Brian Crecente is an American journalist and columnist. He previously served as video games editor at Variety, and in charge of game coverage at Rolling Stone.
Career
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 Stones game coverage. In July 2017, Crecente announced on Twitter that he would be leaving Polygon for Rolling Stones gaming website Glixel. 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. 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. 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. 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. Crecente was named one of the 20 most influential people in the video game industry over the past 20 years by GamePro in 2009 and one of gaming's Top 50 journalists by Edge in 2006. He was featured in a 5280 biography. In 2019, Crecente published a collection of his Kotaku and Polygon columns entitled Good Game, Well Played. 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.
Personal life
Brian Crecente is married and has a son, Tristan. 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. Crecente attended the University of Maryland, College Park.
