In 2006 I was fired from my job at EB Games. It was, with the benefit of hindsight, a well-earned dismissal. One Sunday I'd set up a camera and filmed myself jumping over a stack of boxes and hip thrusting at a stranger. My area manager saw the video about eight months later. I was fired on the spot.

In the 21st century, video game news is available in endless streams, 24 hours a day. But if you grew up in the 1980s and 90s, you went to magazines for your gaming news, reviews and gossip. For 30 years, the UK games mag industry was a thriving sector, providing players, not only with information about games on every format, but also a sense of community. They were part newspapers, part fanzines and their writers were the YouTube streamers of their day. I've been lucky enough to write for dozens of them, but before that I was an avid reader, spending all my money on these glossy celebrations of game culture.

We tasked Launcher's staff and freelancers to report striking stories that provided a window into gaming culture, while holding to account the industry's most powerful figures. Launcher debuted on Oct. 15, 2019, and served as the hub for The Post's gaming coverage. It was not, however, a silo. Our daily collaborations spread to every department of the newsroom -- Features, Tech, Financial, Politics, Sports, Foreign, National -- providing context around stories they were working on and fielding pitches from them when gaming intersected with their coverage areas. In the process, we were able to share our knowledge and experiences with writers and editors throughout the newsroom, showing what games coverage should look like at The Post and why this coverage is vital.