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. :)