Alanah Pearce (born 24 August 1993) is an Australian
video game writer and former journalist. Since 2020, Pearce has worked for American game developer
Santa Monica Studio.
Pearce has reported on video games for various news outlets including entertainment news website IGN. She worked at production company
Rooster Teeth from 2018 to 2020, during which she hosted the Inside Gaming news program and was involved with its
Funhaus division, which produces videos focused on video games.
Early life and education
Alanah Pearce was born in
Cairns, Queensland, Australia, on 24 August 1993.[1][2] Pearce was raised in Cairns, and later spent nine years in
Brisbane.[1] From a young age, she was interested in writing and video games, doing reviews of video games in her diaries. While working at a call center, she found a job listing for a volunteer
games journalist position that inspired a career in journalism.[3] She earned a
bachelor's degree studying
mass communication at the
Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane.[4]
Career
Journalism
From 2012 to 2015, Pearce wrote gaming news for around a dozen news outlets, including Impulse Gamer, Zelda Universe, the
BBC,[4] and worked stints at Australian radio and television stations.[5] She launched a
YouTube channel in 2012, where she publishes game reviews and personal videos.[4][6]
Feeling the Australian video game industry was too small, Pearce moved to the United States in 2015. She began work as an editor and writer for IGN later that year.[4][7] In 2017, she replaced
Naomi Kyle as host of IGN's Daily Fix gaming news program.[4] Later that year, she was involved in a staff walkout until the company issued a statement addressing sexual harassment allegations made by former editor Kallie Plagge.[8][9] Pearce cohosted the
SXSW Gaming Awards alongside Rich Campbell in 2018.[10]
After departing IGN in 2018, Pearce joined production company
Rooster Teeth. She regularly appeared in videos for
Funhaus, a division of Rooster Teeth which produces videos focused on video games, and cohosted the company's Inside Gaming news program starting in 2019.[11] She left Rooster Teeth in October 2020.[12]
Game development
In November 2020, Pearce joined
Sony's
Santa Monica Studio as a video game writer.[13] She provided consulting on three video games and completed other work on two video games prior to joining the studio.[14] She faced harassment on social media following the studio's decision to delay the release of God of War Ragnarök.[15][16] In September 2021, Pearce revealed that she was part of the development team behind Ragnarök.[17] In November, she was selected among the
Forbes 30 Under 30 for gaming.[18][19]
Pearce is the host of the Play, Watch, Listen podcast, along with
Troy Baker,
Mike Bithell, and
Austin Wintory.[23] She also hosts the podcasts Red Lips, Orange Car, Video Game Writing 101, and Voice Acting 101, and formerly hosted Idiots and a Broad.[24] She was a founding host of the Kinda Funny Xcast, but left the show several months after its premiere due to scheduling conflicts with her new job at
Santa Monica Studio.[25]