Headline scoops McNeil's history of video games

Headline will publish a book about the history of video games by comedian and gaming expert Steve McNeil.

Senior commissioning editor Richard Roper bought world rights to Hey! Listen! from Nick Ranceford-Hadley at NRH Management.

Scheduled for publication on 16th April 2019, the title traces the history of video games, focusing on the golden era from the 1970s to the 1990s.

McNeil is co-creator of the videogaming and comedy TV show “Dara O’Briain’s Go 8 Bit” and the Guinness World Record-breaking live show “WiFi Wars”. He is also a partner on both YouTube and live video streaming platform, Twitch, for which he was recently nominated as Streamer of the Year.

“Steve is a whip-smart writer and this book hits the mother lode when it comes to all that is brilliant, infuriating, spectacular and downright weird about video games and their inventors,” Roper said. “Steve’s love and affection shines through so brightly, along with a good deal of laugh-out-loud fun-poking when it comes to the many, many gaming missteps that have occurred along the way.”

McNeil said: “I spent six years trying to make playing video games my job and, when I finally achieved that goal, Richard made me spend the next six months writing a book about them instead.”