Contributors
Keith Stuart
Keith has been writing about games for 30 years, starting out at Edge in 1995 and later editing Future Publishing’s unofficial Dreamcast magazine, DC-UK. He became The Guardian’s first-ever games editor in the late 2000s, helping to usher in a new era of mainstream game coverage. He has written two books on the history of Sega, and is also the best-selling author of novels such as A Boy Made of Blocks and Love is a Curse.
Read an interview with Keith Stuart here.
Jen Simpkins
Jen has been professionally thinking about, writing about and making games for just shy of a decade. She began her career in print, where she was best known for her work on Edge magazine, and her eye for the next big thing in small games. In 2020, she moved into development at Media Molecule on experimental creation-game Dreams. She has since – inevitably – gone to the indie side herself, and is currently a creative writer at an unannounced studio.
Read an interview with Jen Simpkins here.
Keza MacDonald
In a decision that delighted her parents, Keza dropped out of school to work on a games magazine, and has been writing and talking about them for a living ever since. She was UK games editor at IGN, founding editor of Kotaku UK, and is now The Guardian’s games editor. She co-authored a book about Dark Souls, You Died, in 2016, and is currently working on the forthcoming book Super Nintendo: How One Japanese Company Helped the World Have Fun.
Read an interview with Keza MacDonald here.
Andrew P Hind
Andrew got the design bug from his father, and went on to study at the same art college in Carlisle. He spent 25 years in editorial design working on titles including DC-UK and PC Gamer, and 20 years on Edge magazine. He is now the co-founder and creative director of ON and Hybrid Publications. He is also the art director of Tune & Fairweather, the publisher of luxury books like You Died and Grace Given, and which specialises in the games of FromSoftware.
Read an interview with Andrew P Hind here.
Nathan Brown
After spending the early part of his career in a succession of drab banking and finance jobs, Nathan retrained as a journalist and spent a decade at the legendary Edge magazine, including three years as editor, before signing off in 2020 to go solo. Now a game industry consultant and author of the widely read industry newsletter Hit Points, he lives in the west country with his wife, two children and an unnecessarily large dog.
Read an interview with Nathan Brown here.
Christian Donlan
Christian has written about videogames for Edge magazine and Eurogamer.net, where he was a features editor. He is also the author The Unmapped Mind, a memoir about fatherhood and multiple sclerosis, which was shortlisted for an English PEN prize and was published as The Inward Empire in the United States. He was born in Los Angeles and now lives in Brighton with his family. His favourite videogame is Robotron: 2084 – give it a go!
Read an interview with Christian Donlan here.
Margaret Robertson
Margaret Robertson grew up in Scotland, largely in the company of an Atari ST. She trained as a medieval historian before joining Edge as a staff writer and eventual editor. Working as a game designer and studio head in London and New York, she’s consulted for Sony and EA, made games for Channel 4 and the Tate Modern and led the Incubator program for the NYU Game Center. Now based in Tokyo, she is the co-founder of her own game studio, Cabbage Systems.
Read an interview with Margaret Robertson here.
Yussef Cole
Yussef was born in the Bronx, New York. He studied film and literature, and now works as a designer and broadcast animator. He and his team won an Emmy award for Netflix’s Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj in 2019. He is also a freelance games critic, writing essays that analyse games in a socio-political and emotional context. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Wired, Paste, Polygon, Unwinnable and Vice.
Read an interview with Yussef Cole here.
Caelyn Ellis
In honour of the PS1's thirtieth birthday, Caelyn Ellis looks back at Sony's first console from a distinctly personal perspective, traveling back to her memories of the mid-1990s and a machine that pulled her away from computers and into the orbit of consoles. In the history books, Sony's classic grey box is known as the console that changed everything, but what did it feel like to yearn for a PS1 and then bring it home and plug it in?
Chris Tapsell
A fan since childhood, Chris Tapsell explores the myths and mysteries that give Pokémon its magic. In a quest to solve one of the series' most enduring mysteries surrounding the enigmatic Mew, Chris speaks to a Pokémon archaeologist and the founder of a kind of videogame book club for the close-reading of games. What he uncovers is a vital trace of the series' true spirit and fresh insight into its origins.
Jeremy Peel
Few series have been reinvented as many times as Wolfenstein. More than once, it’s led the industry. And when it hasn’t, it’s acted as a mirror - reflecting the damaging design and production trends of triple-A. Going all the way back to 1981 and Escape from Castle Wolfenstein, Jeremy Peel tells the story of a truly classic series that was always ahead of the curve and explores how it's helped to shape the wider world of games, one new idea at a time.