Chris Comiskey
Managing Editor Chris Comiskey fed off the NES, SNES and Playstation during his troubled early years in Stowe, Vermont. Then, in middle school, he took a computer class that showcased Sim City. “Wait,” he thought, “Games? On a computer? Why was I never told!?” Chris had seen the light, and became a born-again PC gamer. Duke Nukem 3D, Command & Conquer and Quake are his foundations (so much so that the Quake logo resides permanently on his right deltoid).
During his first USAF deployment, he picked up a PC Gamer magazine for the long ride across the pond. He quickly decided that writing about games would be far more awesome than getting shot at, so after the Air Force, he went to college for a creative writing degree. He freelanced for Maximum PC magazine and was EiC for PC Gamer’s “Build Your Own Gaming PC!” before joining PC Gamer full-time in San Francisco. These days, you can spot Chris questionably defending Far Cry 2 as the best PC gamer ever made, and raging when backstabbed in Team Fortress 2. Outside of gaming, he loves Tang Soo Do, Jujitsu, Karate and Jean Claude Van Damme. He also partakes of Wisconsin-sharp cheddar cheese.
Evan Lahti
Evan Lahti is Senior Editor at PC Gamer. His gaming specialties are shooters, multiplayer shooters, and RPGs. His favorite recent games are Arma 2, Dungeons of Dredmor, Red Orchestra 2, riding Josh Augustine’s unending kill wave in League of Legends: Dominion, and Unreal Tournament 2004. Evan counts Starsiege: Tribes, MechCommander, Command & Conquer: Red Alert, Counter-Strike 1.6, and Team Fortress Classic as his most influential gaming experiences.
More than anything, Evan values the PC’s world of varied communities: to Evan, machinima directors, speed-runners, military sim roleplayers, and obscure Doom mod message boards (like Chex Quest) are precious subcultures that don’t exist anywhere else in gaming. Evan is especially drawn to co-op and emergent experiences, which explains his penchant for falling out of helicopters. Evan co-hosts a podcast about Arma 2, the Armacast.
Raised in the horse-obsessed rural township of Highland, MI (the first American city to have a high school equestrian team), Evan abandoned his training to become an international fencing champion and started a Counter-Strike clan. Only his ability to yell loudly into a microphone propelled him to the latter. Evan studied print journalism at North Central College in Naperville, IL.
Outside of gaming, Evan likes longboarding, fencing, gaming music, board games (Pandemic, Battlestar Galactica, Arkham Horror), Esquire magazine, Czech lager, and the Detroit Red Wings. His favorite keyboard shortcut is Alt + Tab.
Gavin Townsley
Gavin Townsley’s earliest hunting grounds included games such as Counter-Strike and Unreal Tournament. But years of FPS practice wore down his soul and drove him into the arms of his first role-playing game, Neverwinter Nights. He eventually transitioned to full-time duty in MMO PvP.
But Gavin isn’t just a player killer. Despite his bloodlust, he can often can be found sharing puppy-eyed moments in Maple Story or cuddling up with one of many plushies on his desk.
Graham Smith
Graham was educated in the ways of gaming by the Amiga 500, and as a result finds games to love amongst most genres. Lotus III taught him to love racing games; Mega-lo-Mania and Cannon Fodder taught him to love strategy; Rainbow Islands taught him to love platform games, and Superfrog taught him to hate Superfrog; and on and on.
When he got his first PC in 1995, he started with FIFA ’96. Soon afterwards, he realised he probably needed help when it came to picking which games to buy, and turned to the venerable PC Gamer. From there, it was a misspent youth of Half-Life, Half-Life modding, writing for Half-Life fansites, fighting with a Counter-Strike clan, and running up an enormous phone bill on dial-up internet.
He dropped out of university in 2005 to do what he’d always wanted to: write for PC Gamer. Today, he’s Deputy Editor of its UK edition.
Greg Henninger
There was a time when you could find Greg, known then as Gregorio the Gondolier, gently rowing Venetian gondolas through the waterways and canals of the Coronado Cay in sun-drenched San Diego. These days it does not matter whether it’s sun-drenched outside or not because he now spends his time in a much healthier fashion in front of his computer.
After cutting his teeth on games such as Tie Fighter and Monkey Island, Greg started his own clan called the Sith Mercenaries and learned level editing for Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight. First-person shooters are his beat but also enjoys strategy and burritos. He acts in films and commercials, and is happiest owning the noobs with his insta-gib Unreal 2K4 skills.
Josh Augustine
Josh likes people. More specifically, he likes to backstab them repeatedly in every online game out there. He believes that victory is sweeter when it’s caused someone to cry out in anger or weep on their keyboard, which is why he spends as much time as possible in MMOs and head-to-head multiplayer games. He’s been playing World of Warcraft obsessively since release and would challenge anyone to a comparison of total time /played in-game, but also has love for all the massively multiplayer goodness out there. He’s pretty sure EVE Online is man’s most spontaneously creative invention and can’t wait to see what its players cook up next. But it’s not all kill or be killed, Josh has a softer story-loving side—fostered by early LucasArts adventure games like Monkey Island, his favorite game series of all time—that recently compelled him to replay Dragon Age three times to compose a story he was completely happy with. He loves to play co-op with friends and family, especially if they’re significantly better at the game than he is. Josh was editor for the first two issues of World of Warcraft Official Magazine, which he continues to contribute to, but he’s always been a Coconut Monkey at heart.
Logan Decker
Logan Decker is the Editor-in-Chief of PC Gamer (US Edition). Raised in Sunnyvale, California, only miles away from what is today the headquarters of Apple, his parents sacrificed to buy him an expensive Apple II+ computer with the understanding that computers were the future, and that those who mastered them would become fabulously wealthy and admired the world over. They were, of course, prescient, but their visions sadly did not apply to their son, who could have cared less about programming and instead spent his youth conquering Britannia in his pajamas.
Logan did, eventually, go on to get a real job as a nerd-in-residence at Maximum PC, and joined PC Gamer as Senior Editor in 2006, wherein “Senior” meant “hardware guy.” The people upstairs must have seen some editorial talent in Mr. Decker, as he was surely not promoted to Editor-in-Chief on the basis of his aim, strategic thinking in StarCraft, or cool in the face of zombie attack.
When Logan is not playing Tornado Jockey, violent shooters or Mass Effect 2 for the umpteenth time in a desperate bid to not kill everybody, he tweets, plays the keytar, and hangs out with his friends Lexington and Tabasco.
Lucas Sullivan
Weaned on PC classics like Warcraft: Orcs & Humans and The Lost Mind of Dr. Brain, Lucas learned to love his personal computer at an early age—a magical love that would continue for the rest of his life, as evidenced by the small, gold-encrusted shrines to Grim Fandango, League of Legends, and Team Fortress 2 in his closet. Lucas finds shooters, MOBAs, fighting games, and platformers to be his videogame animal spirits.
After majoring in Journalism at New Jersey’s Rutgers College, he wandered the countryside searching for shelter until PC Gamer offered him a coveted position as an indentured servant. Lucas leapt at the chance, and now spends his days cavorting through the Fields of Justice in League of Legends, sniping Evan and Chris in the noggins via Team Fortress 2, and smack-talking at Josh for no apparent reason.
Nathan Grayson
Nathan hails from the Dallas, Texas, mythical land of big guns, bigger hats, and crushing boredom. As a child, he naturally gravitated toward games like Fallout, because they presented worlds significantly more enjoyable and slightly less radioactive than his own. After a brief period of console gaming during his youth – which will henceforth be known as the Dark Time – he accepted PC as his one true gaming platform and never looked back.
He then spent most of high school with his face buried in either some sort of book or all sorts of games. And that’s when it hit him: “I could write about games, like, for money and stuff!” Then he went back to reading and gaming for the next four years. Come freshman year of college, though, he tried his hand at freelancing. Eventually he was published by fine, upstanding publications like Maximum PC, GamesRadar, Joystiq, GameSpy, and ultimately, gloriously, PC Gamer.
When he’s not replaying Deus Ex for the 27th time or shouting Zeno Clash’s praises to all who will listen, Nathan spends his time listening to vaguely folkish alterna-prog rock, coming up with ideas for stories that’ll never be published, beating Chris black-and-blue in kickboxing matches, and getting his arms horrifically maimed by Chris in Jiu-Jitsu matches. If you wish, you can follow his occasionally sane ramblings on Twitter @Vahn16.
Owen Hill
It started with the Dragon 32, then the Amiga 500. Owen might have started playing rubbish games on rubbish computers but how was he to know any better? He was only a few years old at the time and his older brothers picked the machines alright?
Owen loves playing co-op games, welding doors and healing people, but he also loves realistic war sims where bullets feel scary. He lists Team Fortress 2, ARMA II, Starcraft II, and any other game with 2/II in the title as his favourite PC games of the moment. He seems to think most games-related tat is ‘awesome’, especially if it’s soft and huggable. He is Welsh.
He’s recently joined PCGamer.com as Web Editor. His aim is to make the website into the ultimate resource for PC gaming on the whole of the internets. How is he doing? Send any suggestions to owen.hill@futurenet.com, or add [PCG] Bop to your Steam friends list. We’re all friends here right?
You can view all of Owen’s posts here.
Rich McCormick
Rich started his gaming life by ‘playing’ MS Paint for six months while he couldn’t work out how to install Tomb Raider. Then he did figure out how to install Tomb Raider and played that instead. It was much better.
Following the revelation that PC games were more fun than basic drawing programs, he spent New Year’s Eve 1997 playing Warhammer: Shadow of the Horned Rat. Around this time came the simultaneous revelation that PC Gamer was better than other written things, so he read that too, learning all about angry houses and things also in the game.
After that, he lost his heart to Planetside, Counter-Strike, and Deus Ex, playing through the latter so many times that he sometimes wakes up screaming “GREASY GREASY GREASELS!” The only way past this deep-seated psychological issue was to pester Tim so hard that he relented and gave him a job.
Rich is a Staff Writer for the magazine and website, he’s convinced PC Gamer saved his life once during a particularly turbulent flight aged 13, and his best ever k/d score is 24/3.
You can view all of his posts here.
Rob Zacny
Rob Zacny got into PC gaming because that’s where he could fly X-Wings and TIE Fighters. At university, Rob fenced and translated quite a lot of Latin poetry, showing the same unerring instinct for practical work that would serve him so well in life. Later, BioShock caused Rob to be fired from the the World’s Most Soul-Deadening Job. While enjoying unemployment, he pitched an article to The Escapist, which he didn’t realize would actually pay him money. He decided to keep pitching more articles while he looked for real work. He must have looked in the wrong places, however, because he kept getting more freelance assignments.
With such savvy career-planning, it’s little wonder that Rob is now a prolific freelancer for a number of gaming publications, a columnist and news writer for PC Gamer, and the host of the Three Moves Ahead strategy podcast. He divides his time between strategy games, racing games, shooters, and console sports games. He’s making a heroic effort to befriend the noble RPG and flight sim, but trust takes time. He lives in Cambridge with his too-smart and too-patient girlfriend.
Tim Edwards
Tim Edwards is the Editor of PC Gamer in the UK. He joined the magazine straight after university, and has never had a proper job. He holds a degree in Biology, and an A in GCSE General Studies. He was nominated for the PPA New Specialist Journalist of the Year award. He spends as much time playing WoW and leading PC Gamer’s amazing World of Warcraft guild as he does working on the magazine.
He loves to be hugged, and to hug back. Relax ladies. Tim is married, and lives with his wife, and two cats in Bath.
Tom Francis
Tom got into PC gaming by persuading his dad to buy him the two best scoring games available – which in 1992 were Ultima Underworld and Monkey Island 2. This taught him that game reviews are always correct, so as soon as the first PC gaming magazine appeared, he subscribed. That was PC Zone. But as soon as the first PC gaming magazine to plaster pretentious words like ‘Superfluous’ across their low-scoring reviews appeared, he subscribed to that as well.
After endangering his high school education by playing too much Little Big Adventure and making Duke Nukem 3D levels, endangering his A-levels by playing too much Blood and making Quake 2 levels, and endangering his degree by playing too much Deus Ex and making Morrowind mods, he was relieved to find all of this actually helped him get a job. He now gets to write about games and gaming culture for the PC Gamer web and print editions, and has never looked back. Except when asked to write a bio, at which point you apparently get his life goddamn story.
You can view all of Tom’s posts here.
Tony Ellis
Tony doesn’t so much write about PC games these days as rewrite about them. As production editor for PC Gamer he inserts apostrophes for a living, murders widows and smothers orphans wherever he sees them. He applies spit and polish to other people’s prose. Mainly spit. If your sentence is flabby he will use liposuction. If your modifier is dangling he will snip it off. If you say ‘gameplay’ he’ll just punch you. In his spare time he enjoys metonymy, but believes synecdoche should only be practised by consenting adults in the privacy of their own homes. He is the grammar Nazi about whom your mother warned.
It wasn’t always thus. For several years he was a freelance videogames journalist, which was OK in a jetting-around-the-world, having-other-people-buy-your-drinks kind of way. Before that he worked on various Future magazines, doing various things. Before that he went to Hull and back to get his English degree, and liked it so much he stayed for the MA. He likes cats. His hobbies include creative writing and C++. He is currently writing his own compiled programming language. Creatively. His dream game would be ‘Alexander the Great vs Cthulhu: the Battle for Atlantis Begins’.
