I specialise in writing feature articles on video games, and I’m particularly interested in weird and surprising stories from the history of gaming.
My work has been featured in magazines and websites such as Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Kotaku UK, The Guardian, PC Gamer, EDGE, PCGamesN, Retro Gamer and Rock Paper Shotgun, and I am also the founder of two popular gaming blogs: A Most Agreeable Pastime and 101 Video Games That Made My Life Slightly Better.
I’ve highlighted some of my favourite articles here, and below that is a complete list of my work.
Back from the dead (PC Gamer)
Genesis LPMud is one of the oldest online multiplayer games in the world: it’s been running continuously for nearly 30 years. But six years ago it almost came to an untimely end. This is the story of how an enthusiastic cadre of fans rallied to save this important piece of gaming history from extinction… (read more)
The Story of Yugoslavia’s DIY Computer Revolution (Eurogamer)
In Yugoslavia in the 1980s, computers were a rare luxury. A ZX Spectrum or Commodore 64 could easily cost a month’s salary, and that’s if you could even get through the tough importation laws. Then in 1983, while on holiday in Risan, Voja Antonić dreamt up plans for a new computer, a people’s machine that could be built at home for a fraction of the cost of foreign imports. The Galaksija was born, and with it a computer revolution… (read more)
The Secret Douglas Adams RPG That People Have Been Playing for 15 Years (Kotaku UK)
…perhaps the Starship Titanic’s most enduring legacy is neither the book, which is now out of print, nor the game, which has been rendered practically unplayable on modern machines thanks to the relentless onward march of PC operating systems. Instead, somewhere out there in a cosy nook of the World Wide Web huddles a tiny community of like-minded individuals who took the idea of Starship Titanic and ran with it as far as their digital legs could carry them. They don’t just play Starship Titanic, they create it... (read more)
Convergence
I contributed several chapters to the book Convergence: How The World Will Be Painted With Data by Charlie Fink.
- AR and Journalism
- AR and AI
- Pokemon Go on and on and on
- Niantic’s Real World Platform
- Rokid company profile
EDGE
- Smokestack lightning (issue 334)
Eurogamer
- In the Loopy: the story of Casio’s crazy 90s console
- Where do downloadable games go when they die?
- A day in the life of an independent video game store
- Your Amiga games are likely dying
- Video games remade in cardboard
- The Story of Yugoslavia’s DIY Computer Revolution
- Entering The Avatar Machine, VR’s Next Big Step
GAME Magazine
- Everyone deserves to play [interview with the head of gaming charity SpecialEffect]
GAME MEDIA
For E3 2019, I wrote news articles for UK retailer GAME’s online news portal.
- Characters we’d like to see in Watch Dogs Legion
- Who are the villains in the new Marvel’s Avengers game?
- 5 things we learned about Nintendo at E3 2019
- Luigi’s Mansion 3 introduces Gooigi for online co-op
- 5 times Keanu Reeves has appeared in games
- 5 new tricks to try out in DOOM Eternal
- The Ubisoft dog is utterly adorable
- 5 moments from E3 2019 to make you smile
GamesRadar+
- “The next few years are going to be tricky” – Streaming services like Google Stadia could change the way games are played and made forever
- Is streaming the future of video games? And can it even work?
- Video game addiction is now a disorder. But what does that mean and why does it matter?
- Battletech arcades were decades ahead of their time, holding global 3D matches before we’d even played a SNES – here’s their story
- How long have video game stores actually got left (and can they save themselves)?
- Microtransactions and loot boxes in video games – are they pure greed or a modern necessity?
The Guardian
The Indie Game Website
Kotaku UK
- Why Were Old PCs Beige?
- In Memory of Jason Brookes
- The Fall of Rise of the Robots
- 20 Years of Lego Star Wars
- The Light Keeps Us Safe — Not That There’s Much To Be Scared Of
- Minecraft-style MMOG Boundless Bursts Out of Beta
- The British Games Companies Seeking Success in China
- Sable is a Beautiful Tribute to 1980s French Comics, and Much More Besides
- Ninja Theory is a Great Purchase for Microsoft – But is it Good for Ninja Theory?
- The Final Days of Grainger Games — As Told By Those Who Worked There
- Why Does Everyone Hate GAME?
- The Secret Douglas Adams RPG That People Have Been Playing for 15 Years
- How People Used to Download Games From the Radio
- No Man’s Sky Versus the Actual Universe
- Inside Scotland’s Real-Life Fallout Vault
- The Most Helpful Pilots in the Galaxy
- How Do 1993’s Future Predictions Stack Up 25 Years On?
- What’s Going on With GAME’s Reward Card?
- The Man Who is Keeping 1990s Virtual Reality Machines Alive
- How Far Away is the Technology of Ready Player One?
- Why We Feel So Bad About Gaming Backlogs
- The 20-Million-Selling Game Series You’ve Never Heard Of
- The Forward-Thinking Genius of Neuromancer
- The Land Where the Spectrum Lived On
- The Dungeons and Dragons Session That Became a Real-Life Phenomenon
- Which Games are Made in the UK?
- 10 of the Best Original Xbox Games to Play on your Xbox One
- The Best Free Games for your New Console
- Silent Bomber: A Forgotten PlayStation Classic
- Are There Really Too Many Good Video Games To Play?
- How Our Caveman Instincts Explain Why We Play Video Games
- Every Star Wars Game Ever, From Worst to Best
- 5 Games That Definitely Won’t Happen In 2016
- RIP Konami Console Games, 1983-2015
- The Metal Gear Novelisation is Super Weird
LADbible
Nintendo Life
PC Gamer
- Feature: Back from the Dead (issue 323)
- Preview: Partisans 1941 (issue 332)
- Preview: Night Call (issue 322)
PCGamesN
- How to deal with your gaming backlog
- No Man’s Sky NEXT is confusing, frustrating – and wonderful
- Cyberpunk 2077’s warning for the world is more important than ever
- What Star Citizen can learn from the Second Life players who break into houses and have sex
- World of Warcraft blood plagues and religious fanatics in Civilization 6 – gaming’s funniest bugs
- How Elite Dangerous players saved a player stuck beyond the edge of the galaxy
- Studying the Thargoids: the intrepid players facing Elite Dangerous’s greatest threat
- Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia PC review
Retro Gamer
- The Making of Skidmarks and Super Skidmarks (issue 205)
- The History of Commandos (issue 204)
- It’s Good To Talk: Retro Gaming Podcasts Special (issue 203)
- Ultimate Guide: Street Racer (issue 202)
- The Making of BITS (issue 201)
- The History of Videogame Magazines (issue 200)
- Ultimate Guide: Super Star Wars (issue 197)
- The Making of X-COM (issue 196)
- The Making of Amiga Power (issue 195)
- The Strange Story of the Casio Loopy (issue 193)
- Minority Report: Amiga CD32 (issue 192)
