Jessica Conditt
reporter & writer | she/her | 🩷💜💙

I got a degree in journalism because I wanted to write for a living. Ideally, I wanted to do this in a probing and authentic literary capacity, similar to Hunter S. Thompson but with a lower reliance on psychedelics, and this was my runway into the video game industry. In my final year of university, I started writing and filming early-days YouTube content for a metalhead spinoff of GameTrailers.com called EpicBattleAxe, and I credit those fine fellas for providing a warm entry into the world of video game journalism. Right before graduating in 2011, I got a job as weekend editor at Joystiq — a dream role that I nearly didn't even apply for, a sliding-doors moment that still haunts me — and I never left. The title and controlling companies have shifted around me, but in an industry riddled with insecurity, I've never been forced to stop writing. Today, I'm a senior reporter at Engadget, heading up the video game beat.

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As my dad once wrote in an essay commissioned by Joystiq for Father's Day, my job is to "create boondoggle apology for the polite existence of a social opiate." I've always loved this description; his allusion to the banal malevolence of my daily grind stings in a motivating way, and I've worked for years to prove it wrong. His statement serves as a constant reminder to put everything in context, question the intentions of those with power, and always try to tell a larger, more connected story. I believe in the intrinsic value of art and artists, I see the power of video games as a form of communication, and I despise the business of stifling creative expression. My reporting is infused with these perspectives. In essence, I'm still just rebelling against the authority figures in my life, but now with professional consequences.

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I've written one novel, unpublished — a piece of near-future speculative fiction involving brain transplants and melodramatic musings on consciousness — and am writing another, always. I spend my days in Phoenix, Arizona, surrounded by desert air, cacti, good friends, two small dogs and the love of my life.