Alanah Pearce

Alanah Pearce (born 24 August 1993) is an Australian video game writer, content creator, actor and former journalist. From 2020 to 2024, Pearce worked as a writer for American game developer Santa Monica Studio.

Pearce has reported on video games for various news outlets including entertainment news website IGN. She worked at production company Rooster Teeth from 2018 to 2020, during which she hosted the Inside Gaming news program and was involved with its Funhaus division, which produced videos focused on video games.

Early life and education Alanah Pearce was born in Cairns, Queensland, Australia, on 24 August 1993. Pearce was raised in Cairns, and later spent nine years in Brisbane. She earned a bachelor's degree studying mass communication at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane.

Career

Journalism From 2012 to 2015, Pearce wrote gaming news for around a dozen news outlets, including Impulse Gamer, Zelda Universe, the BBC, She launched a YouTube channel in 2012, where she publishes game reviews and personal videos.

Feeling the Australian video game industry was too small, Pearce moved to the United States in 2015. She began work as an editor and writer for IGN later that year. In 2017, she replaced Naomi Kyle as host of IGNs Daily Fix gaming news program. Pearce cohosted the SXSW Gaming Awards alongside Rich Campbell in 2018.

After departing IGN in 2018, Pearce joined production company Rooster Teeth. She regularly appeared in videos for Funhaus, a division of Rooster Teeth which produced videos focused on video games, and cohosted the company's Inside Gaming news program starting in 2019. She left Rooster Teeth in October 2020.

Game development and acting

In November 2020, Pearce joined Sony's Santa Monica Studio as a video game writer. She provided consulting on three video games and completed other work on two video games prior to joining the studio. She faced harassment on social media following the studio's decision to delay the release of God of War Ragnarök. In November, she was selected among the Forbes 30 Under 30 for gaming.

Pearce did voice acting for Gears 5 (2019), Dispatch (2025), and Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2 (2026), appeared in Dead Take (2025), and lent her voice and likeness to a character in Cyberpunk 2077 (2020).

In December 2024, Pearce revealed that she was leaving Santa Monica Studio, citing her desire for the flexibility to visit her family in Australia more often as the key factor in her decision. She announced her intent to focus on freelance work, live streaming, and content creation following her departure. One of her projects at the studio, God of War Laufey, was announced in June 2026.

Podcasting Pearce is the host of the Play, Watch, Listen podcast, along with Troy Baker, Mike Bithell, and Austin Wintory. She also hosts the podcasts Red Lips, Orange Car, Video Game Writing 101, and Voice Acting 101, and formerly hosted Idiots and a Broad. She was a founding host of the Kinda Funny Xcast, but left the show several months after its premiere due to scheduling conflicts with her new job at Santa Monica Studio.

Other activities Pearce participated in the Creator Clash 2 boxing event in April 2023, beating content creator RIPmika by split decision.

Pearce was briefly banned from Twitch following a DMCA takedown notice sent by Nintendo after she live-streamed herself reacting to already published preview footage of its game, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, five days before its release.

Pearce appears as Halley in the 2024 film V/H/S/Beyond, in the final segment "Stowaway", directed by Kate Siegel and written by Mike Flanagan.

In 2026, Pearce launched her own indie production company named Charred Pictures focusing on adapting video games into films and television series together with the game developers of the games. The first project in development is a film based on the horror game Faith: The Unholy Trinity by Airdorf Games.

Personal life

In 2014, Pearce became the focus of news media after she wrote to the mothers of internet trolls who had sent her rape threats. In 2019, she was subject to harassment after the Entertainment Software Association, the organiser of the E3 gaming expo, leaked the personal information of E3 2019 media attendees to the public.

Pearce came out in June 2020; while she does not feel an attachment to any label, she felt best defined by the term pansexual. In July 2024, she made a video where she reflected and discussed her previous post. In the video she described herself as both pansexual and demisexual.

Awards and nominations Pearce was nominated for Content Creator of the Year at the Game Awards 2020.