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The Editor
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“I have a responsibility to the multitudes that not only make a game, but that publish, promote and distribute it. That’s a cast of hundreds, if not thousands. For one game. It’s an awesome responsibility”
TheEditor
So long Seth, and thanks for all the notes
If my predecessor can sign off by paraphrasing Douglas Adams, it feels apt to similarly lean on the great man’s words to effect my introduction: “Don’t panic!”
No, really. Everything’s going to be okay.
While you breathe deeply into your paper bag at the sight of an unfamiliar and considerably less pleasant face atop this page, let me tell you how I ended up becoming the latest editor of MCV/DEVELOP. Once you’re hyperventilating comfortably, I can begin.
Actually, it’s not that interesting. Retail management. Business studies at university. More retail (during which time I applied for job in a shoe shop and only got an interview because the area manager thought I’d fabricated my surname), then a transition that I can’t account for: fours years in epidemiology, or rather, assisting healthcare analysts with their monthly journals, which somehow translated into becoming the staff writer on Dennis Publishing’s PC Zone magazine.
That brings me up to 1997, but don’t worry, I won’t bore you with the rest. You can probably guess. Writing here, editing there, freelancing in between. All in games, thankfully, because here’s the thing: Once I started writing for and about games I never had any ambition to do anything else, so for nearly 25 years it’s all I’ve ever really done. Until now.
Truth be told, if anyone should be panicking it’s me. Writing about specific titles and having a responsibility to do them justice is comparatively easy compared to having that same responsibility to the people that make a game happen. In my previous life, to know a game was simply to play it, and perhaps interview it’s lead designer or senior producer to gain some exclusive insight beforehand. In my new big boy job (something I can tell my mum about at last), I feel a more direct responsibility to the multitudes that not only make a game, but that publish, promote and distribute it. That’s a cast of hundreds, if not thousands. For one game! It’s an awesome responsibility, one that in spite of all my experience and uncharacteristic enthusiasm, I feel slightly ill equipped to deal with.
But before you pass over that bag for me to have a toke on, I do have a few things on my side. One is the MCV/DEVELOP team that Seth left behind, namely Chris and Alex who you will already be familiar with, and who have been, along with countless others behind the scenes, utterly brilliant in my first days at the helm. The welcome I’ve received in reaction to the news of my appointment - not least from my predecessor - has also unlocked a resolve I didn’t know I had. Then there are the copious notes Seth prepared that were forwarded to me upon my appointment. The first implied instruction, of course, was not to panic.
So yes, I think everything’s going to be okay.
