There is a road, no simple highway,
Between the dawn and the dark of night,
And if you go no one may follow,
That path is for your steps alone.
-"Ripple," The Grateful Dead
"A relationship, I think, is like a shark. You know, it has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark."
--Alvy Singer (Woody Allen), "Annie Hall"
Well, now. So here we are. And here I am. 17 years at Ziff Davis, the last guy still here from the day I started, finally hanging it up and heading for the exit. For some of you, I know, this is a shock, but for me, as I ponder it many days after the decision was finally made, the greater shock may be that I actually was here for this long. Because, really, who does this anymore? Who stays with the same company for coming up on two decades? I guess the answer is: Guys like me, who found a place where he could learn and grow and thrive and have a pretty damn lucky time of it, when all is said and done.
When I took my first job at age 29 with Ziff at the now-defunct Ziff Davis Press, the computer book publishing division that came up with such winning products as "Can Do DOS," a book that was rolled up and sold in an aluminum can like tennis balls (no, I'm not kidding), I had no idea--and would have been horrified to know, I'm sure--that I'd still be with the company at age 46. Not one person I met at that time, or any time since, is still at Ziff from that day I started. Ziff Davis Press is gone, MacWEEK, the weekly magazine that was my second Ziff job, is gone, Computer Gaming World is gone, Games for Windows magazine is gone--and yet I kept hanging on like a fuggin' lifer.
When I started at Ziff Davis Press, I wasn't even married yet. Now I have a wife and a daughter who is 14 years old and in high school. And I'm emphasizing all this, right up front, because I want you to realize, as much as you're wondering how I could possibly do this, how monumental a decision this is for me. I've been here for most of my entire adult life.
I don't have too many great memories of Ziff Davis Press or MacWEEK, other than the phenomenally awesome people I met, many of whom are still my close friends today. And while the publications we worked on were just fine--they were not me. As is the case for many people in all walks of life, it was just my job. Yeah, it was in a field that I had interest in (publishing, journalism), but the subject matter was something I frankly didn't give much of a gooseberry fool about. It wasn't until I searched the internal Ziff job listings in 1996 and saw an Associate Editor position at Computer Gaming World open up that I truly found my proper place here, and, heck, maybe in the universe.
I don't want to go on endlessly about the CGW years, other than to say they were the best years I ever had. That original staff--Johnny, Ken Brown, Denny Atkin, Terry Coleman, Elliott Chin, Dave Salvator, and everyone else--were freakin' rock stars of gaming journalism. In those first years in the late 90s, which would turn out to be the magazine's peak years, we cranked out 300-400 page issues every single month. With the Web just barely born yet and not even remotely a competitive presence, magazines were all that there were. If gamers wanted gaming news, you read the magazines. When I first started, Johnny Wilson had so much power and influence as editor-in-chief at CGW that it was awe inspiring. This guy could walk into an E3 booth to see a game, and it would be like the Red Sea parting. Getting Johnny's seal of approval was *the* goal, the highest accolade, of many game developers in those days. At the magazine itself, we worked our asses off, but we also were a tight-knit group of gamers who wasted tons of time on the then-nascent phenomenon of LAN gaming, spending nearly entire days glued to our screens and killing each other in Quake. Truly there was no better job on Earth--for us anyway--than right there at Computer Gaming World.
But time marches on. Things change. Because they always do. Because they have to. I watched my old comrades at CGW leave one by one. The staff turned over I don't know how many times. But the great thing was that every new editor and artist was yet another kickass, smart, talented, funny person: Thierry "Scooter" Nguyen, Tom Price, Jason Babler, Michael Jennings, Will O' Neal, Robert Coffey, Darren Gladstone, Dana Jongewaard, Sean Molloy--the list goes on and on. I never left CGW, and then GFW, because why the hell would I? It was an awesome place to be, day after day. I'd wake up in the morning and want to go to work. In all those years I can honestly say I never had a day where I got up and thought, "gooseberry fool, it's a work day."
With the coming of, and then the dominance of, the Web, though, things started changing pretty freaking rapidly for the magazines. And I'm not going to be an old curmudgeon about it all. Many, if not most of, the benefits of the Web are obvious and stunning and revolutionary for human communication and interaction and I'm right there with everyone else wondering how the heck we ever lived without it. I'm on the Web I don't know how many hours a day. I'm addicted. And I'm killing print in my own way like everyone else, too: I stopped getting a daily newspaper because I was already getting all my news and information from the Web. So, I get it. And I like it. I am not one of those people, on the other hand, who thinks that "print is dead." I still get the Sunday paper, because sprawling out on the couch, or outside in the yard, with the paper on a lazy Sunday morning/afternoon cannot be duplicated on a computer screen.
Gaming journalism has it particularly tough, I think, because the very demographic it appeals to is also the most tech-savvy, the most likely to be on the Web all day anyway. So it is harder and harder for the magazines to keep up and compete. I actually loved the challenge of it, when CGW/GFW still existed. The fact that we knew we couldn't compete when it came to immediacy and breaking news meant that we had to try something new, go deeper, provide cool "alternative programming." It was a cool creative challenge, and I felt, in the end, that we were really onto something. my biggest frustration and disappointment about the closing of GFW back in April is that I think that was one of the best issues this magazine ever made, in any year. We were finally hitting our stride in the Web 2.0 years---and then the hammer came down, quickly and brutally and without warning. (Though in retrospect, I should have figured it out when, just weeks before the magazine's closure, I sat in a conference call with some dudes from Ziff's circulation department, and while strategies for EGM were being worked out, GFW didn't even come up, while I sat there like a moron.)
And while it's no secret that I was devastated by the loss of the magazine--my home and identity for 12 years--I still found a lot here to make it worthwhile for me to stay. For one, there's the small issue of CGW/GFW Radio. The podcast started out as something alien and unwanted to us, but then quickly morphed into something we loved, as we realized the opportunities it gave us to entertain folks and connect with our audience in an entirely different, and much more immediate way. Shawn, Sean, Ryan and I--with the humongous contributions of regulars like Robert Ashley and Anthony Gallegos--found the perfect outlet to complement our other work, a place to vent and joke and rag and BS and share our thoughts in an unfiltered way that ended up serving as some form of weekly catharsis for us. Not everyone loved (or loves--I shouldn't use the past tense) our unstructured, unplanned format, but for me personally, I couldn't have it any other way. I *needed* it to just be something that either happened or didn't. I wanted us to just turn on the mics and go, without a net, because I trusted the immense talent and brains and humor of the guys I had hired. The spontaneity meant that we wouldn't necessarily knock it out of the park every week, but the satisfication and thrill we'd feel as we knew we were in a good rhythm on the good weeks was something I never expected to ever get out of this job.
But the Web job itself--my regular job--in the post-magazine world turned out to be something of a mixed bag for me. While I saw Shawn and Ryan every day at the office and on the podcast, they were spun off into different directions when GFW closed, and so that close, creative bond that Sean, Shawn, Ryan and I had formed to make the magazine did not persist unfettered on the Web. We were not an "online version of the magazine." We were four guys absorbed into the greater good of the website. Which is fine. Which made sense. Which is what was needed here. But what became increasingly clear to me over the last few months, and especially when I had a few weeks away in Europe to think about it all, is that the concerns of a website, the concerns of this website, are not really my concerns at this point in my life. It doesn't mean they're wrong and I'm right. At all. I'm probably wrong! But no one does good work when they're unenthusiastic---I knew this at the very beginning of my Ziff career 17 years ago. And I didn't want to end the way I started. I wanted to leave while I still loved this place. Which I do. Very much.
I have been a very lucky man. The staff here is awesome. I am leaving you in very good hands, with some fantastic young talent. The generational change is in full effect here, with some of the newer employees, like Tina Sanchez, being literally young enough to be my daughter, as we've joked (and which is surely another sign that I was getting past my expiration date here). But these folks are amazing--hiring good talent is the one thing that Ziff has always consistently done well all these years. I have loved being a "father figure," or "elder statesman" as I heard one artist call me a few weeks ago, to the staff here. Working with all of them has been very satisfying, and an honor for me--I am continually flattered that they treat me the way they do.
And that goes for all the readers--you folks--and listeners of the podcast as well. I am ridiculously lucky. I still can't quite get my head around the fact that I actually have "fans." It's embarrassing to me to think about or admit. Maybe it goes with the whole self-hating Jew thing.
But, as anyone who really knows me knows, I am usually focusing on what I did wrong rather than what I did right. It's a continual struggle for me to acknowledge success. And that's not some kind of bogus fake modesty strategically designed to engender your flattery ("no, please, I'm not great! I couldn't be great! Please tell me I'm great!")--it's a hardwired part of my personality. I just want to do better, all the time. I remember reading an interview with Woody Allen (one of my early idols) where he was asked which of his movies was his favorite, and he said something along the lines of "I don't like any of them, because all I can see is what I could have done better", which is pretty much exactly how I feel. So, when I do sit down and read folks' emails to me, and the message board posts, and all that, it just feels surreal to me. It is incredibly rewarding--the most rewarding part of what I do, to know that people are enjoying what I do, that my desire to do something to please myself can entertain others in the process. Again, I feel extremely lucky, and grateful, for all of you who have ever enjoyed what I did, and took the time out of your busy lives to let me know this. I've read every email--even if I didn't have time to respond to even a fraction of you, know that I appreciated it.
But, hey: Let's not get too maudlin here. I'm not dead. This is not my wake. The opportunity I am getting to work with The Sims group is a fantastic one for me, even if you don't necessarily understand it yet. I will tell you this: I was not one of those game journalists who always secretly wanted to make games, and jumped at the first chance. In fact, this job change feels scary and weird to me, still, to be honest. I'm taking a chance here. My identity has first and always been as a writer, and as a journalist. "Switching sides" here is not the fulfillment of a dream as much as it is a leap of faith. What I am hoping for, and am strongly confident will be the case, is that I'll find myself in exactly the type of environment where I know I do my best work: With creative people, in a team, working on something to entertain people. It's a chance for me to explore new avenues of creativity and expression, to stretch my muscles in new ways, to go from being a guy who's been around so long he can do his job in his sleep to a guy who is going to be wide awake every minute because he has a lot to learn and a lot to prove. It is really, truly exciting for me. And I'm grateful, again, to be given the chance to start over in this way. So you better wish me good luck, because I am going to need it.
So, yeah: I'm not dead. But I am moving on. I'll be around, but I won't be here. I am in the process right now of setting up a personal blog again, where those who are interested can keep track of whatever random nonsense I'll be posting about. (Hopefully, as long as my new masters are cool with it, I can regale you with tales of my new career transformation.) And because I still love the folks here very much--and it's kinda killing me to leave them--I'll come back for podcasting fun now and then, whenever the time allows. And should I end up having any kind of public presence within the Sims community or on the Sims site itself, I'll letcha know.
My final words here are simply ones of thanks. To everyone. Starting with Johnny Wilson and to everyone I've worked with at Ziff, to all the readers and listeners--it's been an amazing, unbelievable ride for me. No one should legally be allowed to have this much fun for this many years while getting paid to do it. It's truly not fair.
So good luck to you, to me, to all of us, as we keep on keepin' on here. I'll be back to blog at least one more time to let you know where my new blog is, and we've got one more Brodeo coming up next week, and I'm sure I'll answer questions here and on the message boards for a bit. But, for the most part, this is it for me. 1991-2008, and I'm out, kids. Be good, eat your vegetables, and don't forget to tip your waitress.