It’s April 3rd, which means it’s time for this month’s Interview! Every month I’ll be interviewing authors and creators about their newest works, their lives, and what influences them. For this month’s interview, I’m joined by game critic and video game Jedi (or Sith Lord!?) Alex Kane!
Welcome Alex! I’m so happy to have you on my website today! Interviews can be a little scary sometimes, so I’ll start with an easy one: tell us a little bit about yourself! What are some of your first video game memories? And have you ever heard of a little thing called ‘Star Wars’?
Super Mario Bros. 3 with my dad was a big one, and Mario 64 not longer after that. I remember many hours of GoldenEye against my sisters growing up, and Halo at friends’ houses. One of my favorite gaming memories, for sure, is the time my brother and I built a portal to the End in Minecraft and slew the Ender Dragon. Crazy as it sounds, that was probably the closest I’ve ever come to having a mystical experience, and it happened in a video game.
There was a period of my life where a lot of big events were coming at me in a hurry, and the games I played in that timeframe will always mean a lot to me. They helped me make sense of things. I became a father just as I was starting to write game reviews, and I played Night in the Woods the same week we brought my son home. Then I played through the Morrowind
expansion for The Elder Scrolls Online with him sort of napping in my lap shortly afterward. I treasure those memories.
Star Wars, like games, is something that’s been a part of my life almost since I was four or five years old, but it really started to become an obsession in ’97, when I saw The Empire Strikes Back during its special-edition run, at the Rivoli Theatre in my hometown. That was when I started begging for the toys, and watching them over and over on VHS and so forth.
You’re the first gaming journalist I’ve interviewed here on my website. I saw that you’ve written for Variety, Polygon, USGamer and others. How did you get into game writing? And, more importantly, what are some of your favorite games of all time?
I’ve been writing for ages, and publishing stuff since college. When I went freelance in 2014, I spent my second big check on a Wii U bundle with Wind Waker, and then Bungie’s Destiny
landed a few months after that. With this newfound freedom of being my own boss, I fell pretty hard for Destiny and the social experience it offered; I spent like two thousand hours in that world over the course of three years. When an editor for Kill Screen — which used to be a really hip publication full of brilliant games journalism — put out a call for freelance news writers in 2016, I jumped at the opportunity, and he took a chance on me. I worked hard to make a good first impression, and that led to gigs with Rolling Stone and some other places. I got very
lucky.
Some of my favorite games — outside of KotOR, obviously — are things like Super Mario
Bros. 3, Skyrim, Halo 2, Night in the Woods, Star Fox 64, Pokémon Red, the new Spider-Man.
Wind Waker was a big one for me, too, when I picked that up in 2014. It sort of helped me mourn my grandparents in the midst of this wild career transition; I loved that Link had a grandma, because I’d just lost mine six months prior. And it’s also probably one of the
three best Zeldas.
Your first book comes out via Boss Fight Books this month. It’s a deep dive into the 2003 RPG classic Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. I just finished reading it and I loved it! This is a game that deserves this kind of exploration. How did this book come to be?
For one thing, it’s ultimately the result of me learning how books are written. I think I emailed my editor the KotOR pitch in May of 2016, and then he called me up in late October of that year and offered me a contract. That’s a day I’ll never forget. That wasn’t long after I started getting paid to write about games, actually, but I already had a lot of publishing experience
as an editor, and from doing short fiction and acquisitions and various little contract projects.
The truism in writing and publishing is that it’s all about persistence, in some ways, and that was definitely true for me in terms of establishing a relationship with Boss Fight and getting on their radar. Knights of the Old Republic wasn’t the first pitch I sent them,
and I think my editor, Gabe, admired my tenacity a little bit.
Do you think you’ll ever write a book like this again? And if you would, what game or facet of the gaming world might you look at next?
I definitely think there’ll be a book two, and I know what book I want to write next, but it’s gonna take another big stroke of luck to make it happen. I think there’s a good chance that I’ll be writing about either Star Wars or video games, or something very closely related to those, but it’s hard to say exactly when that might materialize. I love the official guidebooks and things like that — the DK Publishing Star Wars line. I’d love to do a bit of Star Wars fiction, if given the chance. I’m doing some behind-the-scenes copywriting for Lucasfilm, so there’s always that sense that maybe if I keep my head down and my fingers crossed, some of those things could happen. One day.
I’ve spent most of the last three years writing about people who make games and other forms of entertainment, and I just love telling those stories. I hope to do it for a really long time.
As a game critic, I’m sure you play lots of games. What games are you currently playing? And what have been some highlights of the year so far?
There’s a ton of games coming out later in the year I’m excited about, like Control and Jedi: Fallen Order and The Outer Worlds, but so far my big hits of 2019 have been Apex
Legends and The Division 2 — neither of which I saw coming. I’m always fiddling around with several games at any given time; right now I’m playing Oblivion,Division 2, Battlefront II, and Anthem.
Lastly: where can people find you online?
I mostly live on Twitter, at @alexjkane.
Or on Xbox! And my publisher, of course, can be found at bossfightbooks.com.
Alex Kane’s book Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is up for preorder! If you liked this interview and want to read more, you can see the Archive here.
Logan Noble, Author 