If you want to break into the business, it's going to take some work. The Tutorial is a series of articles about video-game writing intended to better prepare you for what's ahead -- or help you figure out if it's even for you.

In the last article, we covered freelance work -- a great way to get your foot in the door, if not make a living, in game writing. The intern position is another way to start a career games journalism. Like freelancing, you're going to see a lot of work, and it's going to require a lot of passion. The lowest of the low, interns get paid the least, have zero job security, and the job's all about filling in the gaps that the higher ups can't get to.

If you're lucky, however, you'll be on a great team, get great experience, and have the chance to move on to another job.

In this edition of The Tutorial, I've interviewed Jay Frechette, current community manager with Visceral Games and former producer with Area 5 and EGM intern (not to mention Bitmob contributor). Then I spoke to Bitmob's Dan Hsu, the man who hired him while he was editor-in-chief at EGM. It's like a reverse-engineered job interview, so take notes -- you may end up on the other side of Hsu's desk asking for the same position. Or even Jay's desk, as he's made good on his EGM internship!

Andrew Hiscock: Prior to getting your internship, how did you conduct your job search? Did you pursue every lead, or did you specifically target what you wanted to do?

Jay Frechette: I was at the right place at the right time. I was coming up on my senior year of college and was asked to come into Ziff Davis to focus test a new website they were getting ready to launch. That website was Gamevideos.com. While waiting in the lobby, Mark MacDonald was keeping me company and asked if I knew of anyone looking for some contract work to help out before the launch. I offered my services. And two months later, Shane Bettenhausen, who was executive editor of EGM at the time, approached me about applying for an upcoming internship. I submitted a few writing samples, and a couple days later, they offered me the job. I wasn’t really looking; it just kinda fell in my lap.

AH: How did you perceive an internship prior to acquiring the position? Was it less than you were looking for, more, or about on par with your expectations?

JF: I really didn’t know what to expect at first. Dan Hsu and [EGM Managing Editor] Jen Tsao sat me down ahead of time and explained what my tasks would be as well as their expectations for me. That settled a lot of questions that I had. It was way above what I expected to start with. I figured that I would get a typical internship doing office tasks at a developer. This was much more. I was a long-time reader of the magazine but never thought that I would ever get the chance to work on it.  

AH: Since you were a fan of EGM, was there a period where you were in awe of where you'd ended up, or did the reality of day-to-day work sink in pretty fast?

JF: I was definitely starstruck at first. It was an honor to work for such a great magazine, but like I said, they put me to work right away. So there wasn't a lot of time for ogling.

AH: What was included in your day-to-day activities?

JF: I assisted in the production of the Table of Contents, Reviews, and Next Month sections of EGM. I would also help with writing descriptions in those sections and help with creating captions as well as gathering screenshots. For our monthly contests, I picked the winners and sent out prizes, and I was assigned a few previews and reviews to write for each issue.

AH: How did you perceive your job security?

JF: It was made clear at the start that it was a temporary thing, so I knew the day would come when I would need to move on. Everyone I worked with was great about giving me feedback and letting me know where I stood. I knew when I was doing a good job, but if I wasn’t, they made sure I knew that too.

AH: Did you work toward a more permanent position while in your internship?

JF: I did my best to do whatever they threw at me well and improve off the feedback that I got. We shared a network with CGW, 1UP.com, Gamevideos.com, and MyCheats, so even if there wasn’t opportunity for full-time work at EGM, there were other options. I tried to be proactive by asking for extra work on other products and develop relationships with the other people in the office.

I bounced around to different internships and contract jobs with various departments until finally getting a promotion to associate producer on The 1UP Show.

AH: Since you were bouncing around, was it a constant struggle to find the next thing, or were you pretty comfortable that something somewhere was going to come up in the office?

JF: Full-time work was hard to come by and that was stressful but because I had developed relationships with people in other departments, but when one door closed, someone else was there to open another one.

AH: What was the learning curve like?

JF: Pretty steep for me. My education background was in video-game art and design, so I had very little knowledge in how magazines were put together. They threw me right into it, so it was a lot of trial by fire those first few weeks. I stumbled a lot, but like I said before, everyone there did a great job of providing feedback, and that helped a lot in learning from my mistakes.

And now to hear from the man who hired Jay, Dan Hsu, and learn about how a major magazine brings in an intern.

AH: Why does an outlet, major or small, hire interns?

Dan Hsu: Cheap labor!

I'm joking -- somewhat -- of course. It all depends. At EGM, our interns wrote, too, but they also helped out on the little things to help free up the editors and managers to take care of bigger-picture items. At Bitmob, the interns write all the time. In other offices, however, you might as well call them the Starbucks delivery people.

DH: Sort of. In my experience, it's more of an "if a job becomes available and you're awesome for it, then we'll offer it to you." But we don't necessarily bring in interns with the specific intent to advance them to a predetermined, permanent position later. We do groom them, because we want them to get something out of the gig, but sometimes, they just don't pan out, or they just want the experience and go elsewhere -- that's all good.