Written by Jason Kwong
Monday, 03 April 2006
Che Chou has broken into the industry after a storied career in video games media. We decided to interview Che to learn more about how he got his break, which lead into his current job as Community Manager at Microsoft Game Studios. I was lucky enough to get Che away from playing Oblivion to share his experiences with us.
NeoGAF: Tell us how you got your break into your first paying media gig. Who was it for?
Che Chou: When I say I stumbled into the industry, it isn't too far from the truth. And as sad and particular as it may sound, in my situation, it really was a case of who i knew. Back in 1998, I hung out on an IRC channel called #vidgames a lot because I was heavy into importing Japanese games. Through that channel, I met a lot of folks -- some had aspirations to do their own gaming sites. David Zdyrko who ran Dave's (Sega) Saturn Page, and young Sam Kennedy and Dave Toole, who ran Gaming-Age, as well as more "legit" game writers from Ziff-Davis magazines like EGM and OPM.
At the time, I was kind of slacking and making good money at Netscape, but I knew the gig wouldn't last. AOL had just bought the company and Netscape's browser was complete shit. Plus, I wanted to try my hand at "writing" for a living. I'd always wanted to be a writer in high school, and wrote a ton of fiction, and then majored in English in college so I did plenty of essay writing too. My first few gigs were writing for DaveZ's Saturn page and Gaming Age -- both fine sites, I might add. Did it as practice, you could say. I didn't get paid but it was okay. Once in a while, they sent me a game to review and because I already had a job, I really didn't need the money.
Once my writing started hitting its stride on Gaming Age, I began to get noticed by Joe Fielder and Jeff Gerstmann over at Gamespot, who began freelancing me to do reviews. Not just any reviews, the worst of the worst N64 games they could shovel at me. But I whipped out the text, sure as ever. Towards the end of 1998, John Ricciardi, who was the reviews editor over at EGM at the time, told me they had an opening on the magazine. I was pretty entrenched with my life in the South Bay Area of SF and didn't know if I wanted to move out to Chicago to pursue what I saw at the time as a hobbyist, dead-end career. I mean, if you love what you do for a living, there has to be a silver lining, right?
Like I said, Netscape was going down,
and San Jose -- if you really think about it -- is a complete dump. So I packed up my things and drove out to the Midwest. Once I got to EGM, it seemed that I had found my calling. The year and a half of web writing I was doing was paying off in spades. That's pretty much my origin in the industry.
NG: So you paid your dues, which is great, because a lot of people just assume that new hires just walk into something.
CC: Nah, I paid plenty of dues. Oh and let me just mention that my starting salary at EGM was, even at the time, pretty pitiful. I had to take a pay cut from Netscape to work there, which is a large part of why I didn't think writing about games had much of a future.
NG: Yeah, I think people who really want to get into that type of career don't realize that most people in publishing don't make much money salary-wise.
CC: Yeah. If you're a complete n00b, starting salaries start around 35k.
NG: I came from that background too, so I know about meager paychecks and how that affects your spending habits in a region that has high costs of living.
CC: Well, luckily for me, Chicagoland was very affordable, so even while I was making 35k, I was very comfortable.
NG: Yeah, but you just can't do that here in the SF Bay Area
CC: I know quite a few ex-interns-now-employees who do make something in that range and are living in SF. You can do it, but you probably aren't going to own all 3 next-gen consoles in 2006.
NG: So how did 1Up form?
CC: Well, it's kind of a full-circle thing with 1UP. The site is a result of the Ziff-Davis Games group wanting to take their business online, and a return for Sam Kennedy (the original Gaming Age guy) to his roots. As far as I know, it was entirely driven by Sam and my ex-editorial director John Davison. I'm pretty hazy about the beginnings of 1UP because I was on Xbox Nation at the time, too busy trying to make an avant garde games magazine.
The site started in earnest in 2003, but I didn't get involved with it until 2005, when sadly, Xbox Nation was shut down.
NG: And you then became Managing Editor...
CC: Yeah. Just previously, I was executive editor of Xbox Nation... which is different than managing editor.
NG: Just for clarity's sake, can you describe the managing editor position?
CC: As executive editor, I was more shaping the direction and content of the magazine, worrying less about production details and deadlines (although everybody worries about deadlines sooner or later). As a managing editor, that's primarily all you're worried about -- making sure you're running a tight ship and things are getting turned in on time and posted in a timely manner. If need be, you crack the whip. Essentially, you play the bad cop vs. the editor in chief, who is usually the good cop.
NG: Heh, what, no aluminum bat? (I've heard about Bill Donohue...)
CC: You didn't see my Condemned lead pipe?
So given that definition of what a managing editor does, I think I was probably ill-suited for the job. In retrospect, I think I did a pretty crap job of handling the purely managing editor duties, which were to just stay on top of folks turning stuff in, planning out a daily schedule of editorial content, and just making sure there's follow through on what you plan.
The problem is, I'm more of the creative type, and really, from the moment I stepped into the EGM offices, I was bred to be more of a writer and a brainstormer for content. Plus, having been senior editor for Gamers.com, reviews and previews editor for EGM, and then executive editor for XBN, I was getting pretty good at talking to PR folks and trying to get exclusive stories. So that was my specialization, and so I did a lot of the more executive editor (i.e. creative) stuff for 1UP... which was good and I'm proud of the stuff I accomplished there, but what really suffered was our ability to have a "tight ship," so to speak. Trust me, it isn't easy managing a group of 14 or 15 people.
By the time Jane (Pinckard) and Ryan (O'Donnell) developed the 1UP Show, I kind of fit right in. Again, it draws on my strengths of being more creative, coming up with concepts, calling companies for stories and access, that sort of thing.
The guy who took over as Managing Editor, Garnett Lee... he's excellent at the managing editor duties so I think everything worked out for the best.
NG: Is it safe for me to assume that being managing editor gave you incentive to work for your current employer, or did you get some bitchin' offer?
CC: Oh, again, the winds of fate blew me over to Microsoft much in the same way it did way back in 1999 when I went to EGM. Sure, I have the skill set to do my job at MS, and that's why they hired me, but opportunity came knocking because I knew the right people. Having worked with MS and Bungie when I was on XBN established friendships and relationships. So it was natural of them to think of me when a position opened up.
When the job first landed in my lap, I didn't even want it. I was quite comfortable at 1UP, and I was passionate about what we were doing with the 1UP Show. Perhaps it was because I went into exploring the MS opportunity armed with this knowledge and confidence that helped me get the job, I don't know. But now that I'm here, I can say that I've made the right decision. I felt like I was hitting a ceiling over at Ziff. It had nothing to do with the fact that I couldn't someday get promoted to a higher spot.
It was more about challenging myself to learn something new. I could probably be an editor for the rest of my life, to be honest. But, I don't know, I'd feel like I wasn't really living up to my potential. Maybe if I were to become the Lester Bangs of games journalism or something. But there simply isn't room for a publication like XBN to exist, and after a while, I didn't even want to do new games journalism because it felt belabored.
NG: So what do you think you will miss the most about working for Ziff Davis, or more precisely, 1UP?
CC: I'm going to miss the people. The Ziff group really is a tightly knit family of friends... most of my best friends all worked under the same roof. It was pretty remarkable. Sure, sometimes it could get a little bitchy or dramatic, but it's totally worth it.
NG: That's has to make being a managing editor somewhat difficult. Even if you're supposed to separate professional and personal relationships, it can play a factor.
CC: Yeah totally. I guess what you gotta remember is that when you're in that kind of a position, your job isn't to make friends.
NG: What did you dislike?
CC: Well very little. Like anything you do for a long time (in my case, 7 years), you kind of just burn out of doing the same routine over and over again. Also, if you're doing online, trade shows are a total whore. Some people were born to hustle like that. It really does require a certain mindset and personality. For online, it's more like, walk around all day, look at games, talk to PR folks, go to appointments, then stay up all night writing it up.
NG: Tell us how most games are reviewed, with more emphasis on the process, and not so much on criteria.
CC: Well, I can't speak for other places like Gamespot or IGN but having friends at all those places, I imagine the process is very similar and really bland. Companies typically send out games 2-3 weeks before it ships or goes to certification so print magazines can put it into their issues and offset lead times. Reviews editor gets the games in, assigns them out to the best person on the staff to handle that style of game. (Although there's no exact science to this -- sometimes you want to mix it up.) Then the reviewer plays the shit out of the game. How long they play it for will vary with the genre.
The truth is, it isn't always possible to finish games. I mean, some games you finish, some you can't. Nobody would review FFXII or RE4 without finishing it, but how do you finish a game with a heavy online component? It could be really fun for a few days online, but then it could get old and become kind of shit, and vice versa. you might hate it at first and then you discover how awesome it is later. So, I say online reviews are the biggest challenge for any publication.
Companies will also call you up all the time to bitch about bad review scores. At which point, it's up to the person who wrote the review to defend his score by citing specifics and talking with the developer. Usually they just end up agreeing to disagree. Sometimes, it turns out the reviewer made a mistake or didn't finish the game or play it enough... that's when you're fucked.
NG: So you better hire people with a backbone.
CC: Or people with good review ethics. I mean, there is no conspiracy. I know it's shocking, but there are no moneyhats, at least not where I worked. And yeah, we disagree with each other's scores all the time, but at the end of the day, we knew it all just came down to personal preference, and not because Konami gave somebody an oriental massage or something.
NG: What's your opinion about payola? We always read about editors and junior reporters being flown in for some event, and being put up in some hotel for a day. We read stuff about guys getting XBoxes for an XBox Live event
CC: Hmm...the funny thing about this question is that, it's such a hot topic in the forum community, and there's so little of it actually happening. Obviously I can't speak for anyone except for the publications I worked for, but I have friends all over the place and -- I swear to you, Jason, nobody has EVER gotten an envelope filled with money, or a check, or a hat made of cash, for giving a game good scores.
That being said... the games industry is no different than any other industry, entertainment or otherwise. Yes, editors are flown in from all over the world, and those without scruples will let the game publisher pay for these trips (which, contrary to popular belief, may not even be very extravagant). Ziff-Davis has a pretty strict policy about not letting companies pay for these junkets, but really, I think that's just a gesture of integrity. Because the apparent hypocrisy there is that every editor in the biz gets free games...
NG: What about review copies? I've heard of some independent sites that take the copies and eBay them.
CC: I suppose that's the real source of payola. Just an endless flow of free games. Again, there are no conspiracies. However, there are relationships that need to be maintain so I can see why people go soft on scores... because you don't want to fuck yourself over for that next big exclusive. But personally, I have never seen a blatant case of review fraud.
NG: So big exclusives... how does that work?
CC: No big conspiracy here either. Game publishers usually give big exclusives to mags and sites with the highest circulation or traffic numbers. It's kind of fucked up for the little guy because it's a vicious catch-22 -- you can't get a scoop because you're small-time, but damn, if only you could put yourself on the map with a few big exclusives, you'd get more traffic, and hence, get offered bigger stories. I've worked on big mags and small sites before. Fighting that system is pretty tough and can be discouraging. When you see smaller sites with big stories, it's almost always because someone on the inside worked a miracle through a relationship. That kind of stuff is always good to see.
I can't stress enough the importance of maintaining good relationships in this business, by the way.
NG: Is there anything you'd change from your experience ?
CC: I know it sounds cheesy, but you can't ever change anything in life without that difference completely impacting who and where you are now. I could say that I'd want XBN to have survived and have sold a lot of copies when we were at our most experimental, but who knows how that would affect the outcome of everything around me? I might not be here today, working on the other side of the games business, helping develop a game.
NG: Thanks for taking time from playing Oblivion to share your thoughts. Undoubtedly, you'll be at E3, so I'll owe you a beer at the Gordon Biersch inside the convention center.
CC: Haha... deal...
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