Meet The Newest Members of the Kotaku Team

A month ago, I said publicly that the Kotaku team would be expanding, which may have led some to think we were going to add on the expansion pack of a single, terrific new hire. Or maybe we'd add two people. No way.

Today, I'm proud to tell you about four terrific new members of the Kotaku team, plus the addition of a new monthly columnist. And that's not the end of it.

Joining us full-time over the next two weeks are the following folks:

• Tina Amini joins us as a writer and coordinating editor. She is fresh off a stint running the lively video game section at Complex and appears to have a thing regarding dragons. Here's Tina:
• "I've been a gamer for as long as I can remember, but what started out as often having to sneak in game-time when my older brothers weren't looking eventually evolved into covering the industry professionally. Now that the tables have turned and my brothers try to steal my games, I like to chalk it up to the ultimate win of that sibling rivalry.
• "I started my game journalism career contributing to Gaming Nexus, reviewing games and flying to press events in between attending classes at NYU. If there was a dragon that needed slaying, I'd be in Edmonton doing just that. Soon after graduating, I took over Complex Magazine's video games section, officially taking up the role of dragon-slayer et al. full-time, which also occasionally included debating word choice with freelancers and getting rappers to open up about early SNES memories.
• "In my new role at Kotaku, I'm happy to be picking up that sword when needed and helping to make sure we're providing you with the most insightful, entertaining content our collective journalistic minds can conjure. That, and, you know, officially killing any and all dragon jokes possible."
• Kate Cox adds a Washington, D.C.-based writer to our crew and offers one of the freshest, smartest new voices in games criticism. Here's Kate:
• "I went to grad school to study film, but by the time I was in my second year a little voice in the back of my mind had begun constantly to shout, 'Games! This applies to games! You can write about video games!' and I realized I might have a problem. A few years later, I left the first PAX East buzzing with ideas that I thought someone really needed to start writing about... and suddenly, realized I was someone. Since then I've been writing about games and gaming culture at your-critic.com and occasional other venues (GameCritics.com, The Border House, ThinkProgress).
• "I'm an old-school PC gamer at heart (we named our cat Guybrush) but have come to love consoles, my DS, and my Droid in recent years. I'm thrilled to be coming on board at Kotaku in the midst of exciting change. I hope to be able to bring a new voice to the news and reviews that have made the site so popular, and to add some areas of coverage and criticism. I've had fun as a solo voice for the last few years but being able to work with this team is a writer's dream come true."
• Chris Person adds to our roster our first dedicated video editor in years, a man who will help us leave what historians will refer to as the Shaky-Cam Era of Kotaku. Here's Chris:
  
• "Hey everyone! I'm Chris, Kotaku's new video editor. Previously, I worked for Pitchfork, Vice and various other places as a shooter and editor. Most recently, you might have seen a video I edited for PBS' ‘Off Book' series about video-games.
• "My goal going forward is to produce original video content for Kotaku that's interesting and human. I want to produce retrospectives on weird, black sheep of gaming and to tell stories about what it means to game and be a gamer. I want to document the good, the bad and the weird of gaming culture.
• "Feel free to Twitter stalk me here. "
• Jason Schreier enters the ring here, too. He's our newest newshound, and already one of the best at it in the field. Here's Jason:
• "Hello! I'm Jason Schreier, a writer, reporter, and media junkie based in NYC. You might be familiar with my work at Wired.com, where I've spent the past year and a half reporting on gaming news and culture, or at Joystiq, where I ran a weekly column dedicated to all things JRPG. I've also written for the Onion News Network, Kill Screen Magazine, Edge, Eurogamer, G4TV, GamesRadar, Paste, and a whole bunch of other sites/publications. However, the highlight of my career so far was when Kotaku featured one of my tweets. So now I'm stoked to join the team as a full-time staff reporter and newshound. I'm really excited for the opportunity to find and share all sorts of stories here at Kotaku, and I'd love to start getting to know some of you lovely readers, so be sure to come follow and chat with me on Twitter!"

Jason, Chris, Kate and Tina will join Brian Ashcraft, Mike Fahey, Luke Plunkett, Owen Good, Kirk Hamilton, and Evan Narcisse as we build the biggest, most diverse and most wonderful team in the history of very strong Kotaku teams.

• I'm also pleased to tell you about the first new regular contributor who will be joining the roster of Kotaku wacky neighbors columnist, a group that currently consists of Leigh Alexander, Tim Rogers and Lisa Foiles. Welcome, Patricia Hernandez who has been running an excellent blog that she's about to tell you more about. Here's Patricia, whose first column will debut next week:
• "I'm Patricia, and in 2010 I founded Nightmare Mode, a site that has blossomed into a project devoted to writing critically about games, powered by a score of writers who champion the idea that games are a worthwhile, meaningful medium. Since then I've branched out and written for Destructoid and Gameranx in varying capacities - previews, features, news, etc. Now, I write columns for Kotaku, too. My mission is to advocate games as intimate, personal experiences that deserve a place in the wider cultural consciousness."

I really want to tell you the topic of her first column, but I don't want to spoil it.

These new members of our team are just the start of many big plans for this site about all things video games and the cultures that intersect with them. Kotaku in 2012 will inform you, entertain you, and provoke you from time to time. If we do our jobs as reporters, writers, videographers, reviewers and opinionated essayists right, we'll also keep surprising you.

Enough about us. Back to the stories.