An Interview with Johnny Minkley

It certainly isn’t every day that you get the chance to pick the brains of a man who has used the power of his words, his voice (and his charming face), to conquer the gaming world. So what of the history of Mr.Minkley? Here is a man who begun his media career writing for a small gaming magazine, but has now moved into his own and is in the big league! On his CV, alongside all the impressive interviews, you would find information about his TV show and monthly radio slot. Jealous? Yeah, us too! But enough of the life story, I know what you really came here for.

Lets get talk about games, baby.

Xboxer360: Everyone has his or her own story to tell about how they first became sucked into the gamer world. What was your first taste of the sweet seductress that is gaming?

Johnny Minkley: My big brother’s Atari 2600 – so he’s to blame for everything (including my lifelong support of Man Utd. No, I’m not from Manchester). We used to rent games from the local video store. Spider-Man was a favourite – web-slinging and swinging up an impossibly high skyscraper. Ludicrously basic, but utterly captivating. One of the pins on the power plug snapped off in a socket so we couldn’t play it anywhere else in the house for years afterwards. This Was Living, to coin a phrase.

First machine that was MINE ALL MINE was a BBC Micro Model B. My parents got it because they thought it would be more ‘educational’ than a Speccy or C64. My education consisted mainly of Chuckie Egg and Football Manager. The latter was my first full-on gaming addiction; I’d punch the computer in a rage if I lost. Which happened a lot. Someone should have called the Daily Mail.

Xboxer360: You are a very busy man, what with your fortnightly show at Eurogamer TV coupled with your continued writing at EuroGamer.net and GamesIndustry.biz. Are there any other projects you are currently working on?

Johnny Minkley: The Eurogamer TV Show is weekly these days and huge fun to make, not least due to the efforts of the long-suffering James the Cameraman. And, having recently launched our shiny new HD player on EGTV, the Show itself will be evolving to support that very soon. It also helps enormously working with such an amazingly talented bunch at Eurogamer.

Aside from EG, I have a monthly spot on BBC Radio 1 with the wonderful Jo Whiley as the resident ‘games expert’, which I’ve been doing now for over five years. There remains an appalling lack of respectable games coverage on mainstream TV and radio, which is why Radio 1 deserves credit for remaining committed to giving the industry exposure to millions of listeners on one of its biggest shows.

Beyond that, random opportunities pop up here and there. In April, I presented a 75-minute session on gaming at the BBC Children’s Festival. A slightly terrifying but exciting experience, and a great chance to talk up the positive aspects of the industry to a theatre full of BBC journos and execs. As we know, when the mainstream press report on games, it’s usually either the obvious (“Ooh, that Sony Wii thing is popular with attractive women!), or the negative (“LEGO Batman made me a cross-dressing murderer!”). So genuinely inspiring and positive stories – such as the incredible and life-changing eye-control tech used by the charity Special Effect (specialeffect.org.uk) – struggle to get noticed.

Later in the year, I’ll be speaking at the annual conference of the National Obesity Forum (not as a case study, I hasten to add) on ‘virtual fitness’, which again shows the impact gaming is having beyond the obvious.

Xboxer360: Nintendo Official Magazine and CVG were big starting points in your career, what advice would you give to anyone wanting to break into the gaming industry as a writer?

Johnny Minkley: My first games role was staff writer on CVG mag – no longer with us, sadly – starting in, I think, October 2000. We shared a floor at Emap’s offices in Islington with NOM and an unofficial PlayStation mag, both of which I did a bit of freelance for.

I was very lucky to get that foot in the door. I’d graduated from UCL that summer without anything remotely resembling a ‘plan’. I did, however, read CVG’s website (headed up back then by the inestimable Pat Garratt, who now runs vg247.com) religiously – at the time via my Dreamcast! – and they posted an ad for staff writer at just the right moment. I applied, and somehow tricked them into hiring me.

I won’t lie. The climate in the UK games press is challenging, and staff opportunities at major print and web publications are few and far between; plus there’s a swelling pool of experienced and talented freelancers out there fighting over commissions. On the other hand, as you guys are proving, the web now provides a platform for people with knowledge, talent and determination to make their own mark in the games space without the considerable overheads associated with traditional publishing.

This means there are any number of outlets for aspiring games journalists to target with their ideas and work, if they are struggling to get noticed by mainstream publications. If you want to be a games writer, an encyclopaedic knowledge isn’t enough by itself – you need to show an editor that you have a passion for writing and an ability to communicate well.

And that means getting as much experience as you can, any way you can. If you’re a student, write for your uni’s magazine. It doesn’t matter whether it’s about games or not (I wrote about music); but the experience is invaluable, and on a CV it shows you’re already keen. Also be prepared initially to offer to write for free for any gaming blogs/publications you’re a fan of. Editors are always on the lookout for great content, but are often hampered by gnat’s arse-tight budgets, so if you have a fantastic feature idea and are willing to contribute it for free to get your name out there, ears are open. It won’t feed the kids, but it will help you build a portfolio of work.

Write as much and as often as you can, even if it’s just for your own personal blog. Look carefully at the work of publications and journalists whose writing you admire, and think about what makes it work: not just in terms of the individual style, but the way it communicates to a specific audience, and how it’s structured.

Is a journalism qualification important? While it undoubtedly teaches useful skills, it’s far from essential in my view. I studied English lit at uni, which was many things (mainly a five hours per week doss), but not vocational. When I’ve recruited junior writers in the past as a website or magazine editor, I would be inclined to favour someone who’s CV boasted work experience on, say, a local paper over someone who had a journalism qualification but no real world experience.

The journalist skills that matter are learned on the job – so if you snag an unpaid placement on a games mag/website, or a local paper etc., that will a) look great on your CV, and b) might, if you’re lucky, lead to a real job. I know some very senior and highly successful hacks whose big breaks came off the back of work experience gigs. Keep at it!

Xboxer360: You have accomplished many things since the beginning of your career, what would you say is your biggest achievement to date?

Johnny Minkley: Writing and presenting an hour-long show on gaming for Radio 1, that was broadcast on New Year’s Day as a look ahead to the big games of 2009. An amazing opportunity – it’s a relatively small group of people who can say they’ve presented a show on Radio 1. I even got to pick the music!

Also, singing Especially For You with Jo Whiley on air as part of a SingStar challenge during Radio 1’s recent Big Gaming Weekend. As a massive, irredeemable and unapologetic Neighbours fan, that was very much a case of ‘Achievement Unlocked’.

Xboxer360: And the best interview you have ever conducted?

Johnny Minkley: My favourite interviewee is EA Sports boss Peter Moore. I’ve sparred with him many times over the years, and he always gives a brilliant interview. One of the most approachable and candid exec in the business, and one others could – and should – learn a lot from. Gamers aren’t stupid: if you’re evasive, misleading, and waffling bollocks in impenetrable management jargon it just makes you look bad; on camera, worse. And the Internet is not an especially forgiving place.

But my favourite interview was with snooker legend Jimmy White, promoting Jimmy White’s Cueball 2 on PS2 back in 2001. He’d spent most of the afternoon ‘warming up’ in the Spearmint Rhino ‘gentleman’s club’ on Tottenham Court Road in London. When I arrived everyone had shifted over the road to a pub with a pool table, so the PR company could gets some promo shots of him playing. He took a couple of strippers with him, one of whose breasts he took great delight in exposing to astonished punters – mostly students. Let’s just say that by the time I got to interview him he was in a rather tired and emotional state.

Xboxer360: Here at Xboxer360.com we are a teeny bit bias when it comes to Console Worship. So we have to ask, which console is the one for you? We advise you to think carefully now Johnny.

Johnny Minkley: Pressure! My favourite console of all time is the SNES. So many classic games, plus a nigh-on perfect joypad. It’s no coincidence that, almost 20 years later, both 360 and PS3 pads use the same basic button layout. These days, I play everything, but it’s fair to say you’ll find me on my 360 more often than not. Partly, it’s because it came before PS3, so if there’s a multiplatform game I’ll always go for the 360 version to raid it for Achievements. Plus, the online experience is the best out there, so most of my gaming chums are on Live.

Xboxer360: Staying on the topic of what we love the most in life, we must know your answer to the age-old question, “What is your favourite game?”

Johnny Minkley: Super Mario World. No contest. It’s never been bettered, even in 3D. I could write a book on why I love this game (hello, publishers!), but in essence it’s pretty much perfect on every level that matters: control, structure, style, music, charm, love. A masterpiece that remains a joy. In my youth I would happily while away entire days by wiping all three save slots on the cart, then filling each one with a full 96-exit completion file during marathon 10-hour plus sessions. I didn’t get out a great deal in those days.

Xboxer360: A little birdy told us you are a man of many talents and are quite the vocalist-cum-songwriter. If you could compose a theme song for any game, what would your game of choice be and what would the song be entitled?

Johnny Minkley: Ha, I doubt Thom Yorke would lose much sleep over my “many talents”. But I have actually already contributed a videogame-themed song to the creative ether, which is more than enough for one lifetime. When I was 11, during the height of my Sega fanboyism, I rewrote the lyrics to Salt ‘N’ Pepa’s ‘Let’s Talk About Sex’. It began: “Let’s talk about Sega, baby/Let’s talk about Sonic and the Mega CD”. Bit of a shame, that.

Xboxer360: If you had to select a video game that best described your life to our readers, what one would you pick?

Johnny Minkley: Spider-Man on Atari 2600, neatly enough. Constantly striving onwards and upwards, with frequent stumbles, dodgy music and weird clothes.

Xboxer360: 2009 is shaping up to be a great year for big gaming announcements. At Xboxer360 we are positively drooling over Project Natal and would love to hear your thoughts on this.

Johnny Minkley: I wasn’t out at E3 this year, sadly, so I haven’t seen Natal in the flesh. It is clearly a tremendously promising prospect on paper and was without question the major ‘wow’ moment of the show, watching from afar. If the tech is as impressive as Microsoft made it look – and that is still an ‘if’ for me – then developers have quite the toy to play around with.

But, as with Wii and Sony’s motion control device, a piece of gaming technology is only as good as the games made for it. Wii’s instant success wasn’t simply due to the Wiimote. It was because it came with Wii Sports, a game that perfectly demonstrated why Wii was a game changer. As wonderful as, say, Super Mario Galaxy is, there’s no chance Wii would have made the same initial impact in the West if it had been bundled with that instead.

Sony and Microsoft need their own Wii Sports moment in motion-control. For Natal, whether it’s Milo & Kate, or something that’s still under wraps, remains to be seen. Bloody exciting though, eh?

Many thanks for the questions and for indulging me!

Xboxer360: It was our pleasure! Thank you for giving us the chance to delve into the mind and life of Johnny Minkley. We will no doubt be knocking on your door for Round Two next year!