Player One Podcast

[NOTE: This is a repost of an entry I originally wrote for my personal blog, which is horribly outdated and is not even worth going to anymore (oh god, the layout...it's like I was blogging in 1998 and using Lynx to browse the Internets). I'm going to move those entries over here piece-by-piece and at some point close down the other site. I'll probably post an entry from there every day or two. And this is the first of those! Enjoy!]

This is the first issue of EGM that I worked on (uncredited).

Originally posted June 24, 2004 — It was ten years ago this month that I was first hired at Sendai Publishing Group to work on Electronic Gaming Monthly.

When I was originally hired at Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM) I had just turned 17, and it was the summer of 1994, between my junior and senior years of high school. I’d been doing a fanzine called Paradox for about three-four years before that and had sent copies of it to EGM in the hopes that one day, they’d give me a job. During the ‘zine days, I’d talked on and off with Sendai’s then-grand pooba Steve Harris about the magazine and the game industry — though really, I was a wide-eyed kid with a passion for games and mediocre writing ability that wanted a job. So when he offered me one, I was ecstatic. All that blood, sweat, and tears doing a ‘zine with some friends at my own expense had finally paid off. My starting “Associate Editor” salary was $16,000/year — not bad for a high-schooler still living with his parents.

I remember my first day, and my first assignment, vividly. At the time, EGM2 had just started up and both magazines had a single staff. Because it was the last day of a deadline, I was told that my first duty would be to help out with the Quartermann column for the premiere issue of EGM2. I thought, “great. I get to pow-wow with Q-Mann, talk rumors; this will be great.” But as a longtime EGM fan I was ill-prepared for what I found out a few seconds later: THERE WAS NO QUARTERMANN (dun dun dunnnnn!) There was in the beginning; one person wrote Q-Mann (and apparently got an awful lot of his information from the staff of a certain west coast game store that would later start its own magazine) every month for a couple years and that was that. But the “old” Q-Mann didn’t have time to do it anymore, so it was up to various members of the staff to pick up the reigns. And because I was the newbie, it was my turn to do it. I was given a sheet of paper with some minor (read: crap) rumors on it and was told to write Gaming Gossip as my first assignment. To me this whole thing came as a shocking revelation. Here it was, my first day working at the North Pole and I find out that there is no Santa Claus–or rather, that I am Santa Claus.

So during that first summer I worked at EGM, I did about 5-6 installments of Gaming Gossip across both EGM and EGM2. To differentiate the two columns I eventually had to come up with another pseudonym for the EGM2 version. That experience would later haunt me for years to come when I came up with a ridiculous pseudonym that everyone on EGM would soon constantly tease me about — “Secret Turtle.” But the name that made it into the final product was “X-BERT.” Yeah, both are pretty lame, huh? In addition I did the Interface: Letters to the Editor (letters), Press Start (news), helped with the arcade sections, and did other odd-jobs and special features. And because one staff did two magazines, deadlines were every two weeks.

While working at EGM was a dream for me at the time, there was a slight catch that made that first summer…well, a living hell. The catch was that Steve Harris had hired me without consulting EGM’s editor-in-chief Ed Semrad. Ed had wanted somebody else instead — Canadian games reporter Todd Mowatt. Yet, while Ed was on vacation Steve had gone and hired me. So I started at an incredible disadvantage — my boss’ boss had gone over my boss’ head and hired some 17 year-old kid that did some fanzine. Not good. And because of this, I suffered. For the first month I worked at EGM, I had no cubicle, no computer, no phone, no game systems, no TV, and nowhere to sit. And no one — least of all Ed — was in any hurry to get me these raw materials. Instead, I used another guy’s area while he was on vacation. When that guy came back, I would wait for people to go to lunch or until after 5 p.m. and get on their machines and work. And because this was a time before fileservers or the Internet, I had to borrow other people’s optical discs to be able to do anything and hope my stuff didn’t accidentally get corrupted (which happened to those discs all too often).

The other problem about being persona non grata with the boss was that no one else on EGM liked me much, either. I had a few friends — Mike Vallas, Tim Davis, “Trickman” Terry Minnich and John Gurka among them — but the rest of them didn’t like me, and took a certain pleasure in watching me suffer. Eventually I got a hand-me-down computer and a “desk” (an old door laid across two filing cabinets) so I could get some work done during the day. But I sat far away from the real “EGM area” and still had to borrow an optical drive so I could get any work done. And the computer I had couldn’t take game screenshots, nor did I have any game systems or a TV to play on so I had to use other people’s stuff for that still.

A few weeks later, Sendai expanded to take up a whole floor of the small office building in Lombard and EGM was scheduled to move to the other side of the building. I figured that this was going to change everything. I’d probably get a cubicle and sit with everyone else. Maybe I’d even get a real desk (GASP!). One day the entire EGM staff had a meeting and we all went over to the new area and Ed laid down a small map of the place which had it marked where everyone would sit…except me. Somehow, someway, they had forgotten a place for me. This honestly pissed me off. I’d been working there for a solid two months or more, and yet it was if I didn’t even work there. Todd Mowatt, who had eventually gotten hired to EGM after I was, had a place on this floorplan. I was the only one who didn’t. So when EGM moved to this new area, I was squeezed into a tiny walkway with just enough room for my table-on-two-filing-cabinets desk. And because I was nowhere near any electrical outlets, I had to use an extension cord that was plugged into someone else’s outlet. And they enjoyed flicking the switch, cutting the power to my computer every now and again.

By this time, it was August and a new school year had started. For a while, I’d go to high school during the day and then go into work at night. The problem soon became that even though I was technically working part-time now (and was paid via time card), I was still expected to do all the sections I’d worked on when I was salaried. For both magazines (remember–deadlines every two weeks.) Unless I quit high school (which I wasn’t gonna do) I had to somehow lighten my load. I could not keep working these crazy hours — school from 7:45 in the morning until 3:10, then EGM from 4-10:30 at night, every day plus working on weekends. So I went in to talk to Ed. I explained the situation and that I needed to have a few things taken off of my plate or at least given some help…

TO BE CONTINUED…

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And some of the comments left to that original post…

Hey CJ,

In a comment to how you were percieved way back when- You were sort of set up as a bit of opposition to us old guys. Certain members of the staff made well and sure to show us what special treatment you were supposedly given. As a result, there was some animosity towards you. Over the duration of time, I realized how much a real gamer you really were. It was because of the office politics that I was shunted away from someone who I honestly could have considered a friend. Hell, we had so much in common- why not?

My real lesson learned during my years at Ziff was to avoid the politics. Unfortunately for me, I gained a stigma as someone who hated all of the new guys no matter what I did. You were always cool to me.

And we’ll always have Japan. You were a part of one of the most magical experiences of my life. That nugget of memory is something I’ll always carry with me.

Andy Baran | 07.17.04 – 9:12 pm

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You are an ungrateful SOB. Many people took you under their wings to give you experience and try and help you along.

The fact that you were given the opportunity to work at EGM would be enough for most people.

Your ungrateful attitude and biased recollection of the events that took place showcase your inability to be satisfied with anything.

You still have no college degree and you think you know everything.

I tried to teach you a few things to help you out with your work and with life, but it seems as though you haven’t learned anything!

Accept the fine art of being bitter!

Todd Mowatt | 07.31.05 – 3:52 am

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(This next comment is one I wrote to that last post…)

I’ll have to go back and read to where you’re finding the part about me being ungrateful. I am extremely grateful to people like Steve Harris, Joe Funk, John Davison, etc. They gave me real opportunities and I will always hold those people in high esteem.

CJ | 07.31.05 – 9:07 am

Chris Johnston Electronic Gaming Monthly EGM