Riley MacLeod
Riley MacLeod is editor and co-owner of Aftermath, covering video games with a sharp focus on how corporate decisions, labor conditions, and player culture intersect. Their recent work combines hard news on layoffs and unions with wry, detail-rich features about how games are made, marketed, and played.
Wake Up Babe, New Layoff Horrors Just Dropped
MacLeod is a consistent voice on labor and job security in the games industry and games media. In “Layoffs Hit GameSpot Again,” they track repeated rounds of cuts at a major games outlet, treating layoffs as an ongoing structural story rather than a one-off event.
Coverage of “IGN Ownership Chooses Busiest Time For Games Media In Years To Lay A Bunch Of People Off [Update]” extends that scrutiny to ownership and timing, highlighting how corporate decisions collide with peak workload in the press. MacLeod reports on studio-side labor as well, writing about ZeniMax Online Studios workers forming a union and framing organizing as a direct response to industry norms. Pieces like “Wardogs CEO Says Workers Who Speak Out Against Crunch Won't 'Be Happy Here'” focus on leadership rhetoric and the pressure it places on workers, emphasizing how company language reveals expectations around overtime and dissent.
Across these stories, MacLeod treats layoffs, unionization, and crunch not as isolated controversies but as linked parts of how work is structured around games.
Games Love To Use Cults As Enemies
Beyond news, MacLeod writes analytical features that dig into what games say about power, belief, and systems. “Games Love To Use Cults As Enemies, But They're Rarely About Cults” examines how games deploy cults as villains while sidestepping the social and ideological realities cults represent, showing an interest in how tropes flatten complex subjects. They extend this lens to technology and platforms in work such as “Companies That Love Shit-Spewing Algorithms Admit Maybe Shit-Spewing Algorithms Are Bad,” treating recommendation and ranking systems as part of the same ecosystem that shapes games and their coverage.
Headlines like “Future? No Thanks! Thinks The Revolution Is Possible, But Also Pretty Funny” signal a willingness to treat political and technological futures with a mix of seriousness and humor, suggesting a through-line where optimism, revolution, and burnout are questioned rather than accepted at face value.
This strand of MacLeod’s coverage gives communications around games, platforms, and tools the same scrutiny as the games themselves.
It's 2026, And I'm Playing GTA V For The First Time
MacLeod also writes in a personal, reflective mode, using their own play to anchor broader observations about games and nostalgia. In “Grand Theft Auto V Was Released On September 17, 2013,” they mark the anniversary of a landmark release, situating the game in a long window of relevance and continued play.
“It's 2026, And I'm Playing GTA V For The First Time” takes the opposite angle, turning a late arrival into a way to talk about how blockbuster games age, how backlogs work, and how players encounter canonical titles outside launch hype. Pieces like “Your ‘Focus M’ Zelda Jokes Have Become Reality” and “I Didn't Need These Feelings, Bluey” show MacLeod connecting games and adjacent media to everyday emotion and online jokes, treating fandom and meme culture as parts of how games are lived. In “Is Arm Hair The New Horse Testicles,” they zoom in on small details and visual fidelity, using a single example to talk about how attention to detail is framed as realism and craft. Their archive also includes stranger vignettes, such as “Here's Four Hours Of A Cow Playing EVE Online,” which treats odd experiments and community projects as worth covering on their own terms.
Together, these pieces show a reporter who uses first-person experience and micro-observations to illuminate how iconic, everyday, and absurd games fit into players’ lives.
Computer Was A Mistake
Alongside game-focused work, MacLeod writes about computers and digital systems themselves, including the piece “Computer Was A Mistake.”
Their coverage of algorithms, corporate platforms, and long-lived online games positions everyday computing as part of the same story as labor, fandom, and media business. Headlines that treat algorithms as “shit-spewing” and question speculative futures underline a consistent skepticism of technological inevitability, especially when it collides with workers, players, and audiences.
This blend of labor reporting, critical features, and personal essays means MacLeod’s beat is not just video games, but the structures and habits around them that turn computers, platforms, and games into daily environments.
4 more gaming journalists.
Adam Vitale
Adam Vitale is Editor-in-Chief at RPG Site, with coverage distinguished by detailed tracking of the full lifecycle of role-playing game releases. He reports concrete information for players, focusing on demos, platforms, sales milestones, downloadable content, and post-release updates for a wide range of RPGs. His work includes structured release calendars that list every upcoming RPG in a given year and news posts that map out release dates, formats, and platform rollouts. He regularly covers announcement trailers, gameplay videos, screenshots, and storefront page launches, with a strong emphasis on Japanese and indie RPGs and adjacent genres. Alongside this daily news, he writes longer features on RPG themes and systems and takes part in developer interviews, combining editorial leadership with consistent, granular reporting on how individual titles move from announcement to long-term support.
Al Landes
Al Landes is a long-time tech writer who treats emerging consumer technology, gaming, and AI as systems of power and consequences rather than hype. He writes news and explainer pieces for Gadget Review while managing a team of review writers, blending fast-moving coverage, clear technical detail, and practical guidance. He covers Apple hardware, software, and leadership transitions as a single evolving ecosystem, from iPhone 18 Pro and Apple Intelligence memory thresholds to Touch ID in foldables and Tim Cook’s last day as CEO. A core strand of his beat is AI, privacy, and device security, including AI worms, smart TV tracking, and regulation of superintelligence. He reports on labor and organizing in video games, experimental consumer tech and public infrastructure, and how money, logistics, and policy shape everyday devices and urban transport.
Andrew E. Freedman
Andrew E. Freedman is a senior editor at Tom’s Hardware and stands out for covering how hardware design, platform policy and pricing shape PCs, consoles and handheld gaming. He oversees laptop and desktop coverage and closely follows news in technology and gaming. His beat includes PC hardware, laptops and desktops, console and handheld gaming ecosystems, and AI infrastructure and data center investment. He reports on platform transitions, new desktop designs, memory and component costs, budget laptops, Xbox and Nintendo strategy, Windows-based handhelds, and large AI buildouts. His work has appeared at Tom’s Guide, Laptop Mag, Kotaku, PCMag and Complex. He uses detailed specifications, pricing breakdowns and corporate context, with a hands-on approach to evaluating portable hardware and product changes.
Andrew Webster
Andrew Webster connects video games, movies, and television as one culture beat. He is a senior entertainment editor at The Verge, where he oversees coverage of games, film, and TV. He reviews games, movies, and shows, including nearly every Pokémon title, and covers consoles, new releases, streaming shows, genre movies, franchises, and the technology that shapes how people watch and play. His reporting links hands-on criticism with attention to visuals, stories, creators, studios, platforms, and digital business models. He has covered E3, TIFF, Sundance, and GDC, judged at The Game Awards and E3, and interviewed Shigeru Miyamoto, Phil Spencer, and Hironobu Sakaguchi. He joined The Verge in 2012. His work has also appeared in Ars Technica, Wired.com, Eurogamer, CNN, Gamasutra, the Toronto Standard, and VentureBeat. He also contributes video and podcast work.