Electronic Gaming Monthly - Staff

Staff

Staff writers for the magazine have included founder Steve Harris, Martin Alessi, Ken Williams (as Sushi-X), "Trickman" Terry Minnich, Andrew "Cyber-Boy" Baran, Danyon Carpenter, Marc Camron (later Director of Operations), Mark "Candyman" LeFebvre, Todd Rogers, Mike Weigand a.k.a. Major Mike (now Managing Editor at GamePro), Al Manuel, Howard Grossman, Mark "Mo" Hain, Mike Vallas, Jason Streetz, Ken Badziak, Scott Augustyn, Chris Johnston, Che Chou, Dave Ruchala, Crispin Boyer, artist Jeremy "Norm" Scott, Shawn "Shawnimal" Smith, West Coast Editor Kelly Rickards, Kraig Kujawa, Dean Hager, Shane Bettenhousen, Jeremy Parish, and Mark Macdonald (who later went on to become director of Gamevideos.com before leaving Ziff-Davis). Writers who also served stints as editor-in chief include Ed Semrad, Joe Funk, John Davison, Dan Hsu (aka "Shoe"), and James Mielke. In addition, writers of EGM's various sister publications – including GameNow, Computer Gaming World/Games for Windows: The Official Magazine, Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine – would regularly contribute to EGM, and vice versa.

Personalities featured in the magazine included gossip columnist "Quartermann," (or Q-Man or The Q) originally penned by Steve Harris and assisted by Ed Semrad, Danyon Carpenter, Andrew Baran and Chris Johnston. Near the end of EGM's original run, Quartermann had been penned by former editorial director John Davison and executive editor Shane Bettenhausen. Many items from the column have indeed come to fruition (such as the impending announcement of a competing game console by Microsoft, which eventually became the Xbox), though many have not (Panzer Dragoon sequel on the Dreamcast). Controversy followed the magazine in April 2000 when the column speculated on a port of Metal Gear Solid (PS1) for the Dreamcast, with many gaming news outlets (including international ones) taking this as fact and reporting it as their own, leading to a virtual scolding by the columnist a month after for this practice.

Another long-time personality is Seanbaby, who penned the "Rest of the Crap" section found at the end of the magazine. The column reviewed poor-quality games or included more unorthodox columns and lists. Favorite targets included the "Barbie" games, as well as games based on the TV show That's So Raven, cosplayers, and those who frequent gaming tradeshow E3.

Perhaps the most infamous personality was "Sushi-X", a pseudonym for a reviewer (and, at times, someone who had a mini-letters section) who was modeled after Taco-X of the multi-panel review team of the Japanese publication Famitsu, which inspired EGM's own review style. A supporter of fighting games (Street Fighter in particular) and detractor of role-playing video games and portable systems, Sushi-X was originally David Siller in the early years and then taken over by Ken Williams for almost a decade.

After Ken's departure the moniker was used by several people through the years until phased out by Ziff Davis as a "maturing" of the magazine; initially, the magazine did seem to have planned to have another fictional character, Elephant Sak (or E-Sak) which was the name of a character by the editors from the game WWF Attitude created to take over Sushi-X. The magazine teased the audience with a highlighted silhouette of the character in the photo box as the next reviewer in the issues from the last half of 1999. This never came to fruition.

Late-term "mascots" for the magazine included a Space Invaders alien, which acted as an anchor to any written work in the mag as well as symbolizing reactions from games from E3 ("Awesome", "Terrible", etc.). Additionally, there was also a robot handed out as a trophy for their yearly awards as well as an award named after Tobias Bruckner from Turok: Evolution, which was given as dubious honors to the worst aspects of the past year in gaming.

EGM's return marked a largely new staff of contributors that saw founder Steve Harris serving in the role of Publisher and Editor-In-Chief, the positions he held when the magazine was launched in 1988. He is joined by Brady Fiechter as Senior Editor, Mark Bozon as Reviews Editor as well as Dan "Shoe" Hsu, Demian Linn, Aaron Thomas, Omri Petitte, Jasmine Maleficent Rea, and Brett Bates from Bitmob.com, and Ryan O'Donnell and Matt Chandronait of Area5.tv. Other past contributors like Sushi-X and Seanbaby also contributed to the reborn EGM.