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Steve Harris

Editor-in-Chief / Founder · Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM) · 1989–2000s · American

Steve Harris founded Electronic Gaming Monthly in 1989 and built it into the most influential American gaming magazine of the 1990s, defining the multi-reviewer format and the ten-point review scale.

Steve Harris launched EGM from his Chicago apartment in April 1989 after working in games retail and becoming frustrated with the lack of substantive consumer games coverage. His key editorial innovations were structural: EGM used four reviewers per game rather than one, printing all four scores and mini-reviews to reflect the disagreement that genuinely existed among players, and it adopted a ten-point scale (presented as four scores out of 10) that would become the most imitated review format in games journalism. EGM also distinguished itself by breaking news aggressively — it ran the first American coverage of the Super Famicom (later SNES) and was first with screenshots of many Japanese games before their Western releases. Under Harris's leadership, EGM grew from a photocopied newsletter to a glossy magazine with over 700,000 monthly readers by the mid-1990s.

Notable Work:
  • Founded Electronic Gaming Monthly in April 1989, growing it to the dominant American gaming magazine of the 1990s
  • Introduced the four-reviewer format and ten-point scoring system that became the industry standard
  • Published first American coverage of the Super Famicom and numerous Japanese exclusives months before Western releases
  • Developed the "Seanbaby" humour column and other editorial features that gave EGM a distinctive voice beyond pure reviews
Key Facts:
  • EGM was initially self-funded and self-distributed before Sendai Publishing acquired it after its first issues
  • The four-reviewer format was designed explicitly to reflect that reasonable people disagreed about games — a philosophically honest position unusual in 1989
  • EGM's annual Video Game Awards, later the EGMAs, were among the first games industry awards voted on by journalists rather than industry figures
  • The magazine survived through the collapse of Nintendo Power's dominance and the PlayStation transition, remaining relevant from 1989 to 2009