Ryan Gilliam

Ryan started playing games before he started making memories, but he began writing about them for a living in 2016, when his first League of Legends guide for Polygon's satellite esports site, The Rift Herald. After years of freelance, contract, and part-time work with Polygon proper, he was finally hired full-time in 2019. Ryan left Polygon in 2025 after Vox Media sold the site. He's since started his own, alongside a former co-worker, dedicated to high-quality guides: BigFriendly.Guide. Ryan will play pretty much anything, but has a particular affinity to progression-heavy loot games, ARPGs, and metroidvanias. He's written hundreds of Destiny guides over the years, and loves helping others better understand complex games and their systems.