8 Biggest Unsung Heroes Working In The Video Game Industry

2. Phil Spencer - Turning Xbox Around At The Brink Of Disaster

Phil Spencer X-Box
Wikipedia

If you can cast your mind back to E3: 2013, you'll remember that Xbox wasn't really having that good of a time.

Under the guidance of Mark Whitten and Don Mattrick, the company's unveiling of the Xbox One - something that was meant to be an overwhelmingly positive experience - well, didn't really find an audience. In fact, any audience it could've found began to chuck proverbial fruit at the two executives as a systemic backlash formed against the One's ostensible 'always online' approach. Don Mattrick's ill-advised quip stating that Microsoft already had a console for those discontented by their announcement - "It's called Xbox 360" - probably didn't help things either. Probably.

In comes Phil Spencer, who, to Xbox fans, probably signalled the second coming of Christ as he announced that Xbox's latest console would, in fact, actually put "gaming first". Shocker.

We all know the industry is dominated by awkward personalities and executives who probably thinks gamers sit down to play SonicKartBros10 every Friday whilst streaming five TV shows at once, so to have an executive who actually knows and understands his audience is pretty fantastic. Microsoft have only improved since their devastating 2013 showing, and as the Scorpio moves on the horizon, it's fairly clear that Spencer has grand designs for the brand.

Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.