Polygon Exit Interview: Nicole Carpenter, Senior Reporter

Chatting with an award-winning reporter and pickup hockey enthusiast about her time at Polygon

Image via Nicole Carpenter

Welcome to Polygon Exit Interviews, a series of chats with my excellent former Polygon employees who were laid off (along with me) when Valnet purchased the website from Vox Media May 1. We’re talking about how these talented people got to Polygon, what they did in their time there, and what they hope is next. I’ll publish most of these in the next few weeks, which will likely result in a higher-than-usual cadence for this newsletter this month.

Next up: Nicole Carpenter, a dogged reporter who tirelessly shone a light on labor conditions in the games industry and other big features about the business and culture of games. She did this while balancing Vox Media’s high output demands, managing to make time for big, important stories while also reviewing games and covering the news of the day. Nicole received the New York Videogame Critics Circle’s Knickerbocker Award for Best Games Journalism in 2024.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Tell me about your pre-Polygon background.

My first jobs in journalism were a long time ago, after I graduated college. I went to college at like 26 or so, and then I had a job as an intern, and then a full-time job doing layouts for business software manuals. On my downtime during that job, like on my lunch break, I would freelance for IGN, writing news stories. Eventually I started getting enough work freelancing with IGN and other places that I started freelancing full time. After that, I worked full-time at Dot Esports. I covered Overwatch esports – that's all I wrote about. I can't believe there was a time where I only covered Overwatch esports. Now I can't imagine covering one thing so intensely.

I eventually left Dot Esports because I was getting a little bit overwhelmed with just writing Overwatch stuff. I freelanced for more than a year, and then [former Polygon editor-in-chief] Chris Plante reached out to me about a job opening. I started working at Polygon, and I didn't have to only write about Overwatch! I was very excited, because while I actually enjoyed freelancing a ton – it gave me a lot of freedom in what I was able to write – I had been reading Polygon for a very long time. I read it when I was in college, and I was taking a digital media course, and they had us write down what publications you wanted to write for. Polygon was the one that I modeled my writing in class for where I wanted to work. Being able to get that job was such a full circle, “pinch me” moment.

What do you remember about first joining?

What made Polygon the place I wanted to write was the writing was so in-depth. I saw Tracey Lien’s story, “No Girls Allowed,” and I was like Damn, you can do that? I wasn’t super enmeshed in the online video game space before Polygon, because I didn’t really see it as a place for me. I had always been interested in video games, but I never really considered that I could be a journalist that covers the industry. In school, I was writing academic stuff about the video game industry, about gender, about the history of the American language. I wrote a story applying the things I learned in that class to the language of grunts in Halo. Seeing Tracey’s story was like Oh, yeah, OK, that’s it. That’s the moment where my brain started churning.

I went to the office for my first day, and it was really awesome to go there and be introduced to all the writers I had known from reading Polygon. It was kind of surreal, because it was like this is me making it. I was so nervous. I literally remember what outfit I was wearing. It was a day that stuck out to me as very special.

Can you run me through your history at Polygon – what roles you had, and what each entailed?

When I was first hired, my title was deputy news editor. I had never really done an editing role before. I did editing for news a little bit, but it was mostly writing. I think that's why I moved into the senior reporter role, and I stayed in that role. It felt like a much better fit.

One of the big things about being a reporter at an outlet like Polygon is balancing the day-to-day news and shorter stories with the longer term ones. That's something I had to learn a lot about, working at a site where you're not just working on one or two or three or four stories at a time. You’re looking at the month and planning ahead from there. There were stories I worked on for a year. You have to figure out a cadence where you can be writing, you can be reporting, you can be in edits, while also looking into what story is going next.

I was also on the culture team for a bit, and working with that team was my favorite. It let me expand outside of video games and go into territories I don't usually cover. Learning from people like Ana [Diaz] and Cass [Marshall] and Nicole [Clark] was really special because they are culture writing experts. Where else can you work with people who are so knowledgeable?

Brag about yourself: what’s one thing you’re proud of from your time at Polygon?

To me, it’s the Barbie story. It was an exciting story to look into. I started thinking about that game because it was announced as being up for consideration to go into the Video Game Hall of Fame. That was literally my favorite game as a child. I decorated and designed Barbie's outfits. I printed them out, I colored them, I cut them out, I put them on Barbie and made outfits. It was a really formative game for me.

I pitched it as a history of this game: Both how it was made, and the context around the time it was released. It's not the first game for girls, but it was the first mass market game for girls. Being Barbie, there was a lot of talk about does it go in the toy aisle? Does it go in the video game aisle? It was the first frontier for a lot of those questions.

There had been some really great coverage, especially a piece by Mary Kenney in Harper’s Bazaar about the game’s success being ignored. That was a super great starting point for me. Then I started reaching out to people, and that was really hard, because it's not a game that I can access very easily. It was hard to find the credits for who worked on it. So the first thing I did was try to find a Let's Play of it that I could scroll to the end and find the credits. Eventually I found an incomplete list of credits for the people who worked on this game on MobyGames. I pulled the names, put them into LinkedIn and sent a ton of messages. And it worked! People responded to me and they were eager to talk about it. Sometimes when you're writing about newer games, people don't want to talk about it, or they can't talk about it. But because the game was so old, people were like, I want to talk about this.

The other really exciting thing was it was made by Digital Domain [James Cameron’s visual effects and computer animation company]. There are a lot of fun anecdotes about what it was like working on Barbie Fashion Designer while they were doing post-production for Titanic. One of my favorite stories: They were doing rendering for Barbie Fashion Designer, and it was really, really computer intensive. It shut down all of the servers for Digital Domain.

I also got to talk to the voice of Barbie. It was such a crazy feeling to get on the Zoom call and for her to be like Hi, I’m Barbie! She was not only the voice of Barbie for the video games, but for the toys, as well. That was surreal.

Also, the union zine. That was really, really fun to work on. That was another really long process. I think we were working on it for close to a year. It was a lot of the same process of trying to find the best people to speak to about this. There were some people who were anonymous. Going through the process of making people feel comfortable enough that they’re able and willing to speak about this was difficult and rewarding. That one had a long editing process, and legal had to look at it, there was artwork as well. Pulling it together was a true team thing.

Everyone pitched in across sections at Polygon. What’s a time where you did something outside of your core job responsibilities that you enjoyed?

Gosh, that's a hard question. That was my favorite thing about working at Polygon, being able to collaborate. I really loved when Polygon did [advice column] Dear Polygon. I really liked being able to brainstorm about how to answer those questions. When Dear Polygon ended, we did the curation open thread [where staffers would recommend personalized titles to readers], which you were heavily involved in. That was really cool for me as well. You couldn’t pick and choose from the questions, you just had to answer the questions you got. A lot of the time, there was a question about something I had no idea about. I loved going to the wider group to be like What’s the perfect game here? and see someone suggest actually the perfect game for that person. I was like, How did you do that?

The work we did as a collective at Polygon was so special. It makes me feel so proud that I was able to work with and learn from these people. And having the union support throughout everything, and into this layoff, makes me so emotional.

Do you have a favorite Polygon story or video by someone else?

One of my weird nerdy interests is the supply chain. And Clayton [Ashley]’s supply chain video was like How did you know this is exactly what I was looking for? Same with Clayton’s video on notebook games.

The other thing is the guides team in general. I didn’t do a ton of guides, but when I did, I felt so in awe of the work they do, because it’s so fucking hard. You can’t just play a game like you normally would. You have to play with some new perspective in mind, as someone who is going to be reading this guide. I found that so challenging, and found myself looking to people like Julia [Lee] very often. I don’t have enough fingers or toes to count how many times people have been like Can you thank Julia for this guide, or Johnny [Yu]?

Ana Diaz wrote a story about 2000s-era digital cameras that I loved. It’s a part of culture that would have passed me by otherwise, and to be able to read something like that was really special. I think of Ana and Petrana [Radulovic] in this way, they are pinnacles of the work they do. When I think of the work Petrana has done, I think of her coverage of the Princess and the Frog ride. That was another one where I thought I don’t think anyone else could have written this.

What do you think is the biggest misconception that people outside the industry have about games journalism?

I think people underestimate the people who do this work, when there are a ton of journalists doing really serious and really fun work. Just because you enjoy something that you cover doesn't mean it's not rigorous.

What’s your wish for the future of games journalism or digital media?

I want there to be money to support journalists, and let this job be sustainable and healthy. I don't want people to feel like they have to overwork. I want people to be able to have healthy relationships with the hobby, because in the past couple years specifically, I've struggled really, really hard with that, and I think that it led to me playing less games. I felt like I could only play new games that were coming out, because I had to write about them. That made playing games all the time always feel kind of stressful – you always have to be generating ideas. I want the industry to be at a place where people feel supported doing the kinds of work they want. I wish that more companies or publications were interested in supporting reported and investigative work. I'd love to see independent outlets succeeding, and for there to be an ecosystem that supports that.

What’s next for you?

I have no idea exactly what I want. But for now, I'm going to freelance. I'm going to try to make that work again. I want to stay in journalism. I hope I can. I hope that I can do both fun and serious work, and have the time and space to take a long time on stuff, if needed.

[An exciting update: Since we talked, Nicole has absolutely been making that work again, publishing great pieces and becoming a regular contributor at both Aftermath and Game File. Read her stories on the community-led “girlcot” going on in the gacha game Infinity Nikki, how Nintendo’s lawsuit changed Palworld, and on how video game sex scenes are made.)

One thing you didn’t mention is playing hockey, which I have to imagine is in your plans, too.

Actually, the day we got laid off, I had a pickup hockey game, and I was oversharing to everyone about being laid off and how sad I was. A couple people said Well, now that you’re unemployed, you have a lot of time to become the oldest player in the PWHL. [Laughs] I am just a little bit outside of my prime for being a PWHL player. But I’m just getting started. I have a lot to give to the world of hockey. I will say, by the power of being laid off, I scored a goal on Thursday. It was on a breakaway where I skated right through two defensemen and hit a wrist shot right over the goalie’s shoulder. It was a great moment.

Where can people follow you and your work?

I’m on Bluesky. I also have a new e-mail address, which is nicolecarpenterwrites@gmail.com. You can send me e-mail if you’d like. One of the really upsetting things, though, after we got laid off, is that there were some YouTubers who made videos celebrating the demise of Polygon, and I got some pretty mean emails to my new email account. So I'm hoping to fill it with nice emails and of emails of people offering me money to write stuff. If that's you, please send me something else. I will take compliments, but also money.