About Us
Zoey Handley
After years of convincing herself that it was an impossible dream, Zoey Handley took her first steps into a career in video game media and started the Game Complaint Department (now Maximum Utmost, the site you see now). Before long, she somehow accomplished her dream by writing for publications like GameSpot, Nintendo Force, and Destructoid. Even better, some people say they like her writing! On the internet! A place where nobody says anything nice!
Not knowing what else to do, she leans on her love of the weird, the awful, and the retro to entertain. Her new dream is to just stay submerged in video games and leave her fingerprints on everything. Right now, she likes writing reviews. She likes writing so many reviews.
Jonathan Holmes
If you have any problems with modern media, Jonathan Holmes is probably to blame. He helped usher in the dominance of reality TV by appearing on Road Rules: Northern Trail, the first season to feature the Real World/Road Rules Challenge. Then a decade or so later he became one of the first gaming YouTubers and streamers, co-hosting The Destructoid Show, creating the abysmal cartoon Teenage Pokemon, and live streaming complete playthroughs of games like Super Meat Boy on Justin.TV (the original name for Twitch). He also is the cohost of troubling podcasts like Dismal Jesters and Boston’s Favorite Son, the birthplace of the word(?) Chungus.
To try to make up for it, he’s been working behind the scenes to make gaming magazines relevant again, writing and providing art for such periodicals as Nintendo Force Magazine, A Profound Waste of Time, Lost in Cult’s Lock-On, Gamebound’s Generations, as well as a handful essays for art books by Limited Run Games. He also runs a not-troubling podcast called Talking to Women about Videogames.
Patrick Hancock
One of Patrick’s core memories is playing some iconic edu-tainment games like Oregon Trail and Treasure Mathstorm in fifth grade, so now it’s a bit surreal that he gets to write about video games online and also has a career as a teacher. Kind of like a Patrick Hancock Teaches History instead of Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. Except now it’s closer to Hancock Tries To Figure Out If This Work Is Actually AI Or Not.
Joining Destructoid in 2011 after being a community member and previously writing for AbleGamers, Patrick felt out of his league with some of the titans of the industry also on staff. He’s always had a “I’m just happy to be here” mentality regarding video games media, and the same can be said now at Maximum Utmost!
Jay B. Ross
Unlike his peers, Jay never got to play Oregon Trail; instead, his Commodore 64 came with Odell Lake, an educational fish simulator. His awkward youth was spent watching Golden Girls, listening to the Beatles & They Might Be Giants, and, of course, playing video games. After attending engineering school to study art, he became Publications Director at a variety of anime conventions (even though he watches little anime). He leveraged that experience to begin a successful career in marketing, design, and copywriting.
Over the years, he’s written on a wide variety of topics – yet, curiously, (until now) never on video games. Here at Maximum Utmost, he plans to remedy that. He’s ashamed to admit he was once an avid EverQuest player. Jay wants a rock to wind a piece of string around.
DANIEL SANFORD
Toiling away in front of a pair of speakers with 15 different audio and video programs open simultaneously is typically where you’ll find Daniel. He was his college radio station’s production director where he made some scripted, pre-recorded monthly programs that were too ambitious for their own good. Letting his microphone rust in its scabbard, he turned his attention to the synthesizer and has been writing dance music on his computer for 25 years. In late 2021 he pivoted back into radio…except now people call it podcasting, and he’s been hooked ever since.
Daniel was the guy that was connecting his NES’s red and yellow AV output to the VCR to record himself playing Iron Sword: Wizards and Warriors II just to see what those ports did when everyone else was using an RFU adapter. He has a shelf with archaic game consoles next to his PC and adapters to play them all. He’s comfy when he’s got cables strewn all over the place in a technological rat’s nest. He’s into Squarepusher, CHVRCHES, Daft Punk, and a whole lot more. He never was officially affiliated with Destructoid, but he was always in the comments and reading every post on the site as far back as 2008.