 Clive Thompson , a games writer with Slate , interacted with Smith over AOL Instant Messenger and the two began to bounce ideas off of each other for their respective writing projects ; when games blog Kotaku started to expand from one writer ( founder Brian Crecente ) , Thompson recommended Smith . Smith credits his time at Kotaku for helping him come into his own , develop his style and learn about attribution and citing sources , but he left after a short period of time . " At the time stories ( on Kotaku ) were unsigned . Kotaku was like the Brian Crecente vision . If I posted something or [ fellow writer Brian Ashcraft ] did people thought [ Crecente ] did . Also , there was no health insurance , it was just full @-@ time freelance . " 
