If you’ve noticed a stark lack of content coming out of the Rolling Stone’s gaming experiment called Glixel, it’s because the site is winding down support as some of the key content producers have been moved over to Variety to cover the games beat. The last published post on Glixel was published back on April 6th, 2018, titled “Here’s What’s Coming To Summer Games Done Quick”. Since then the site hasn’t been updated.
I reached out to Brian Crecente, the former editor at Glixel, who confirmed that the vertical will only be updated for “big” news throughout the year but Rolling Stone won’t be supporting day-to-day coverage anymore because there’s no longer a website.
The website doesn’t exist anymore. Rolling Stone game coverage is now focused on major trends. Think a half dozen stories a year. While Variety is now providing daily coverage.
— Crecente (@crecenteb) June 29, 2018
The Glixel offshoot of the Rolling Stone vertical was originally introduced back in October of 2016.
Rolling Stone’s Gus Wenner was the spearhead for the project, but writing veteran John Davison was put in charge as the site manager. Brian Crecente, formerly of Polygon and Kotaku, joined the staff as well.
Things didn’t quite take off the way Wenner expected, and by July of 2017, Rolling Stone was shutting down the San Francisco office for Glixel.
Fast forward another year and Glixel is now operating in pretty much name only.
Brian Crecente decided to take up a position at Variety as an editor for the games division, covering the daily beats. However, some of the bad habits that Crecente exercised at Polygon have covered over into his gig at Variety.
It turns out that Crecente is on the advisory board for Games For Change, as noted in his reply to a Twitter user asking about adding a disclosure to his articles about his affiliation with the company.
Advisory board, not the board.
— Crecente (@crecenteb) June 29, 2018
Crecente was asked once more about adding disclosures to the articles, but opted not to respond.
Kotaku in Action has a list of articles that Crecente had published on Variety that contains references to the organization Games For Change.
The Games For Change organization is featured prominently in an article published on June 29th, 2018 on Variety, but there’s no disclosure that Crecente is on the advisory board.
Another article, published on June 28th, 2018, also cites the Games For Change, but there’s no disclosure that Crecente is on the advisory board.
In a less egregious case, Games For Change is mentioned in passing in a separate but short piece published on June 28th, 2018 as well.
These issues of disclosure have been persistent and prevalent as a key issue within the consumer revolt known as #GamerGate, where back in 2014 things kicked off into high-gear due to a lack of disclosure by Kotaku regarding one of its staff members dating someone who was the subject of their work. Things got so bad that gamers funded a website called DeepFreeze.it, which chronicles some of the journalistic impropriety exhibited by game journalists.
So far the articles on Variety have yet to be updated with any disclosures as of the writing of this article, and Crecente has yet to acknowledge the requests for disclosures.
(Thanks for the news tip Lyle)
