Yet another of my blog entries hauled out of retirement from Sore Thumbs Blog, a repository of pre-Bitmob musings from Dan “Shoe” Hsu and me. It’s a look at one night of possibly shady dealings from EGM’s ancient history….
“These kinds of things don’t normally happen,” said the man sitting across from me in the hotel lobby. “I’d appreciate if you kept this between us. It could give the wrong impression.”
The “things” in question were the previous evening’s cigars from Cuba and Scotch whiskey that cost 100 bucks a chug, all courtesy of Activision PR. The “us”: EGM’s at-the-time editor-in-chief and me, a bottom-of-the-masthead associate editor.
This was in 1997. We were in Los Angeles for a private preview of Apocalypse, a generic action game memorable only because it starred a laser-scanned Bruce Willis and got some late-in-development finessing from then-unknown studio Neversoft, charged with polishing this turd before Tony Hawk heated their cred 900 degrees.
Activision wanted Apocalypse on the cover of EGM. We were already considering two other titles — neither from Activision — for the cover, so the publisher’s PR man was working us. His name was Frank. He was right out of central casting: slick talker, slick hair, blazer-and-jeans wardrobe, quick with the corporate card.
After our Apocalypse demo, where I dutifully filled my notebook fully expecting to write some kind of preview, Frank took the editor-in-chief and me to dinner at a classy place. He unfurled a ziplock baggie of Cuban cigars and ordered round after round of tippy-top-shelf Scotch. The editor-in-chief agreed to the Apocalypse cover.
We had the “things” discussion the following morning, then flew home to EGM’s Chicago-area offices. I wrote my Apocalypse cover story. Unbeknownst to the Activision PR guy, the editor-in-chief also agreed to put the two other games under consideration on the cover, too. The result: The first and only issue of EGM with a run of three unique covers (each featuring a different game).
I don’t know what went on behind the scenes to get those other two games their covers. I think the editor-in-chief was really just wavering between three so-so options and opted to try all three at once. Safety in numbers, I reckon. The effects of all that wining and dining were probably negligible.
None of the games’ publishers knew of this triple-cover threat. After finding out about it, none of them was happy. Frank left Activision shortly afterward to work in the movie biz.
I didn’t keep things between “us.” I told our editorial director at the time, Joe Funk, about the Scotch and cigars. He told me to “hang in there — things would change.” Things did change.