Dan ‘Shoe’ Hsu interview

EGM magazine and the 90s

How did you get the gig and what was your background beforehand?

“At the time I was out of college and I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I studied statistic in college and I was just kind aimless, didn’t really know what I wanted to do in life, and I was a big video gamer, an EGM reader, and my girlfriend at the time suggested I apply at companies that I would like to work for, rather than were can I apply my college education to, and so I want to work in video games, and so I sent my resume and cover letter to maybe 20 companies, game companies, game outlets such as EGM, and out of those 20 nothing happened for months, so I thought that was just as bust.

“So I want to say about 9 months later I get a call, and it was the editorial director at EGM, Joel Funk, so he really like my cover letter, which basically said “I’ll do whatever,” so I thought maybe marketing, as that’s a something I could do without a writing background, but my cover letter caught his attention, and he said they were looking for writers, so he asked me to turn in some more writing samples. I thought it was a joke at first, like maybe one of my friends were pranking me. So any way I sent through some samples, he liked them and asked me to come down for an interview, and I got the job.”

Which magazines did you read growing up? Like EGM or Nintendo Power?

“Both. EGM was my favourite, was my number one. My second favourite was probably Next Gen. So I read them both regularly before I got into the industry. Then Nintendo Power further after that, and occasionally other magazines like Gamepro or Game Informer, Game Fan. But mostly EGM and Next Gen.    

Where the UK  classics like CVG  or Mean Machines a factor in the US? Or where they hard to find?

“There were a lot of influential magazines abroad, like Edge, Famitsu in Japan, that we knew by reputation, but we never got the sense that they had huge distribution, because the markets are relatively smaller, just in terms of populations of their counties. So the advantage we had as American magazines is we had a much larger market. The impression I had was that our distribution was a little bit more advanced, so we were able to get some magazines overseas, and that had a snowball effect, where American magazines in general had a broader audience, had a larger audience, so we were able to secure more exclusives. You had magazines like Next Gen or Edge, that were more prestige branded, or positioned as prestige brand where they could secure exclusives or interviews, based on the prestige of the brand, presented and designed very nicely, it was a PR win for a publisher to get coverage in Next Gen. EGM was a little more mainstream, and so they had a wide reach, and once you start getting those exclusives your readership expands, and the success builds upon itself. 

“And like in England, one of the things we always talked about was the newsstands sales, and for them to be a bigger deal for the English market. Like, I know in the US we really drove hard for subscriptions, we also had a big newstanda model, but in the UK, they’re very newsstand driven, so a lot of the business was including goodies and bonus products (inside the poly bag), to try and convince people to pick up that magazines because there was more competition there on the newsstands vs the US. 

How important was the ad sales revenue vs newsstand sales and subscriptions?

“I don’t know exactly, I didn’t work in that department, but if you like at our ad sales dept vs the circulation dept, the ad people were way more important, they had the budget to go do things, they had the bigger team. You weren’t making much money from subscriptions. Subscriptions are mainly to drive up the circulation numbers. Newsstands you made more money because with subscriptions you’re selling each issue at a significant discount, you have to mail them out, etc.

But the main business was to get as many readers as possible, so you could sell ad pages at a higher premium.”

Why is EGM so fondly remembered?

“I know for me, as a reader, like even before i worked there, one of the reasons I read it, well lots of reasons actually, but one was they always seemed on top of everything new that was coming out, and they had sections about what’s coming from Japan, and as a gamer you get excited, like, “oh, I hope this product will come out sometime in the future to the US market, so I can play it, but sometimes it won’t. Like this is a game in Japan and it’s only going to stay in Japan. But you still get to read about these things you wouldn’t have access to otherwise. This is the 90s, so this pre-internet, and this is where you’re getting all the information from. So  EGM was very aggressive about global coverage vs just a domestic market.     

“Another thing is they were very much about letting the personalities of the writers shine. So whether that was the rumours section with Quarterman, or Trick-man-terry, or the reviewers, you kinda got to know them by name, almost. So when I went and interviewed at EGM, i was like, “Oh, your Ice man, I’ve been reading your stuff, Iknow who you are, so they let their personalities shine. I know the review crew was really popular, Famitsu had a similar format, so EGM stole that format, and each game would get a little right-up, so it’s kinda counter-intuitive, you get very little information, but you see 3 or 4 scores right away,  so you get a good feel for what the magazine or staff think of that game,  

“The personalities of the review crew was a big thing, and just having that access, the success kind of build upon itself, because after a while EGM gets bigger and bigger, and companies come to you say, “we want to debut, or announce a game through EGM, because it’s the biggest magazine out there, or one of the best selling ones.”

“The big, big thing for me as a reader, I remember reading an editorial by Steve Harris, who’s the original owner, about how Capcom was going to pull ads from EGM because they weren’t happy with coverage for Super Street Figher 2 for  Super Nintendo, or one of the  later editions of Street Fighter 2, and EGM wasn’t kind to it in it’s review coverage, I think the critique was it was rehashing a lot of the old ones. Capcom threatened to pull advertising. So, the traditional thinking is you pull advertising, you threaten that loss of revenue, and that magazine will cave, or be friendlier to you. So (instead) the magazine wrote an editorial outing this, and just saying, “We don’t care. Capcom can pull the ads. Our service is for you, the reader.”

“And I remember when I interviewed, I asked the editorial director, Joel Funk, about this, and “how do you handle the pressure.”  I remember this very clearly, he said, “the bottom line, you take care of the readers and the advertising will come. If you’re hornets and transparent to the readers, the loyalty will build, the readership will grow, and advertisers will have no choice but to go to you, because you have the numbers and you have the reach.”    

“And so when I started writing, I remember I was one of the lower reviews on Turok for Nintendo 64, and I didn’t know this until years later, way later the fact, that Acclaim pulled advertising because of my review. But this is how the magazine was set up, the advertising department was not allowed to share that with us, because they didn’t want to put pressure on us to be more favourable. So it was about keeping those two worlds very separate, so that there’s no undue influence about what we write about, or how we score things, or how we cover Acclaim products in the future.

“So I learned those lessons, and we made policies around them, so that the bottom line is the product has to be very honest, and be full of integrity and be true to the readers. 

Was there any kind of rivalry or connection with the UK media? Did you meet up at gaming awards or conventions?"

“There wasn’t a lot of that, my main interactions were with other US press, because when you go to like a conference, from a game publishing perspective, a gaming company will have marketing for different territories, so here’s our North America division, .

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