Jeremiah Leif Johnson, a author and editor for plenty of gaming and tech web sites together with IGN, Vice Motherboard, Macworld, and PC Gamer, died all of the sudden of a cardiovascular occasion final Saturday, Might 17. He would have been 46 in June.
Leif began writing about video games professionally in his 30s, at which level he had already lived no less than two totally different, fascinating lives. In his youth in Texas he labored on a ranch and was not only a cowboy, however a cowboy poet. Leif attended the annual Nationwide Cowboy Poetry Gathering and traveled throughout america performing poetry readings and songs on guitar and mandolin.
Later he studied English and historical past on the College of Texas at Austin and accomplished a Grasp’s diploma within the historical past and philosophy of science and expertise on the College of Chicago. In Chicago, the place he lived for a few years, Leif labored at an artwork gallery, dealing with promotions and gallery preparations for works from modern artists like Shepard Fairey in addition to classic movie lithographs.
I did not know Leif throughout this period of his life, which you’ll learn extra about in his obituary. However he later shared anecdotes from his time within the artwork world that made me suppose his biggest power in that function was someway not his seemingly boundless information of artwork and historical past, however his friendliness and heat—his giddiness when given any likelihood to attach with somebody and burrow deeply into any subject they shared a ardour for.
Leif was my good good friend. After he moved again to Goliad, Texas in 2014 to take care of his household’s ranch, he started writing for PC Gamer and plenty of different publications as a freelancer. To assist the phrases stream, he’d typically write longhand with a fountain pen earlier than typing up his work. Again then Leif and I solely sometimes corresponded over e-mail, however he was a daily on PC Gamer, reviewing RPGs and technique video games and protecting Blizzard’s World of Warcraft and different MMOs, which he performed avidly. He wrote a model of PC Gamer’s listing of the most effective RPGs of all time that we have been working from ever since.
As Leif’s editor, I significantly keep in mind working with him on the characteristic “How Unreal Event mods created a wave of profitable indie studios,” which captured an essential second in PC gaming historical past. It was a narrative I wished to see informed effectively, so I turned to Leif. I am fairly certain he missed his deadline, however the finish consequence was price it. Coincidentally I used to be simply resharing it with the PC Gamer staff and praising his work final Friday, the day earlier than he died. I want I would texted him about it, too.
Leif and I grew to become pals in 2018, a yr after he wrote that story. He moved to San Francisco the place I reside to take a job at Macworld, the place he largely coated Apple’s tech—although he could not cease writing about video games every time he may squeeze them in. Leif began a video collection at Macworld that he dubbed Apple Arcade greater than a yr earlier than Apple nicked the identify for itself.
Leif liked San Francisco. Through the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic once we all remoted in small social “bubbles,” he was a part of mine. We might go on hikes within the close by hills and round components of town we would by no means visited. By then he’d already gorged on the historical past of San Francisco and will level out landmarks and their backstories street-by-street. He was the most effective strolling companion: all the time recreation to maintain going, and by no means greater than a minute or two from dropping one other nice little bit of trivia that I now want I may keep in mind.
Even if you happen to did not know Leif, there is a good likelihood that his ardour for video games and his fastidious consideration to element has truly touched your life in a small approach. Whereas Leif was a superb author, he thought of himself a greater editor, and after being laid off from Macworld through the financial turbulence of Covid he ended up working as a duplicate editor for Apple, serving to refine the form of documentation all of us take without any consideration when it is good and lose our minds over when it is complicated.
That work was a stepping stone to what I feel it is protected to say was Leif’s dream job: Video games curation editor for Apple’s App Retailer. He selected what video games to characteristic on the shop and wrote the quick editor’s alternative suggestions for them, someway discovering a job that permit him mix the relationship-building and curation he’d completed on the artwork gallery together with his ardour for video games. I prefer to suppose his time contributing to PC Gamer journal helped him condense his ideas into only a sentence or two, however which may be giving us a bit an excessive amount of credit score—lengthy earlier than writing for us he was a poet, in spite of everything.
A pair years in the past I got down to write a e book and requested Leif if he could be my editor. He instantly accepted the burden, as a result of he was a deeply sort particular person and an much more beneficiant good friend. I am undecided if he had the Chicago Handbook of Model memorized from cowl to cowl, but when there is a single misplaced comma or capital letter in your entire manuscript, I most likely screwed it up after he’d already completed a cross. 2024 was a yr filled with enjoyable texts from Leif, like:
“SO
A phrase on ellipses…”
In hindsight it is a humorous reversal of the best way our relationship began, however my recollections of these early emails have all been changed by the hikes we would gone on, the flicks we would seen collectively, and the evenings Leif had spent at my residence with different pals enjoying board video games. His punctuality grew to become a working joke: he all the time confirmed up first, even when he tried his greatest to be fashionably late.
When San Francisco’s annual Noir Metropolis movie pageant got here round each January, he was the good friend I may rely on to cram in as many screenings as we may keep awake for. And Leif was a fantastic film companion: He’d get so absorbed he could not assist however vibrate with nervous vitality or react with a bit “oh nooo” when issues went unhealthy. Our report finally yr’s movie fest was 11.
It was a privilege to name Leif Johnson my good friend, and I am simply one among many individuals who will miss him drastically.
