Joyce Katz, who along with her husband Arnie Katz and friend Bill Kunkel founded the first magazine devoted to videogames, has passed away at the age of 77.
Katz, who wrote professionally under her maiden name Joyce Worley, was senior editor of the magazine Electronic Games from its founding in 1981 until just prior to its shuttering in 1985. She went on to take senior editorial roles at gaming publications throughout the 1990s, including Video Games & Computer Entertainment and the relaunched Electronic Games.
News of Katz's passing was originally reported by File 770, a site for news about science fiction fanzine fandom. She had been active in this field since the mid-1950's, eventually earning the nickname "High Priestess of Fandom." Alongside her first husband Ray Fisher, she co-chaired the 27th annual Worldcon, the sci-fi festival that hosts the Hugo Awards, in St. Louis in 1969. ODD, a zine she published with Fisher, had been nominated for a Hugo the year prior. Joyce suffered a stroke in May of this year, File 770 reported, leading to serious medical issues that caused her death on July 30.
It was also through SF fandom that Joyce met Arnie Katz, who she married in 1971. The pair bonded with another couple in the scene, Bill and Charlene Kunkel---not through their shared love of sci-fi but instead their enthusiasm for a then-new arcade amusement machine called Pong. As the 1970s came to a close, Arnie Katz and Bill Kunkel were penning a regular column in Video magazine called "Arcade Alley," devoted to the emerging game industry.
In 1981, Joyce joined her husband and friend as one of the founding editors of Electronic Games, the first magazine devoted to videogames. The first issue contained articles such as "Can Asteroids Topple Space Invaders?" She penned reviews of LCD-powered handheld game machines like "Alien Attack" and "Wildfire." In addition to her duties as senior editor of the magazine, she took on the solo project of a biweekly Electronic Games-branded newsletter called Arcade Alley, a typewritten chronicle of all of the latest news updates and game reviews that didn't fit into the monthly installments of the magazine.
Eventually, Arnie, Bill, and Joyce formed Katz Kunkel Worley, a company through which they provided content, consulting, and game design services.
