Editor / Critic · Various (PCWorld, InfoWorld, Computer Gaming World) · 1983–2010s
Lincoln Spector was a prominent PC game critic and technology journalist whose reviews and columns in PCWorld, InfoWorld, and other publications shaped how mainstream American audiences evaluated and understood personal computer software through the 1980s and 1990s.
Spector worked as a writer and editor across several of the most widely read American technology publications during the period when personal computing was transitioning from a hobbyist activity to a mainstream consumer category. His reviews of games and productivity software appeared in PCWorld and InfoWorld — publications with circulations in the hundreds of thousands — at a time when professional game criticism in mass-market technology press was genuinely new. Unlike dedicated gaming magazines, which spoke to an already-converted audience, PCWorld and InfoWorld reached business users and general consumers who were deciding whether games were worth their time and money. His writing occupied a space between the enthusiast gaming press and mainstream technology journalism, translating the technical specifications and design qualities of games into terms that a general computing audience could evaluate. This dual readership — gamers who respected technical rigour and general technology readers encountering serious game criticism for the first time — gave his work an influence that was qualitatively different from contemporaries writing for dedicated game publications. He continued writing about technology and occasionally games into the 2010s.