Luke Smith (writer) - 1UP.com Journalism

1UP.com Journalism

Smith served as the news editor for 1UP.com, the sister site to the now-defunct magazine Electronic Gaming Monthly. During his tenure at 1UP, Smith wrote extensively about the Halo video game franchise, as was considered a leading fan voice; in one article, he declared Halo was the only game series he cared about. Smith wrote a feature story for 1UP in 2005 called "Broken Halo", in which he explained how developer Bungie could fix problems he perceived with the game; Crecente said the article put Smith "on the map". Smith also became one of the panelists of the 1UP Yours show, a weekly video games podcast featuring gaming editors and experts.

Play.d magazine credited Smith with inspiring gamers to learn more about the game industry and not accept company promotion, as well as turning 1UP from "the bastard child of EGM" to an important part of the Ziff Davis Internet company's gaming network. His style has been described as a "robust, direct approach" to journalism and is known for his scathing attacks on the industry. Smith, however, felt disheartened by the state of game journalism. "Video game journalism is just weird. You have guys married to women in marketing for the games they cover. Video game journalism is still very young, very early, still trying to find out what it is," he said. In an interview with Michael Zenke of The Escapist, Smith said he felt game journalists were treated by developers as another part of the PR plan, with developers sending out information and the journalists "regurgitating" it. Worse, Smith felt that gamers had become used to this sort of information; "We have to be responsible for our actions and held accountable when we manipulate the expectations of gamers," he told Zenke.

While he was becoming more frustrated with the field at 1UP, game developer Bungie contacted Smith about employment. After sending the company his resume, Smith stopped writing about Bungie and Microsoft to avoid a conflict of interest. Smith accepted a job offer a month later.