I’m a UK-based writer and artist, currently working as a Staff Writer for PC Gamer!

I’ve always had a love of language, gaming, characters and storytelling. The easiest way to describe myself would be to talk about how I relate to each of those things, so I’ll do just that.

The Words:

Everything in my life has revolved around these funny little shapes; from the gaming manuals I would read like bedtime stories, to the drama of mid-2000s Runescape, to discovering a love of roleplaying in MMORPGs like World of Warcraft and Star Wars: The Old Republic. When I was younger and far, far too cool and handsome and loud for the playground, I would scurry away to the library and devour fantasy novels.

I went to University to study Creative & Critical Writing, first for a Bachelor’s, then a Master’s, and my love only grew. I studied a lot of different mediums and genres, and each one taught me something new about how words could be moulded to do pretty much whatever I wanted.

I superbly acquitted my person with abstract verbiage and profound linguistic expertise, and I also found out that the best sentences often use very basic language. Advanced vocabulary is a topping, and you don’t want to add everything; nobody wants to mix hot sauce and sprinkles. Unless you’re a freak like that, in which case, you do you.

The Worlds:

Video games. I game. I’m a gamer. I have been for pretty much all my life. There’s the neuroscience behind it, certainly. I have an understimulated brain, and video games offer quick, chemical rewards, but I think my adoration for them runs a little deeper than that.

World of Warcraft was the gateway drug. I wouldn’t be able to speak to the state of it nowadays, but back then, Stormwind City on the Argent Dawn EU server was bustling. Close to a hundred people, maybe more, occupied the various districts at any time. Each was an individual character with their individual backstories, relationship drama, motivations, flaws and special powers.

Guilds recruited in the cathedral square, dressed in shining regalia. Interpersonal drama and bar fights broke out at The Pig, and the player-run Stormwind Watch (bless them) would try in vain to keep the peace. They could often be found contending with characters like Iceheart, the gnome death knight who swung a shadowy katana and screamed about his dead wife while unleashing lore-inaccurate flames from his mouth. It was amazing.

It was its own social ecosystem and I was fascinated. From then on, stepping into any game felt like stepping into another world entirely. Even now, as an adult, with my cynical adult brain, I still enjoy sitting down with a new title and saying: “go on, enchant me.” Anything to get the immersive fix a fifteen-year-old Harvey was obsessed with, whether it spawns from the players or the world itself.

The Characters:

Trying to learn how to write a character as a teenager on the internet is… it’s a crucible. It’s a great way to iterate on bad stories in rapid succession. All my first attempts were edgy, inconsistent, and played up various tragic backstories for drama. I love each and every single one of them. Criticism was harsh and uncompromising, but we were just having so much fun.

Tapping into this vein got me addicted to the idea of the character, the moving part of any story. Lord of the Rings has a fascinating, granular world that feels older than time itself. It has its own fully developed conlangs, its own cultures, its own history and traditions… yet my favourite part is when Frodo, exhausted from the heavy burden he bears, collapses on the side of a mountain. Sam, a humble man with a big heart, picks him up and they press on through hopelessness together.

No setting, however transportive, is ever going to feel real until there are people in it who are going through something. That’s what I love about characters. If you get a good one, it can breathe life into a featureless white room. You can make someone cry over a fake person you invented. If writing is telepathy, as Stephen King put it, then I think characters are magic. A good character can make someone fall in love with clay.

The Stories:

The last piece of the puzzle; stories. I love stories. I love reading them, playing through them, I love listening to them. I love telling them. I love placing my hand on an artery of emotion and being able to conjure fear, sadness, elation, panic. It’s addictive in the truest sense of the word.

Tabletop RPGs properly solidified this love. You can hand someone a written story, certainly, but it’s a little weird to stare at them the entire time they’re reading it. When you’re DMing, however? It taps into something primal, an urge to tell a story around a fire, a way to banish the shadows by making them dance for you. Any time I DM and I get a genuine gasp of invested panic from someone, or make them double over in laughter, I’ve won.

I also fell in love with being an observer to these stories. They’ve taught me how to overcome my demons, how to forgive my fellow person, how to push on through the grim and stygian grief of life, and find the fleeting happiness that makes this entire thing worth it.

The stories I tell will always have that nugget of hope to them. I don’t think I have the heart for a grim dystopia or a dismantling of the human psyche. I will test those things, certainly, but stories made me believe in people and I like to pay that forward.