Jody Macgregor

Jody Macgregor is a Weekend/AU editor at PC Gamer who focuses on strategy-heavy videogames, tabletop-inspired RPGs, and the wider culture and industry around them. His coverage stands out for the way it connects new releases, crossovers, and patches to long-running genres, specific communities, and the history of PC gaming.

Strategy, Warhammer, and systems-focused games

Strategy games and Warhammer adaptations sit at the centre of Macgregor’s beat. He writes regularly about Total War: Warhammer 40,000, covering gameplay showcases and performance demands, and highlighting how ambitious strategy games stress modern hardware.

He follows the development of Star Wars Zero Company from early design commentary through post-release patches, paying close attention to systems choices like realtime-with-pause and how they land with the genre’s audience.

His reporting on playing RTS games with a controller focuses on design trade-offs and input schemes rather than surface announcements, making clear where developers claim to have solved long-standing usability issues. Across these pieces, he treats strategy games as complex systems that deserve detailed scrutiny, and he uses long familiarity with the genre to frame why particular tweaks, modes, or platform decisions matter.

RPGs, vampires, and tabletop crossovers

Macgregor covers RPGs with an emphasis on mood, narrative design, and connections to tabletop traditions. His review of the vampire RPG Nighthawks dwells on the strength of its writing and the way it reads like a full novel layered onto a roleplaying experience, signalling that he values prose, tone, and character work as much as mechanics.

He reports on Baldur’s Gate 3 mods such as an over-the-shoulder camera project, explaining how camera changes alter the feel of a classic isometric RPG and why some solutions stand apart from typical third-person hacks.

In tabletop-adjacent coverage, he follows Dungeons & Dragons developments like the introduction of a proper vampire class through a Vampire: The Masquerade tie-in, treating cross-licensing between RPG universes as a substantive design and fandom story rather than a marketing footnote. He also returns to BioWare’s Mass Effect series through interviews with former designers, pushing past “doom and gloom” narratives to explore what veteran developers think is realistically achievable in the next entry.

Card games, crossovers, and fan culture

Card games and licensed crossovers form another clear thread in his work. On PC Gamer’s card game desk, he writes about Magic: The Gathering’s major collaborations, including a set that effectively crosses over with itself and new releases based on The Hobbit and Stardew Valley. These stories emphasise what new cards and art do to long-running fan expectations, particularly when a beloved videogame’s visuals are reinterpreted for a different medium.

He covers incidents in the high-end card scene such as Post Malone opening his The One Ring card and the stress it causes for organisers and insurers, treating them as case studies in how collectibles, celebrity, and risk intersect. His reporting on thefts and scalping in the Pokémon trading card ecosystem focuses on the impact on small retailers and the measures companies adopt, which shows a consistent interest in the economic and security side of hobby gaming.

Across these pieces, Macgregor’s card game writing combines attention to flavour and lore with a practical eye on how products, prices, and scarcity shape player behaviour.

Industry news, events, and awards

Beyond individual games, Macgregor covers the business and culture of the videogame industry.

He writes news analysis pieces that revisit advice from figures like Gabe Newell, discussing why guidance to developers about live service, hacking, and community expectations still resonates years later. His coverage of Japanese studios and layoffs compares executive pay, team structure, and business models to explain why that segment of the industry is experiencing different pressures than Western studios.

Event reporting is another part of his remit; he previews lineups for shows like PAX Australia, where high-profile titles such as Total War: Warhammer 40,000, Alien: Isolation 2, and Modern Warfare 4 are playable ahead of release, and he frames those playable builds as milestones in long-running franchises. On the awards side, he reports on ceremonies such as the BAFTA Games Awards, tracing how breakout successes like Hades sweep categories and what that signals about critical taste. In all of this, he treats news not as isolated items but as connected developments in an ecosystem of studios, platforms, and players.

Background and long-term beat

Macgregor’s current work builds on a long tenure in games and culture journalism. He started at PC Gamer in 2015 with a feature on the audio of Alien: Isolation, and he has remained on the masthead since then. He edited PC Gamer’s indie coverage between 2017 and 2018, which reflects a sustained interest in smaller, experimental titles alongside big-franchise strategy and RPG releases.

Before shifting fully into games, he worked as a music journalist interviewing figures across electronic and rock music, and he co-hosted a dedicated radio show about videogames. He has also written for outlets including Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten, and Playboy.com, a mix that spans enthusiast press and broader cultural publications.

Across this arc he has kept returning to PC games with deep systems, strong writing, and ties to tabletop and genre fiction, and that long perspective shapes how he approaches new announcements, patches, and cross-media collaborations today.