Press Pass: An Interview With Dan "Shoe" Hsu

9/11/2008 7:01 PM | 1 Comments | Page 1 of 3

After starting at major game journalism publisher Ziff Davis in 1996, Dan "Shoe" Hsu rose through the ranks to serve for six years as editor-in-chief of Electronic Gaming Monthly before being promoted to editorial director of Ziff Davis' Game Group in 2007. So it was a bit of a shock when, in April this year, Hsu announced that he would be ending his career at Ziff Davis, with no immediate plans other than "taking some much needed time off."

Or maybe it wasn't so shocking. Even as a member of the game journalism elite, "Shoe" was one of the game press' fiercest critics, frequently using his editorial space in EGM to deride what he sees as an overly cozy relationship between game journalists and game publishers. It's a tradition of criticism he's continued on his Sore Thumbs blog, where he's written a series of posts revealing insider tales of some of the more sordid wheeling and dealing that goes on behind the scenes in the game press.

Despite this openness, Hsu has been reluctant to discuss the specifics of his abrupt departure from a top position in the game journalism scene -- until now. In his first in-depth interview since leaving Ziff Davis, Hsu talked with Crispy Gamer about the reasons he left, the myriad problems with the current state of game journalism and more.

Crispy Gamer: Are you ready to elaborate any further on the reasons you left Ziff Davis?

Dan Hsu: I'd say I probably have about a dozen reasons why I left. The easiest, most immediate -- and safest -- answer: I've been with that company for 11 out of my 12 years in the business, and it was just time for a change of pace. I needed a break, and I needed new challenges.

I guess you can also say the business itself burned me out. Working on a print magazine is hard, hard work. And a typical work scenario could look like this: I bust my ass trying to score a triple-A exclusive, I go and see the game, do interviews, spend hours writing up and polishing a story, work with the art team to design the cover and layout. Finally, I'm all beaming and proud of what we've done, and bam, people scan the contents and deliver that scoop to everywhere for free.

It's not about freedom of information. EGM's a business, and it depends on people buying the issue -- not only for those cover-price dollars at newsstand, but for circulation for ad revenue. We try to do stuff the Internet does not have, but the Internet goes ahead and ruins it. It's a no-win situation, and our business has suffered for it. And then I had frustrations competing with Game Informer's business model. Those guys are smart. With their GameStop connection, we just had a lot of trouble staying competitive in the circulation department.

Crispy Gamer: Can print survive in this kind of environment? Even neglecting the piracy/copyright issues, can a game magazine compete with the speed of the Internet?

Hsu: I don't think most magazines can compete, no. The Internet offers too much too quickly, and for free. I used to think I could stay competitive at EGM with exclusives and unique features, but realistically, anything a magazine can do, the web can do as well. I think you'd have to have a business model like Game Informer's to survive, where someone is getting those magazines out to consumers at a high rate for zero perceived cost. Or perhaps you have to make the magazine a higher perceived value and make people pay more for it. We played with that idea somewhat: better paper stock, better cover stock, a lot more pages -- all stuff that would make the magazine a lot pricier to produce, but we'd charge readers more for buying it. But that's a very high-risk maneuver that we couldn't afford to try at Ziff. Maybe we should've just gone the Maxim route and put lots of half-naked babes all over EGM.