Will Borger

Will Borger is a Pushcart Prize-nominated fiction writer and essayist who covers video games for IGN, bringing a literary and theoretical lens to game criticism that emphasizes design, narrative, and genre. He has been covering games since 2013 and has written for IGN as a freelance contributor since 2021, focusing on reviews and features across technology-driven entertainment and interactive media.

Fighting, Action, Strategy, and Role-Playing Games

Borger’s coverage is anchored in core genres of fighting, action, strategy, and role-playing games, which he explicitly identifies as his specialties. His work often centers on systems-heavy titles where mechanical depth, tactical decision-making, and buildcraft matter as much as story, using that structure to examine how players engage with a game’s rules and feedback loops.

Outside the masthead, he extends this focus across multiple outlets, contributing games writing to Rolling Stone, PC Gamer, Shacknews, Unwinnable, TechRadar, PCGamesN, The Loadout, Into the Spine, Lifebar, and other specialist publications. He co-founds and serves as editor-in-chief at Skybox, an independent games site where he publishes longer-form criticism and essays, giving him a platform for more expansive analyses than a typical review slot.

He also co-hosts The Platformers Podcast and runs a fighting game local for games press and content creators, which keeps him close to competitive communities and informs his attention to balance, meta, and high-level play in his writing.

Reviews and Previews of New Releases

At IGN, Borger writes structured reviews and hands-on previews that foreground how games play moment to moment, how their systems interlock, and what kinds of stories those systems enable.

His review of Thick as Thieves, a PvPvE stealth game set in a 1910s metropolis that mixes magic and technology, hinges on careful descriptions of co-op heists, level layouts, and the distinct toolkits of its thieves, weighing the joy of sneaking and improvisation against the limited breadth of content. He breaks down how the Vistara Diamond alters stealth encounters, how sprawling stages encourage route-planning and risk-taking, and how text-based communiques and scattered notes deliver story and mission context inside the levels.

His previews take a similar approach, using early builds to explain what will make upcoming releases stand out and how they fit into their genre lineages. In Dragon Ball Xenoverse 3, he focuses on the appeal of experiencing Age 1000 firsthand, framing the messy in-game living space of the player character as a lore detail that signals the series’ commitment to grounded, character-driven worldbuilding inside a bombastic anime action framework.

For Aion 2, he highlights the fantasy of flight, wings, and companion pets as central hooks of the MMO, pairing them with the promise of expansive online worlds and progression systems. His LEGO Skylines hands-on emphasizes the “build and chill” ethos of a cozy city-builder that prioritizes macro-level planning over micromanagement, treating relaxation and creative flow as key design goals rather than side effects.

In Crimson Moon, he introduces the game as a blend of Diablo and Dark Souls, underlining its hack-and-slash combat, fast pacing, and angelic imagery to situate it clearly for action-RPG players.

Across these pieces, he consistently reports from a player’s-eye view, describing controls, pacing, difficulty, and structural choices in concrete terms and then connecting those details back to the broader experience a game offers. His tone stays direct and descriptive, favoring clear judgments about what works and what does not, while still laying out enough context that readers understand how he arrived at those conclusions.

Cross-Outlet Games Criticism and Editorial Work

Borger’s professional bios and essays frame him first as a fiction writer and essayist who applies literary training and knowledge of theory and technique to games writing. He states a preference for reviews and features and takes pride in using that theoretical background to approach criticism from a distinct angle aimed at elevating what games criticism can be, which shows in his mix of mechanical analysis and attention to story, theme, and character.

His Startmenu work, including a reflective feature on his year and career, explicitly links his fiction practice to his games coverage and situates his assignments - such as covering Call of Duty for IGN - as part of a broader critical and creative trajectory.

Across Skybox, Restart.run, and other venues, he writes essays and criticism that go beyond product assessment, engaging with how games fit into players’ lives and the wider culture. Author pages at these outlets describe a consistent portfolio of essays, reviews, and thematic features, reinforcing that his work is not limited to one masthead but part of a wider presence in the games press.

Taken together, his cross-outlet roles, editorial responsibilities, and podcasting give him a vantage point that is both inside the industry and critically minded, and that perspective shapes the way he covers technology-driven games media as interconnected art, entertainment, and community.