Scott McCrae

Scott McCrae covers video games through the people and studios behind them, concentrating on how developers, actors, and artists shape major franchises and cult favorites. His pieces for GamesRadar+ build stories around direct quotes and behind-the-scenes detail from teams working on RPGs, action games, and roguelikes, with attention to how creative decisions land with players. A contributor to GamesRadar+ since 2024, he has been freelancing across gaming publications for more than four years and has also written for outlets including PC Gamer, Eurogamer, VG247, Play, and TechRadar. He has a particular affinity for Metal Gear Solid, God Hand, and other PS2-era titles that rarely receive sequels, and brings that long-view of design and fandom to coverage of current releases and updates.

Developer perspectives on big-budget and cult games

McCrae’s reporting repeatedly foregrounds developer testimony, using interviews and statements to explain how large projects are scoped, pressured, and refined over time. In his coverage of Mass Effect, he highlights a former BioWare developer’s description of “21 days on, one day off” crunch, framing the hardship alongside the belief that the effort was “really worth it,” and giving readers a direct sense of production realities on a landmark RPG. When he writes about Marvel’s Wolverine, he splits his focus between the lead actor’s view of the role as “the honor of a lifetime” and Insomniac’s response to negative feedback, showing how performance and studio stewardship jointly shape the game’s trajectory. His pieces on Final Fantasy 7 Revelation and Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave similarly draw on developers’ comments about narrative structure and cast size, using those details to explain why certain bold ideas, such as eight protagonists, are proposed and then reconsidered.

In coverage of titles linked to Shin Megami Tensei and Persona, he elevates the author whose work inspired these JRPG series and their advice that teams should draw on media beyond games, making creative influences part of the news story rather than background trivia. He also applies this lens to live-service and multiplayer projects, as in reporting on The Finals and Arc Raiders, where he surfaces that the studio has two unannounced projects and hints at different tonal directions through developer comments about “edge.”

Across these stories, McCrae distinguishes himself by using quoted voices to show the trade-offs between ambition, workload, fan expectations, and the eventual shape of the game.

Systems, performance, and how players actually access games

Alongside creative perspectives, McCrae spends significant time on the practical conditions under which people play games, from performance patches to platform policies.

His Dragon’s Dogma 2 coverage focuses on an update that finally delivers a “desperately needed” performance boost, noting that the changes are substantial enough to lower the PC system requirements and reposition the RPG for a broader audience. He tracks platform gatekeeping in his reporting on Valve’s decision to lock Australian Steam users out of age-restricted store pages if they lack a credit card, even when accounts are clearly over 18, treating access rules as newsworthy in themselves rather than as a footnote. In pieces on roguelikes, he follows both release cadence and player behavior: one article reports that Mewgenics, described as his game of the year, is coming to console next month, while another notes that The Binding of Isaac has reached a new Steam player peak and even surpassed Mewgenics.

These stories combine personal enthusiasm with concrete metrics and timelines, giving clear signals about momentum in the roguelike space. Across this strand of his work, he regularly connects technical updates, content drops, and platform restrictions to the lived experience of players, making performance numbers and access rules part of the editorial narrative.

Legacy franchises, fan reactions, and creative risk

McCrae’s beat includes a strong thread of legacy franchises and the tensions they generate between creators, corporations, and long-time fans. On Nintendo-adjacent stories, he follows Metroid Ravenous from reveal to impact, documenting how its announcement drives Metroid Dread back to the top of Nintendo’s eShop charts five years after launch and then tracking community speculation over which studio might be behind the new game.

His reporting on a Zelda and Star Fox artist who is “genuinely amazed” by AI yet facing backlash from Nintendo fans focuses on the friction between individual creative curiosity and a community’s concerns about new tools.

That interest in legacy and risk extends to his stated passion for PS2-era titles that rarely receive sequels, which gives him a clear frame for judging how new entries and spiritual successors treat their heritage. Across different stories, he returns to how fan reactions, store-chart surges, and public criticism influence both the reception and future of long-running series, whether they are action games, JRPGs, or experimental roguelikes. Taken together with his coverage of a high-profile horror project whose pitch was embraced by Xbox after sounding “crazy” to other publishers, McCrae’s work consistently highlights how creative risks either find support or falter, and what that means for players invested in specific genres and franchises.