Whitta was born and raised in London, England. There, he began his career as a writer and games journalist, and came to ACE magazine. When ACE closed down in 1992, he became deputy editor of "The One for Amiga" then was involved with founding the original
PC Gamer magazine in the UK. A few years later, he moved to the United States to become editor-in-chief of the newer, US version, of
PC Gamer. He left the magazine in early 2000, but has continued to write columns for the publication.
Whitta still lives in the United States, currently residing in San Francisco, CA. In 2009, he became a US Citizen. He remains a devoted fan of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, and is an avid fan of bacon.
Magazine publishing
Besides his involvement setting up
PC Gamer, Whitta has a long history of involvement with print and online magazines of all kinds. As previously mentioned, he was a contributing game reviewer for UK-based ACE magazine, an Amiga computer games. ACE was owned by UK publisher Future Publishing, and in early 2000 Whitta worked with Future to establish a film magazine, Total Movie Magazine. Due to financial difficulties at the publisher, Total Movie was canceled after only a couple issues in early 2001. According to Whitta:
I should take a minute to sort out the speculation as to why the magazine died: it was not due to any failure on its part. Actually, we were doing really well, with sell-through rates on the newsstand in the 60-80% region in many places (if you know anything about magazine publishing, you know that's pretty impressive), and we had just finished our first monthly issue and DVD when we learned it would not be printed and published.
While no longer managing or editing, Whitta still contributes game reviews and opinion pieces for a number of gaming publications. His articles can be found in various places, including
PC Gamer and 1Up. He also shows up in industry podcasts, for example with
PC Gamer and Next Generation.
Screenwriting
In addition to contributing to periodicals, Whitta has written a number of screenplays and TV episodes. A partial list, including the text of those which were not picked up, could at one time be found on his homepage. Included among them are both movie scripts and TV episodes for
Voyager and
Futurama.
Whitta has found Hollywood success as the screenwriter of the movie
The Book of Eli. He is also working on a script known only as the "Monkey Project" with Chris Weston. More recent rumors have tied him to a Blizzard project, possibly a title based on the
Diablo series of games. It was later revealed that he was the primary screenwriter for the upcoming
Warcraft movie, but is no longer contributing to the script after the confirmation of Sam Raimi as director. It was announced on www.Firstshowing.net, that Whitta was set to write the script for the live-action version of
Akira that is scheduled to be released in the winter of 2011. It's Official - Live-Action Akira Confirmed Already for 2009! « FirstShowing.net He wrote the script for the action thriller film Undying.
Game development
In the realm of game development, Whitta has consulted on a number of game titles. Perhaps his best known contributions have been as a writer for
Duke Nukem Forever,
Prey, and
Gears of War. He has also consulted on general game design for Microsoft, Electronic Arts, Activision, Midway Games, and others.
Comic books
Whitta is also the writer behind a popular short series of comic books based on the
Death, Jr. character, together with cover artist Mike Mignola and illustrator Ted Naifeh. Having been extended to a second three-part series, the writing has received praise as "charming and cleverly subversive" and for its "quirky characters and slick humor". Whitta spoke about his experience writing this comic with Silver Bullet Comics in May 2005.
Podcasts
Whitta is a frequent commentator on the PC Gamer podcast and he co-hosted the Game Theory podcast with Colin Campbell, which has since stopped being produced. He also commentated on the Next Gen podcast until the podcast was canceled. He has also been a guest on the Tested podcast This is Only a Test.
