Welcome To Rewinder!
A new chapter.
Hello! Thank you for joining us on this new journey, and welcome to Rewinder.
For those of you who don't know me, I'm Henry Stockdale, and my career in entertainment journalism truly kicked off in 2019. These days, I'm best known as the Senior Editor at UploadVR, while my freelance bylines include IGN, Eurogamer, TechRadar, PC Gamer, and more. Now, I'm also the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Rewinder.
At Rewinder, we're not looking to simply chase all the latest trends among AAA gaming. We'll be writing news stories where we can when games catch our attention, but we don't simply wish to follow what everyone else is doing. We're striving to find a middle ground that extends from major AAA games to the smallest indies. In time, we're hoping to become a home for many fantastic interviews, features, previews, reviews, and more. We're not limiting ourselves to a specific niche, giving us a freer hand across different platforms and genres.
Anyone keeping up with media will likely know it's been extremely rough. Layoffs continue as execs chase unsustainable output goals, freelance budgets have shrunk, we've seen increasing consolidation of outlets, and many talented writers don't have steady work. That left me wanting to start something new, more personal, and go “back to the start” while also looking to the future. This mindset inspired our lovely artwork, for which I commissioned Jearum Castro.
I'm not leaving UploadVR and I take huge pride in what I've achieved there, so Rewinder will not cover XR gaming or technology to avoid any conflicts. I've never stopped covering more traditional gaming since I joined the team in December 2022, and that'll continue here as a new chapter in my career. We may eventually extend to wider entertainment and culture coverage too, though it's not our immediate focus.
I've spoken about myself a lot so far, though I'm certainly not alone. Joining this journey is our Managing Editor, Scott McCrae, who you may recognize from his freelance work at TechRadar, Daily Mirror, and GamesRadar+. I'm thrilled to have him on the team, and I'm similarly excited that Lex Luddy, EIC for startmenu and Giant Bomb contributor, will be joining us as the Deputy Editor. As a new outlet with no investor backing and no ads, we're not commissioning freelancers right now because we can't afford to pay acceptable rates, though we may have guest contributors in the meantime. We're doing this as volunteers right now.
As such, we're seeking crowdfunding support via Patreon (coming next week) or direct membership to make this sustainable. We won't be paywalling article access behind these, either. For full transparency, I'm currently running Rewinder as a sole trader and our eventual hope is to create a worker-owned outlet with employee ownership, but we need to walk before we can run. For now, most initial costs are being covered by me. Any crowdfunding profits will be paid to Lex and Scott first and foremost, and I hope this eventually grows large enough to commission other freelancers.
If you're a publisher, developer, PR, or anyone else looking to get in touch with us, you can email our general inbox, news@rewinder.co.uk, and those emails go to all three of us. We also have a contact form, and you can find each of our direct emails on our 'About Us' page, which also includes a wider FAQ on our plans.
We hope you stick around as we navigate these early days in creating something new, so please make sure to follow us across Bluesky, Threads, YouTube, Facebook, Mastodon, and Instagram. Signing up as a free member will subscribe you to our newsletter, too. Thank you all for reading this far, and I'll hopefully see you soon in the comments.
Henry Stockdale
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