A Fond Farewell from Content Director Ben Kendrick

screenrant.com:

The first time I ever heard the name Screen Rant, it was in 2008 — at a dive bar that my New School classmates and I frequented after class and workshops. A good friend of mine (former Editor-in-Chief Kofi Outlaw) had started contributing to the site — and was set to become the site's first dedicated editor upon completion of our creative writing MFAs in 2009. At the time, I was weighing my own post-graduation plans and the prospect of making a living writing about my passions (movies, TV, video games, superheroes, and science fiction, especially) was tempting. Ultimately, I chose to teach college instead of jumping into Screen Rant right out the gate — but became a dedicated reader and commenter nonetheless. Still, a few months, and many more nights at the bar, led me to revisit the conversation with Kofi — who said he'd be happy to bring me on at Screen Rant but thought I might enjoy a new challenge that was spinning up: launching Screen Rant's video game-focused sister site Game Rant — alongside Rob Keyes.

After months of development and content creation, we officially launched Game Rant alongside the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 — which I reviewed, having never played a Call of Duty game, simply because my local GameStop in Astoria broke street date — allowing us time to get a review up the same day as major outlets (despite not having an official early-access review copy). Months later, I began splitting my time between GR and SR - focusing a significant amount of my time to reviewing and features.

When site-owner Vic Holtreman offered me enough money to turn down a full-time office job, I accepted — and it was around this time that Kofi, Rob, and I (alongside Anthony Ocasio) started the Screen Rant