Jessica Chobot

Biography

Jessica Chobot is IGN's Weekly Wood and Strategize host. She is most famous for licking PSPs, which landed her a job at IGN. She is one of the most respected female game journalists who actually is knowledgeable about video games.

Early Years

Jessica Chobot was born Jessica Lynn Horn in Buffalo, New York in 1977. As a child, her family frequently moved along the east coast and around the midwest, to which her parents placated her with video games. As a teenager, she entered a punk/ goth phase and developed a deep fascination for comics and vampires. She attended college in Ohio and began roleplaying characters from Vampire: The Masquerade, and even attended LARP meetings.

Unsettled Life

After college, she settled into a more mainstream life and worked for several years as an administrative assistant for a real estate agency. Growing increasingly dissatisfied with this corporate existence, she picked up gaming again, in particularly World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy IX. She tried several times to move to Japan because of her love of anime and manga, but after being rejected from JET she decided to stay in the states, married her fiancé, and returned to college for teaching certification. To further her gaming roots, she quit the secretarial job to work at EB Games.

The Photo

During this time, she had started modeling to support her gaming and anime habit, and coincidentally had a photoshoot on release day for the PSP. She picked up her PSP on the way, and during the shoot took her now infamous photo. She jokingly sent it to a friend who worked in video game product placement, who encouraged her to send it to Kotaku. She did, but expected nothing of it. Kotaku posted it however, and was deluged by emails asking about her. Encouraged by the photo's success, she accepted an offer from the Kotaku's editor to write game reviews for a partner site.

Into The Business

That year, she used her EB Games employment to get into E3, where she coincidentally stayed in the same hotel as Kotaku. She accompanied them to the IGN E3 party, where she met an IGN representative who encouraged her to talk to their entertainment editor as a potential booth model. Impressed with her gaming experience and fascination with Japanese culture, the editor instead offered her freelance work for their insider channel. So she left her old life, including her husband, to move to California to take her dream job.

The Gaming Life

Once working at IGN, Jessica's career took off. She moved from freelancer to regular host of IGN Weekly, landed regular guest spots on Maxim radio, served as game advisor on The Daily Habit, and served as a dating advice columnist on IGN babes channel. By 2009, she had hosting duties for IGN Daily Fix and regular segments on Xbox Live and Fuel TV, as well as hosting one of IGN's most popular blogs. A year later, Naomi Kyle replaced her and she is now hosting IGN's Weekly Wood and Strategize. In addition, she has modeled for the J!NX female gamers clothing line and for a limited edition anime sculpture, and co-authored a sci-fi script with Tron creator Steve Lisberger.

Notable Facts

• Has owned the following gaming systems: Atari 2600, GameBoy, GameBoy Advance, GameCube, N64, NES, Nintendo DS, PS2, PSP, Playstation, SNES, Xbox, Xbox 360, PS3
• Voted 88th most desirable woman by AskMen in 2006
• Voted 14th hottest woman of business by Business Pundit
• Currently lives in Los Angeles.
• Chobot hates anthropomorphic animals, which is why she hates Disney movies (with the exception of Wall-E).
• Was married, however is now divorced and kept the last name "Chobot". On August 24th 2011 Chobot became engaged with G4TV's Blair Herter. They married on February 18, 2012.
• Chun Li is Jess' favorite character in gaming. She knows every move in Street Fighter 4, for that character.
• Nicknamed the Baroness, due to her resemblance to the character.
• Was the model for Grand Theft Auto IV's cover girl.
• Chobot is a big fan of Wonder Woman and cites actress Lynda Carter (who played Wonder Woman in the 1976 TV series) as her idol.