SB Nation and The Verge, meet your new digital-media sibling, Polygon.
In January, online-media startup Vox Media announced that it would break into the gaming-news space, complementing its sports network of blogs SB Nation and popular tech site The Verge with another online publication targeted toward a similar affluent, male audience.
Led by former Joystiq Editor-in-Chief Chris Grant, it started publishing content on The Verge's website in February. Vox is expected to announce at a gaming conference in Boston this afternoon that the site's brand name will be Polygon.
"There's a perception that video-game media hasn't grown up with video gaming," said Mr. Grant, Polygon's editor, in an interview yesterday. "So we didn't want to wear the gaming badge on our sleeve, but rather celebrate the aesthetic and culture of it."
In videogames, polygons are the digital objects that make up 3-D images. Mr. Grant said the internal group that brainstormed the name also liked that its root means "many angles."
"From an editorial point of view, that 's something that we're going to strive for in our news coverage and features."
Polygon content will continue to live on The Verge until its own website is fully functional later this year. For now, Polygon.com is a landing page that lets readers sign up for email updates and that includes a link to the gaming vertical on The Verge.
Mr. Grant said he hopes to have an editorial staff of 20 to 30 when Polygon.com starts to publish content later this year.
It has been a busy year for Vox Media. Last month, SB Nation launched an ambitious YouTube channel fueled by a financial advance from YouTube. The Next Web also reported in March that Vox had secured $17 million in a Series D round of funding. In an interview yesterday, CEO Jim Bankoff confirmed the round for the first time.
"Our investors and team are incredibly excited about the opportunity to create a new kind of digital-publishing company and grow to tremendous scale," Mr. Bankoff said. "And we want to make sure we're armed with everything we needed to compete aggressively."
