John Davison has taken a prominent role amongst videogame journalists over the last 20 years, with a background that runs from the heyday of PC Zone magazine in the UK (1995+), through to becoming editor-in-chief at the US-based 1UP network. His tenure at 1UP has seen the site transform into one of the ‘big three’ US videogame resources, along with the development of ground-breaking podcasts such as 1UP Yours, and the weekly 1UP Video Show.
Firstly, could you tell us a little bit about your background and how you managed to break into videogame journalism back in the UK?
I got into it when I was 14 years old, and playing games on the Atari ST. My first “professional” review was Winter Games from Epyx for a magazine called Page 6, which was later renamed New Atari User. That review led to a regular gig for the next three or four years for which I was mostly paid in games. Being a properly “published” writer helped open some doors when I was looking round for a full time gig when I left school at 18. My first full time job was on a short-lived weekly games magazine, Games-X.
You spent a few years in the mid-90′s as editor of PC Zone magazine, which I remember from a teenage vantage point as being fairly anarchic and light-hearted, not to mention having some excellent cover discs. Do you have any good memories of your time at the helm there? Are you proud of the direction that the magazine took under your charge?
That was a wild few years and I’m still incredibly proud of some of the stuff we did. I was lucky enough to have access to some excellent writers while I was there, like Charlie Brooker who was absolutely hilarious, and is now deservedly much more famous than I am, as well as David McCandless, Patrick McCarthy, Duncan MacDonald…the list goes on. All of them funny, talented guys that were working on games coverage in a style that was way ahead of its time. We got into all sorts of trouble, but the magazine grew and grew, and was always neck-and-neck with it’s arch-rival PC Gamer. We beat them to the Quake demo too, which I was always very pleased about because nailing demos back then was ridiculously important, and a ludicrously bitchy process. Actually, Simon Cox (who ran PC Gamer’s disc at the time) who was on the receiving end of my gloating about getting the Quake demo first is now a very good friend and my partner in crime here at the 1UP Network. He’s the creative director who oversees the design of all our print and web properties.
We had a lot of fun with other (non demo) stuff on the disc too, and we let Culky (Colin Culk) have pretty much free reign with his insane video projects. This was back in the mid-90s remember, before digital video, and before something like YouTube could even have been imagined.
Speaking of YouTube, some of the old Culky videos (like the one where he made a tank out of his Beetle and shot up the EA offices) are up there somewhere.
Following on from that, moving to work in the US must have been a culture shock at the time. Did you find anything significantly different in the journalism outlook of the American publications? Any lessons to be learned?
I can remember shocking my co-workers twice during my first couple of weeks. The first was using the word “cunt” to describe someone (they’re not big fans of the word here) the second was saying “no” to an exclusive pitch from a publisher. Things are very different now, but I spent a lot of time restructuring the way the EGM team worked, and how we approached content. It was great fun, and it was at a time where print was unstoppable in the games space.
Moving on to 1up; The rise of the Internet in general has changed the landscape of media consumption in the last few years, affecting print publications significantly. How do you feel about people consuming information in this manner at the expense of traditional media? Do you miss the allure of the magazine shelf in WH Smiths?
I love it. The immediate feedback, the community involvement, and the way we can integrate lots of different media types makes things much more exciting now. We now have print, online, audio, and video at our disposal, and we can piece together editorial packages that hit readers with lots of different ways of getting info on games.
The site seems to be going from strength to strength at the moment in terms of content and critical acceptance. Has the rise in popularity taken you by surprise at any point? Where would you like to see 1up expand in the next few years?
The stuff that surprised me the most was how quickly the 1UP Show and the podcasts took off. They were all real skunkworks projects, and very experimental for us. We pushed, we tried something a bit different, and people responded well. Yet again, I’m lucky to be working with some very talented and imaginative people.
A lot of what we do is focused on personality – whether it’s tapping into the community, spotlighting developers, or putting the editors front and center. A lot of media can be faceless, and we wanted to make sure we never were.
The 1up Yours podcast is lauded for being one of the most open and honest discussions on videogaming at the moment, and rightly so. Has your relationship with any developers or publishers been affected by any of the personal outbusts that that the show delivers on a weekly basis? We all know the outcome of the Mark MacDonald and Dennis Dyack situation, but I’d imagine PR departments around the industry would be getting wary of your influence by now?
I think PR people are very careful about who they want to put in that room with us. We don’t ever want it to be a hostile environment, but it will always be a challenging one. The guests we’ve had so far have been great sports about the whole thing, and have (I hope!) had a good time with it.
Ultimately, we want everything we do to be entertaining…”entertain and inform” and all that, y’know?
The thing we’ve found with the podcasts, and 1UP Yours in particular, is that the emotion and the delivery are very important aspects. Hearing one of us say something on 1UP Yours is very different from reading one of us say the exact same thing in our blogs. You can hear the emotion, you can tell where it’s coming from, and you know if we’re bullshitting or not.
The show may sound like complete anarchy, and it may sound like we’re just sounding off for 90 minutes, but you’d be surprised how much preparation we do before a show, and how organized it actually is.
Continuing on that line; There seems to be somewhat of an awakening at the moment with videogame journalists realising that they actually wield a fair amount of power and don’t simply have to recycle press releases. Do you feel that the industry as a whole lacks a certain amount of investigatory quality or has the balance finally been found in that respect?
The good stuff has always been there. The problem was always that there was a lot of noise distracting from the good stuff.
Lastly, as a person with experience on both sides of the atlantic, and with many years under your belt with differing publications and media outlets, do you have any tips to offer anybody looking to get into the field today? What specific qualities do you look for in your writers?
Always be prepared to adapt, and don’t be a dick.
Professional enthusiast, videogame "journalist" and all-round spectacular sofa dweller. "
2 Comments
Great stuff.
I’ve been a fan of John’s for a while now and have a lot of respect for him.
Yeah, he seems like a pretty up front kind of chap from the limited dealings with him that I had last year.
Nice bloke all round.