JUSTIN LEEPER

American gaming publications don't get any bigger than Game Informer, and Justin Leeper was there at the turn of the millennium as its online ambitions grew and print circulation soared. Together, we look back at his career in games media, and how it led to a development career that has seen him work with wrestling stars, Hideo Kojima and even Transformers

- Words by Nick Thorpe

So where did your career start from, coming out of school, Justin?

I knew I didn't want to go to university – I didn't want to spend that time and money when I didn't have a clear-cut path, so I knew I needed to get a job. I figured, why don't I try and make money at something I enjoy? So I applied at this store called FuncoLand, which was a used game store franchise. It was a fun retail job – there was some commission involved, and part of that was selling a discount card that came with a Game Informer magazine subscription, and I got to really like that magazine. I ended up moving down to Chicago after about a year-and-a-half, and then moving further down the US and kept my Game Informer subscription. Then when I found out that they were looking for some editors for their website, because the website was run by the magazine editors in their spare time, I applied for that and somehow ended up getting that gig. So I moved back up to Minneapolis and started working for them.

Game Informer was going through a period of rapid growth then, right?

Yeah. I started on the website, and me and this other guy, Matthew Kato, came in and we had our own little, tiny office. The FuncoLand headquarters was in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, and we were kind of like the funky kids living in the basement of this headquarters. Me and Kato, there was a hole in the wall that said 'hole' on top of it, and that's where they put our little office. But I got to do some really fun stuff for a while there. I don't know how I swung this, but every day I would play a WWE game. It was before No Mercy and