Gary Whitta
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gary "Gaz" Whitta (born July 21, 1972) is an English screenwriter, author, game designer, and video games journalist. Among long-time video game enthusiasts, he is known as the former editor-in-chief of PC Gamer magazine and contributor to one of the first gaming magazines, ACE.
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[edit] Biography
Whitta was born and raised in London, England. There, he began his career as a writer and games journalist, and came to ACE magazine. When ACE closed down in 1992[1], he became involved with founding PC Gamer magazine[2] in the UK. A few years later, he moved to the United States to become editor-in-chief of the newly inaugurated PC Gamer[2]. He left the magazine in early 2000, but has continued to write columns for the publication.
Whitta still lives in the United States, currently residing in San Francisco, CA. Despite his long term residency in the US, he is still a devoted fan of the Tottenham Spurs football team.
[edit] Magazine publishing
Besides his involvement setting up PC Gamer, Whitta has a long history of involvement with print and online magazines of all kinds. As previously mentioned, he was a contributing game reviewer for UK-based ACE magazine, an Amiga computer games. ACE was owned by UK publisher Future Publishing, and in early 2000 Whitta worked with Future to establish a film magazine, Total Movie Magazine. Due to financial difficulties at the publisher, Total Movie was cancelled after only a couple issues in early 2001[3]. According to Whitta:
I should take a minute to sort out the speculation as to why the magazine died: it was not due to any failure on its part. Actually, we were doing really well, with sell-through rates on the newssstand in the 60-80% region in many places (if you know anything about magazine publishing, you know that's pretty impressive), and we had just finished our first monthly issue and DVD when we learned it would not be printed and published.[3]
While no longer managing or editing, Whitta still contribues game reviews and opinion pieces for a number of gaming publications. His articles can be found in various places, including PC Gamer[4] and 1Up[5]. He also shows up in industry podcasts, for example with PC Gamer[6] and Next Generation[7].
[edit] Screenwriting
In addition to contributing to periodicals, Whitta has written a number of screenplays and TV episodes. A partial list, including the text of those which were not picked up, can be found here at his homepage. Included among them are both movie scripts and TV episodes for Star Trek: Voyager and Futurama.
Whitta has found Hollywood success as the screenwriter of the upcoming movie Reaper, scheduled for release in 2008[8]. On March 5, 2007, Whitta announced that his science fiction script entitled The Book of Eli has been purchased by Warner Bros. to be produced by Joel Silver[9]. He is also working on a script known only as the "Monkey Project" with Chris Weston[10].
[edit] Game development
In the realm of game development, Whitta has consulted on a number of game titles. Perhaps his best known contributions have been as a writer for Duke Nukem Forever[11][12], Prey[13][12], and Gears of War[12]. He has also consulted on general game design for Microsoft, Electronic Arts, Activision, Midway Games, and others[12].
[edit] Comic books
Whitta is also the writer behind a popular short series of comic books based on the Death, Jr. character, together with cover artist Mike Mignola and illustrator Ted Naifeh[14]. Having been extended to a second three-part series[15], the writing has received praise as "charming and cleverly subversive"[16] and for its "quirky characters and slick humor"[17]. Whitta spoke about his experience writing this comic with Silver Bullet Comics in May 2005.
[edit] References
- ^ Amiga History Guide
- ^ a b PC Gamer, 1996.
- ^ a b CHUD.com Forum archive, February 2001.
- ^ IW2 review. PC Gamer, July 2005.
- ^ 1Up profile page
- ^ PC Gamer podcast, June 2006.
- ^ Next Gen podcast, January 2007.
- ^ IMDB Reaper, 2008.
- ^ QT3 Forums March 2007.
- ^ Chris Weston blog. September 2006.
- ^ DNF script 3D Realms forums.
- ^ a b c d GaryWhitta.com biography.
- ^ Prey info at 3D Realms
- ^ Image Comics Press Release, September 2005.
- ^ QT3 Forums, February 2006
- ^ Shrew Review April 2005.
- ^ IGN Comics April, 2005.
[edit] External links
- Gary Whitta at the Internet Movie Database
- Moby Games developer profile
- Amazon.com list of books
- GaryWhitta.com – Home Page
- The "Gaz" Blog – Personal Blog
- Famous Whitta quotes – ThinkExist.com
