TSJ Future Writer Award, Video Games

The 2025/2026 Recipient of the Timothy S. Johnston Future Writer Award

August 10, 2026 • 0 Comments

The 2025/2026 Recipient of the Timothy S. Johnston Future Writer Award

Congratulations to Raymond Mach, London South Collegiate Institute graduate and this year’s recipient of the TSJ Future Writer Award. Learn more about Raymond below:

The TSJ Award

Each year, a graduating student at LSCI in the Thames Valley District School Board is acknowledged for their creative writing skills. The instructor most familiar with the student’s work evaluates the creative writing during the Grade 12 senior writing course (University Preparation) and selects the winning candidate. The recipient must show exceptional skills in one or more of the following genres: Thriller, Suspense, Mystery, Science Fiction, and/or Horror. The inaugural award was handed out following the 2017/2018 school year.

2025/2026 Recipient Raymond Mach

I’m excited about this year’s award because of Raymond’s educational plans:

A Game Design university program.

This is interesting to me because I feel video games are the most immersive form of storytelling. To have an award-winner moving into this field is unique and I feel Raymond has the potential to achieve great things in creating, writing, and developing games. I’ve learned from Raymond that he feels strong storytelling adds depth to video games and increases the emotional connection between player and game. His goals are to both work on his own games, for example mobile game apps, but also to:

“… work with a large AAA studio to develop games that millions of people can enjoy.”

My own preference for games are cinematic and narrative-driven stories in the Science Fiction and Horror fields. Raymond’s preferences differ slightly: he cites Spiderman, Deathloop, and Genshin Impact as his favourites. He also tells me that his favourite movie is Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) and series is Netflix’s Wednesday. He clearly has unique and eclectic tastes, and I think the resulting games he will one day create will be fascinating and hold great stories. I look forward to them.

“My ultimate goal is to create a variety of full-fledged games across different genres and styles, allowing me to explore different forms of storytelling, gameplay, and creativity.” — Raymond Mach

Congratulations to Raymond Mach. He will be attending Brock University in Ontario this September in the Game Design program. I’ll be following his progress and look forward to future games that he will one day create with his strong writing skills. Please take a minute and congratulate Raymond in the comments below.

— Timothy S. Johnston, 10 August 2026

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