Brian Crecente | |
|---|---|
 Crecente at the 2007 Electronic Entertainment Expo | |
| Born | July 28, 1970 United States |
| Alma mater | University of Maryland, College Park |
| Occupation | Journalist, editor, columnist |
Brian Crecente (born July 28, 1970) is an American journalist and columnist. He founded Kotaku , co-founded Polygon , previously served as video games editor at Variety, and was in charge of game coverage at Rolling Stone .
Crecente was brought on at Variety on April 9, 2018, to expand the entertainment publication's coverage into video gaming with a new vertical that the co-editors say "represents another step forward in our effort to offer great journalism regarding every aspect of the modern media landscape." At the time he was still contributing to Rolling Stone's game coverage. [1]
In July 2017, Crecente announced on Twitter that he would be leaving Polygon for Rolling Stone 's gaming website Glixel. [2]
Prior to joining Rolling Stone, Crecente was the founding editor and executive editor for Polygon and wrote Good Game, a weekly column internationally syndicated by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. [3]
He began his career as a journalist with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram . He covered crime and public safety for daily newspapers in Texas, Florida and Colorado for 12 years before starting his career as a video game journalist. [4] Crecente was the founding editor-in-chief of Kotaku .
In 2018, Crecente received a special recognition from the Society of Professional Journalists for his series on game culture in Cuba. [5] He was also awarded first place for Excellence in eSports Writing that same year by the SPJ for his story on the esports champions of Cuba. [6] Crecente was named one of the 20 most influential people in the video game industry over the past 20 years by GamePro in 2009 [7] and one of gaming's Top 50 journalists by Edge in 2006. [8] He was featured in a 5280 biography. [9]
In 2019, Crecente published a collection of his Kotaku and Polygon columns entitled Good Game, Well Played. [10]
Crecente was laid off from Variety in June 2019, and the gaming section was removed from the Variety masthead. Rolling Stone's gaming vertical, Glixel, was similarly shut down in 2018.
In 2020, Crecente helped launch an official LEGO Games podcast for the LEGO Group entitled Bits N' Bricks to help celebrate the 25-year history of the first LEGO video game. He co-hosts the weekly show which is hosted on LEGO.com. [11] In 2021, Crecente helped launch an official Level Infinite podcast for Tencent Games entitled This is Level Infinite. It explores the creation of the company's games. He co-hosts the weekly show which is hosted on LevelInfinite.com. [12]
Brian Crecente is married and has a son, Tristan. [13] He is the uncle of Jennifer Ann Crecente, who was murdered in 2006. He was one of the judges on the "Life. Love. Game Design Challenge", a competition designed "to challenge video game designers and developers to create video games about teen dating violence" sponsored by Jennifer Ann's Group, a memorial charity for Jennifer. [14] Crecente attended the University of Maryland, College Park.
Rolling Stone is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first known for its coverage of rock music and political reporting by Hunter S. Thompson. In the 1990s, the magazine broadened and shifted its focus to a younger readership interested in youth-oriented television shows, film actors, and popular music. It has since returned to its traditional mix of content, including music, entertainment, and politics.
Epic Games, Inc. is an American video game and software developer and publisher based in Cary, North Carolina. The company was founded by Tim Sweeney as Potomac Computer Systems in 1991, originally located in his parents' house in Potomac, Maryland. Following his first commercial video game release, ZZT (1991), the company became Epic MegaGames, Inc. in early 1992 and brought on Mark Rein, who has been its vice president since. Moving their headquarters to Cary in 1999, the studio's name was simplified to Epic Games.
Kotaku is a video game website and blog that was originally launched in 2004 as part of the Gawker Media network. Notable former contributors to the site include Luke Smith, Cecilia D'Anastasio, Tim Rogers, and Jason Schreier.
Geoff Keighley is a Canadian video game journalist and television presenter. He was most known for hosting the video game show GameTrailers TV, and for co-hosting the now-defunct G4tv.com. Keighley is also a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Kotaku, among other publications. Keighley was the executive producer of the Spike Video Game Awards, and has served as the executive producer and host of The Game Awards since its inaugural show in 2014. He has also hosted the E3 Coliseum event at the Electronic Entertainment Expo.
Brian Keith Bloom is an American actor and screenwriter. He co-wrote the screenplay and starred in The A-Team, produced by brothers Tony and Ridley Scott. Bloom is the voice of Captain America in The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes and multiple subsequent Marvel titles. He is the voice of Varric Tethras in BioWare's Dragon Age franchise, B.J. Blazkowicz in MachineGames' Wolfenstein series, as well as multiple Call of Duty performances including Nick Reyes in Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, the latter of which he co-wrote. He was also a co-writer of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. He starred as The Punisher in Avengers Confidential: Black Widow and Punisher.
Troy Baker is an American voice actor and musician. Baker is known for his video game roles, including Joel Miller in The Last of Us (2013) and its sequel (2020), Booker DeWitt in BioShock Infinite (2013), Samuel "Sam" Drake in Uncharted 4: A Thief's End (2016) and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy (2017), Rhys in Tales from the Borderlands (2014), Delsin Rowe in Infamous Second Son (2014), Snow Villiers in Final Fantasy XIII (2010), Kanji Tatsumi in Persona 4 (2008), and Higgs Monaghan in Death Stranding (2019). Baker currently holds the record for the most acting nominations at the BAFTA Games Awards, with five between 2013 and 2021.
Jeffrey Kaplan is an American video game designer and former vice president of Blizzard Entertainment, a position he held until he left the company in 2021. He designed elements of World of Warcraft and is the former lead director of Overwatch.
The Jennifer Ann Crecente Memorial Group, Inc., commonly known as "Jennifer Ann's Group", is a Code Section 501(c)(3) public charity based in Atlanta, Georgia, whose aims are to educate young people about the prevalence of teen dating violence, how to identify these relationships, and how to extricate themselves safely from such relationships.
Luke Michael Smith is an American writer. He is a staff member at the video game development company Bungie, and is a former video games journalist. Smith wrote for a college newspaper and weekly papers in Michigan before being hired as one of the first new freelance writers for Kotaku. At Kotaku, Smith developed his writing style but soon left the site for a staff position as 1Up.com's news editor. Smith made a name for himself at 1Up, particularly through an article he wrote focusing on problems with the game Halo 2.
Riot Games, Inc. is an American video game developer, publisher and esports tournament organizer based in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in September 2006 by Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill to develop League of Legends and went on to develop several spin-off games and the unrelated first-person shooter game Valorant. In 2011, Riot Games was acquired by Chinese conglomerate Tencent. Riot Games' publishing arm, Riot Forge, oversees the production of League of Legends spin-offs by other developers. The company worked with Fortiche to release Arcane, a television series based on the League of Legends universe.
Polygon is an American entertainment website that publishes blogs, reviews, guides, videos, and news primarily covering video games, as well as movies, comics, television and books. At its October 2012 launch as Vox Media's third property, Polygon sought to distinguish itself from competitors by focusing on the stories of the people behind the games instead of the games themselves. It also produced long-form magazine-style feature articles, invested in video content, and chose to let their review scores be updated as the game changed.
The Game Awards is an annual awards ceremony honoring achievements in the video game industry. Established in 2014, the shows are produced and hosted by game journalist Geoff Keighley, who worked on its predecessor, the Spike Video Game Awards, for over ten years. In addition to the awards, The Game Awards features premieres of upcoming games and new information on previously-announced titles.
Rod Fergusson is a Canadian video game producer, best known for overseeing the development of the Gears of War franchise, originally at Epic Games and then as head of The Coalition. More recently, Fergusson moved over to Blizzard Entertainment to oversee development on the Diablo series.
Lego Worlds is a Lego-themed sandbox game developed by Traveller's Tales and published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. The game allows players to build constructions in a 3D procedurally generated world. A beta version of the game was released on 1 June 2015 on Steam Early Access. It was released on 7 March 2017 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. A version for Nintendo Switch was released on 5 September 2017 in North America and 8 September 2017 in Europe.
Ghost Story Games, LLC is an American video game developer based in Westwood, Massachusetts, and led by Ken Levine. The studio is the rebranding of Irrational Games as announced in February 2017, and while still the same business subsidiary under Take-Two Interactive, the rebranding was considered a fresh start by the founders as they move into more emergent narrative-driven titles compared to the larger titles they had made under Irrational.
The Game Awards 2017 was an award show that honored the best video games of 2017, and took place at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles on December 7, 2017. The event was hosted by Geoff Keighley, and was live streamed around the world across various platforms, with 11.5 million viewers in total watching the event. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild won three awards, including Game of the Year. Two indie games, Cuphead and Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, also won three awards each.
The Harry Potter video games are a series of video games based on the Harry Potter franchise originally created by J.K. Rowling. Many of the Harry Potter-inspired video games are tie-ins to the novels and films of the same name. The main series features a video game for every novel, as well as two for the finale. There are multiple distinct versions for individual games.
Cecilia D'Anastasio is an American journalist who primarily covers the video game industry. From 2016 to 2020, D'Anastasio wrote for Kotaku, and she was recognized for a 2018 article reporting allegations of sexual harassment and gender discrimination at Riot Games. Subsequently, she wrote for Wired magazine and joined Bloomberg News in 2022 to cover the video game industry.
Video games are among the most popular hobbies of Iranian youth. There are about 23 million video game players in the country as of 2015.
Evan Narcisse is an American comic book writer, journalist, and video game narrative designer. Narcisse began his working career as a journalist who has reported on video games for several media outlets, such as The Atlantic, The New York Times, Time, Kotaku, io9, and Polygon. As a comic book writer, Narcisse has authored multiple titles which feature the Marvel Comics superhero, Black Panther. Since 2018, Narcisse has been involved with designing or consulting on the narrative elements of several video games, including Insomniac Games' Spider-Man video game series, Marvel's Avengers, and Redfall.
Brian Crecente is a journalist and columnist [...] He is Jennifer Ann Crecente's uncle.
