Meet Evan Lahti ’07 of Ypsilanti, Mich., global editor-in-chief of PC Gamer, “the global authority” on PC games that has published news, features, reviews, interviews and buying guides for more than 20 years.
A journalism major, Lahti shared how North Central helped start his career and how he handles a big job that involves far more than playing video games all day. What are your duties as editor of PC Gamer? I set the editorial strategy for a team of 27 editors across different sections of coverage. I influence and direct which stories we pursue every day. I build style guides for our team and set policy. I mentor writers and editors to help them strengthen their voices.
A big early step in your career was writing for The Chronicle. How did that help you get started in journalism? One of the most rewarding things about working on a college newspaper was being part of a small team and the feeling of completing a group project each month— those skills directly translated to creating a magazine when I started at PC Gamer in 2008. It helped me develop a notion early on of carrying a story to completion from beginning to end. It also helped me understand the importance of thinking about all elements of a story—its layout on the page, its imagery, where the story would sit in a section—at the outset of the process, which is definitely a mindset we value.
What is your process when you are reviewing a PC game? Reviewing a game is great because it’s one of the rare moments we get to focus on a single thing and dive deeply into it. We play the game, obviously, taking notes and capturing video footage of the most interesting moments while playing for later reference. We also capture screenshots, like in-game photography, to showcase our experience. At the end (we write and edit drafts) with our colleagues until we’re happy, or until we hit deadline. Then we’re focused on promoting the review (and) positioning it online against our peers in a way that makes our story stand out as much as possible.
5 0 NORTH CENTRAL COLLEGE northcentralcollege.edu
What are your favorite games and/or genres? I’m a huge fan of first-person shooters like Rainbow Six Siege, Counter-Strike, and the Battlefield series. I love the skills that they draw upon—communication, teamwork, physical awareness, and positioning— while also being a great context for bonding and hanging out with friends.
What does it take to succeed in writing about games? Working in game journalism isn’t fundamentally different from other online media jobs. I write lots of emails, attend lots of meetings, and edit (maybe 20,000) words each week. The audience wants to read stuff that challenges their understanding of the hobby and enhances their enjoyment of it. One of the things we look for in anyone joining our team is tenacity—a readiness to reach beyond what’s sitting on the surface of the internet and find stuff being made or being said in the weirder corners of gaming. We highly value writers who can tell stories that matter to people who don’t play games. Check out Evan and his team’s work at pcgamer.com.
