I was on the phone to Simon, to find out what was up. I got his voicemail. By the time he called me back, I could tell he was reluctant to part with the details, but realized there was little benefit to delaying telling me. "EB is merging with GameStop," he told me, "and since they're doing the same thing with Game Informer, they don't need GMR."
Our final cover on GMR was the exclusive review of Resident Evil 4, on GameCube. Capcom asked me if the final issue of GMR was going to press, and I said yes it will. The PR person I was working on this cover with, the render of which Capcom made to my specifications, said that Game Informer had asked that since GMR was shutting down, if they could run the RE4 review anyway. "No way," I said. There was no animosity in my decision, but GMR had fulfilled all of its obligations, and I expected Capcom to do the same. In what would be a rare example of being able to go out the way we wanted, GMR's final issue was done with full knowledge of its impending closure, which you can see in the editorial.
The final issue of GMR. Capcom made the render to my specs. Just how I like it!
My time at GMR was so much fun. The staff (both versions) were awesome to work with, and the freedom we had to champion games off the beaten path was unprecedented. I knew that no matter how much I covered, say, Madden, we would influence zero extra purchases, which that series didn't need anyway. No, what I wanted to do with the mag, was relive the GameFan days --with a smidgen more corporate responsibility-- and blend sharp cover designs with the right blend of hardcore game coverage (say hello, four pages spread on Shin Megami Tensei) with the regular blockbuster stuff, like Halo. I think we did a good job, with some great interviews and compelling features, all par for the course of any magazine, but we really did put a lot of care and thought into everything we did. I had a lot of freedom on that mag, and after it closed (I recall GameNow's Ethan Einhorn telling me it was a nice little magazine, but that there was no way it'd outlast GameNow, which it did) I figured it would be time to finally move onto the publisher side of the industry, or into game development proper. Sam Kennedy changed my mind.
In what would eventually turn into something of a ritual, Sam and I went and had dinner one night at Mel's Diner (made famous by George Lucas' American Graffiti) by the Metreon in San Francisco, where he gave me the full pitch on joining the 1UP.com crew. On the one hand, I was looking forward to spending sudden lack of responsibility burning through my severance package, and playing a lot of Phantasy Star Online and Final Fantasy XI. After all, it had been a while since I'd worked in an online capacity, and had grown used to seeing my work in print every month. As much as many of you prefer your info from the Internet, trust me when I say that when you actually work on a magazine, you grow fond of holding something in your hands, fresh from the printer, every month. It's like Christmas, but 12 times a year, believe me. So to go from the prestige of running a magazine, to the seemingly diminishing returns of writing stories for the Internet, which are hot shit one day, but a hyperlink the next, was a tough sell. But then Sam, and then later John Davison, concurred that if I were to leave editorial, that there wouldn't be anyone in the industry left to do what I was capable of doing. That may sound like a nice bit of ego puffery right there for me to even repeat that, but it struck a chord in me. Sam asked me to be the site's executive editor, and I accepted.
When John Davison first approached me about working on EGM all those years ago, he asked me what my motivation for working on the mag would be. Now, keep in mind that I knew barely anyone in the industry, outside of interviewing Shigero Miyamoto at a Zelda event in New York City, or bumping into Kenji Eno at E3 in Atlanta, but what I told him was that wherever I worked, I wanted to be the competition's worst nightmare. I wanted my rivals --friendly rivals, but rivals nevertheless-- to know that whenever I walked into the room, that something incredible was getting done, some deal was being negotiated, and that I'd be at the heart of it. To be honest, that should be everyone's motivation in nearly any walk of life; to be the best at what you do. So 1UP would extend my opportunities to achieve just that, and so I signed on.
Over the next few years, I nailed down a pretty impressive body of work, if I do say so myself. Developers like Tetsuya Nomura would, during an E3 in which he deliberately told his PR staff that he would speak with print only, request an interview session with me specifically, despite the fact that I now worked for 1UP. He repeated the gesture at one TGS, where he granted me an interview (a rare one on video) when he wouldn't speak to sites like Gamespot or IGN. Not every interview is created equal, due to time or other constraints, but I've been at the center of some great stuff, some wonderful projects that I, with the help of the talented video and production staff at 1UP, have created that you can't find anywhere else. Whether it's stuff like our Amano or Uematsu interviews, or the Q Entertainment cover story. In fact, I've written so much right now that my I'm too tired to recall half the stuff I've done on this site, but someone even reminded me of my BunnyStation 3 (aka the BS3) blog that I wrote two years ago. Thank god for you guys, cuz I can't remember shit. So, my time at 1UP was great, because I had carte blanche from a creative standpoint, and that's what I wanted. And then John Davison left Ziff Davis.
It was a move no one saw coming. He wanted to start his site, whattheyplay.com, which focused on family-friendly content and being a resource for parents to really understand what their kids were playing. I love John. I joined Ziff Davis to work with him, so to hear he was leaving was a big blow. It also had a trickle-down effect on Ziff that the company never really recovered from. With John leaving, Simon and Shoe moved up the ladder, leaving vacancies, and often resulting in the wrong people being overpromoted, and the right people being underpromoted. Because of this, a lot of good people left. We still had a great staff, of course, but we had a hard time fitting the right pegs into the right holes after that, which we struggled with for quite some time.
Fast-forward a bit to a little over a year ago. Garnett Lee walks into my office, closes the door, and says to me "So, are you going for it?" "Am I going for what, Garnett?" I reply. "The EIC spot on EGM," he says. To be honest, I hadn't thought about it. When I was in GMR, there was always someone else to run interference for me on the corporate side, freeing me up to do the creative work. On 1UP, Sam Kennedy was always so omnipresent that I never really had to pick my head up from what I was doing to worry about truly running the site, even though the executive editor is really a de facto EIC in everything but name. Every department was so efficient, it was like the site ran itself, everyone knew what their role was. So because of that, I never really went out of my way to try and climb the corporate ladder. I liked where I was. But since Garnett had brought up the possibility, I considered it, and talked to Sam about it. I knew that considering my past relationship with Dan Hsu, that it was a long shot. We hadn't always seen eye to eye, but I did have my fair share of successes, with GMR and 1UP to back me up, and considering they were looking for someone with both print and online experience to assume the now singular role of editor-in-chief for both 1UP and EGM, I was the only person left at Ziff with substantial credentials in both mediums. Keep in mind that if Mark MacDonald were still around, I wouldn't even have bothered stepping up, but I figured that dark horse or not, I had to make my case.
After talking it through with Sam Kennedy, we both came out of our meeting convinced that I had to do the job. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the other talented people in the office, like Crispin or Shane, but Crispin didn't really have much interest in the web, and some folks thought Shane might need a little more grooming before he was ready for the role. Bryan Intihar was another name that came up, but he had already taken off for Insomniac, so it wasn't even an issue. But my next step was to convince Simon. Simon, remember, was always on my side, but during my years at 1UP I had sort of cultivated this reputation for only being interested in Japanese games (false) and playing FFXI all day (also false). There were just people who were more than qualified to cover things like Halo than I was. I can't do everything at a site, so why not let someone who's hungry to write about Halo write about Halo? Or Gears of War, or Call of Duty? I love all those games, but I'm good at the Japanese thing, at making Japanese developers comfortable, at getting results out of them, so I stuck to what I was good at. As for FFXI? Yeah I had it on all day, but just to see what my guys were blabbing about. Like AIM with graphics. Play? Who has the time? I sure didn't. Anyway, that's what I told Simon, among other things, and after making the full-court press, at the end of our luncheon he said to me "James, I have to admit, you've gone from being off my radar for this spot to a long-shot. I fully believe you can do the job, but the person you have to convince is Shoe."
With Shoe, Sam and Simon had suggested I contact Shoe directly to talk with him about it, which I did. I AIMed him and chatted about the moves being made, and said I'd really like to throw my hat in the ring in regards to the EGM/1UP EIC role. We decided to have lunch to talk about it after the current EGM deadline was over. So, almost 10 days later, he AIMed me to assure me he hadn't forgotten about the lunch, but that deadline was rough, so to give him some more time. Eventually we arranged to have our chat one sunny day when nothing was going on.
INTERMISSION: I'll take this moment to mention that me and Shoe's most significant blow-up was when I scoffed at his decision to put Stuntman on the cover of EGM, which was basically us washing the hands of the PR person who would eventually give us Driver 2, which I felt was unnecessarily bartering one cover for another, and was a boring cover choice. Keep in mind that I'd tried running Grand Theft Auto III and Kingdom Hearts up the flagpole, only to get shot down. Considering just how much longer we actually did that Driver 2 cover story after the Stuntman one, I think we could have easily gotten it based strictly on being EGM and nothing else. In short, we didn't need to do Stuntman at all. In fact, when I gave Stuntman something like a 4.0 in EGM, while Crispin and Greg Sewart (I think) gave it more reasonable scores, Shoe came to me directly to question whether I'd really played the game. "Sure damn did" was basically my response. I won't re-review it here, but I stand by that review. To his credit, many years later, Shoe came to me and said "You were right about Stuntman. I finally played that POS the other day, and you know what? It sucks." I was like "I know it sucks. I gave it a 4.0, but I appreciate you saying this."
Back to the semi-present, I met up with Shoe at lunch, feeling like a complete newbie, because here I was, an almost 10 year veteran in the industry telling him like some excited freelancer why I should deserve this full-time job. Granted, this was the EIC spot for both 1UP and EGM, but I told him in no uncertain terms that I was confident that I was THE man for the job, and that it might take a little while, but that I would defy people's expectations and make him proud. At the end of the lunch I was feeling pretty good, but totally unsure of how effective my pitch was. Shoe's got a pretty good poker face, so I didn't know how convinced he was, but what I did know was that we had buried the hatchet a long time ago, we had worked together, collaborating between EGM and 1UP through the years (I'm the one who made their Ninja Gaiden II cover happen, after two years of negotiations with Tecmo and Microsoft), and no matter what his decision was, that it would be fair.
I will admit that when the day came where Shoe called me and asked me if I'd come in his office to talk, that I was as stunned as anyone would be when he told me "We decided that we'd like you to be the EIC of EGM and 1UP." Sure I had hoped it would happen, but to hear those words come out of Shoe's mouth was unbelievable. I think I was in shock. It was like a daydream. It was a process that began all those years ago when Joe Fielder asked me to write for Gamespot come full circle. I was finally the boss of them all, the world's greatest gaming magazine under my wing, a thing I never thought would happen, a thing I never dreamed of. Of course, it wouldn't officially start for a few weeks, until EGM's current deadline was over, but I remember the announcement. It was in a weekly meeting, when Shoe told the assembled 1UP and EGM staff that "James Mielke is now the EIC of" both publications. The response was a loud murmur, with some "Wow!"s and congratulations and clapping. I tried not to look too pleased, but I sure was pleased. I was back in print, I was still online, I was working with the best collective staff I could imagine working with, it was a dream come true. Now I had to allay any doubter's fears, and get working on what would be the final incarnation of EGM.
I know the last couple years of EGM have been thin. We all know this. It's nothing we can control. Page count is dictated by ads, as well as whatever the corporate HQ is willing to spend. Obviously any issue under 100 pages is basically a comic book with screenshots instead of drawings, but we, for what it's worth, never dipped under 100. Anyway, I think the EGM staff ultimately found me to be quite easy to work with. I encouraged experimentation and ideas, with a much looser style than Shoe's era. Shoe was extremely good at noticing little places where tweaks were needed, either in a layout sense (there's too much space between these images) or an editorial sense. He taught me a lot of things I never knew about editorial. I wasn't a trained writer, after all, I was an illustrator who just found himself in this business by some good fortune, but I never claimed to be a good writer. I had to learn a lot about the craft, and Shoe showed me a lot of things I'd never been exposed to, like passive voice, etc.
But as EIC of EGM, I found working with Shoe easier than expected. He really let me have more freedom than I thought he would, and he was usually so busy clashing over editorial direction with Simon that he eventually viewed me as someone who would defend EGM, as someone who would try his best to keep it alive, despite being told for over eight months that beyond December 2008, there was no guarantee for EGM's future. I couldn't imagine life with EGM. No matter how many magazines have come and gone, EGM has always been there, from the beginning. It was the name people counted on, it had clout, damn the numbers game. When you really understand just how huge 650,000 people is, you realize how far EGM's reach is. I did my best with it. Not every cover game choice was great, but we always tried to make it look as cool as possible. It's well documented that I always tried to get custom cover art and designs done for the mag. I thought it was worth it, I thought EGM deserved it. A lot of people reference the Japan Issue as the highlight of the year, due to its cutting edge interviews and content. But then there was the Killzone 2 cover, and of course the Mirror's Edge cover. I still put EGM's final Street Fighter IV cover up there with the best of them, though. I think that might be the finest cover of my tenure as EIC there. It's like 98% Street Fighter IV, with all the character names, nothing but SFIV-specific content displayed on the cover. It's something I'm proud of. I wish it could have seen print.
Anyway, I didn't forget about 1UP during my time on EGM. I had very busy days, from meetings with the exec team, to working on project for 1UP (see my recent Okamoto interviews) to planning out EGM stuff, and securing exclusives for the mag and the website. I truly did not have much time to do the creative stuff as much as I'd like, with so much time spent coordinating coverage on e-mail, AIM, the phone, in person, etc. I trusted the team at 1UP to keep doing what they do so well, so I could work on bigger picture stuff with Simon and Sam and Shoe. Of course, Shoe left shortly after I became EIC of EGM and 1UP, which left me without a buffer from the dozens of meetings I always seemed to be in. Should we cover iPhone? How would we redesign the site if we had to do it from scratch? How should we reinvent the 1UP Show? Once you reach a certain point in this business, your life is more about meetings and less about doing what you love. It's called 'responsibility,' and it's a nice thing to have provided you can handle it, but that doesn't make it any more fun.
Then of course came the UGO buyout of 1UP. I will admit, the cuts were much deeper than any of us thought they would be, but you pick your chin up and do the best you can. No, EGM didn't go out the way we wanted, but we did our best to sustain the legacy. I respect the EGM crew for doing the astounding job they did under extreme duress and it was an honor to work with each and every one of them. I hope they enjoyed our time together, and I pray I did a good job turning doubters into believers. I wish we could have kept going for another three years. But even though we can't, it brings me to my next point. I'm back.
I'll be up front with you guys. I have plans that lie beyond the horizon, dreams that would take me into development (finally), and I told Sam and Simon a few months back that I would most likely be pursuing that dream by summer of 09, which made it easier for me to be 'let go' in the layoffs. But, in what is now a time-honored ritual, Sam Kennedy and I had a dinner at Mel's almost four years after we last met there, to discuss, among other things, my return to 1UP. I admitted that I wasn't much for sitting around doing nothing, and that I was going to be doing something that I might as well do it for 1UP. It would be easier now, for me to do the high-impact projects that you probably know me for. As it turns out, UGO --who never wanted me to leave-- would like that very much, and have welcomed me back with open arms. They've said to me, quite literally, "Dude, the cuffs are off. Go get 'em." I still have a head full of awesome feature ideas; there are some guys on 1UP I want to mentor, and help to become the real new school of games journalism. There are ideas that simply must see the light of day, and I still have enough gas in the tank to keep my editorial flames lit until I decide what I'm doing next. I may eventually move into development, I may not. I don't assume I'm doing anything until I've signed on the bottom line. But what I do know is that for the immediate future, I'm staying right where I am (I'm still not done packing all my shit up at 1UP) and doing the best that I can for every reader we have, and for the people I have the honor of working with every day. Maybe I'll be here forever, we'll see. Sam and UGO have basically taken the leash off me, and the first thing you're going to see from us --which I'm proud to announce-- is the return of 1UP Cover Stories. I know you miss them, I missed them too. Matt Leone and I and the art team at 1UP have been brainstorming the return of our cover stories, and we expect the first two to hit in February, so I do hope you're excited for those. Expect them to be awesome. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
To anyone who has made it through this lengthy, almost image-free blog intact, I salute you. 10 years is a lot to cover. My hands are almost falling off at this bio-blog-epic, but I hope it's been enlightening. To everyone who has sent me a friendly word to my 1UP/Myspace/Xbox Live/LastFM account, thank you. There have been too many for me to respond to every one personally, but I have read them all, and I have appreciated them all. Forgive me for not returning your message personally. But I guess my overall point in this massive unloading and personal history, is that it's not over for me. It's far from over. Even if I do end up moving on past the editorial side into the development field, I will continue to support 1UP.com. This is my family here, and if Sam Kennedy hadn't started 1UP all those years ago after leaving OPM, Ziff Davis probably would have ceased to exist as is a long time ago, and EGM might not have lasted as long as it did. You should really appreciate 1UP for what it is, and that it still exists. Now that it's owned by Hearst and UGO, the cuts might seem immediately painful, and they are, but we will rebuild, the staff that's here is committed to bringing you the best they can, and for as long as I'm able, I will help them do it. Please stay, please enjoy what we do, and always understand that nothing is as easy as it looks. What takes you 10 minutes to read probably took hours, even days to assemble, and everyone here cares about what they do. It's my privilege to remain a part of this.
And with that, I'd like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the people who have been so very influential in my decade-long run in this industry:
Joe Fielder: Without you, I would never have entered the world of gaming journalism, and would have stayed in New York City, drawing, DJing, and doing other creative things, but not this. You opened up a great big world to me. A world in which I meet creative people who continually inspire me. I've traveled to every corner of this planet because you opened the door for me. Thank you.
John Davison: You brought me on board and then some. You're the reason I stayed at Ziff all those times I got offers to go elsewhere. I only wish we had more chance to work on the same magazine together at the same time. You were always calm and had your finger on the pulse of every situation. I've always been continually amazed by your understanding of the industry. But despite all the things you had going on, you always had my back, you always saw how hard I was working, especially during the hard times. Thank you.
Jeff Green: You too, in your own, soft-spoken, funny way always offered me support when I needed it the most. Thank you for seeing what I was capable of. Thank you for telling me. Words of encouragement can go a long way, and I, in my own way have tried to pay it forward, encouraging and congratulating other young writers whenever I see it. The folks at EA are lucky to have your steady hand on board.
Simon Cox: You salvaged me from the scrap heap and you gave me a forum on GMR to prove myself and to blossom. You challenged me when and where I needed it the most, and you always pushed me to make a better product. You are a great collaborator, and you make the products you work on better, every time. I wouldn't be where I am now if you hadn't given me that chance, and I hope I validated the chance you took. You've been a good friend all these years and one of my biggest supporters. Thank you.
Dan Hsu: You taught me things I never knew before, you showed me to look at the business through different eyes, and you showed me how big a person could be despite the differences we may have had in the past, by moving forward and working at our relationship until we really understood each other. Our bond grew closer as a result, and you proved it by giving me the opportunity of a lifetime. I appreciate this more than I've ever probably let on, but it was an honor to follow in your footsteps on EGM, so thank you for believing in me.
Sam Kennedy: It was the right move to drag you over to print, because you've saved my ass time and time again. I stayed at 1UP because of you, and I came back to 1UP because of you. You're the best newshound I ever met, and you're the reason 1UP is where it is today. You always had my back, we've been an inseparable team for a decade now, and I'm always going to support you, either right here or from afar. It's a shame you're so wrapped up in the business end of it these days, because people probably can't appreciate just how integral you are to the 1UP experience. It's something I know everyone here acknowledges, but on a personal level, it's been the best 10 years of my life. Thank you.
