Brandy Berthelson

Brandy Berthelson builds clutter-free games coverage that treats video games as both everyday entertainment and a long-running industry, with an emphasis on clear news, practical context, and reader trust. She is editor-in-chief of Restart, a Walmart-backed games publication launched by agency Moonrock, where she oversees news, previews, reviews, and other written content about video games. With more than twenty years of experience covering video games and technology, she brings a seasoned view shaped by work across multiple outlets and through repeated shifts in the games media business.

Clutter-free games coverage and editorial leadership

Berthelson leads Restart’s editorial operation, managing an international team of full-time writers and freelancers while editing all written work on the site. She handles the editorial calendar, represents the publication at events, and routinely interacts with public relations teams, game developers, and publishers, giving her coverage direct access to announcements and hands-on opportunities.

Under her leadership, Restart is set up as a games journalism site focused on in-depth coverage, expert analysis, comprehensive reviews, exclusive interviews, and timely news updates rather than commerce-first content. She articulates a clear separation between Walmart’s commercial backing and Restart’s editorial decision-making, explaining that purchase links use tracking codes but do not share revenue with the editorial team and do not dictate review scores or coverage angles.

That emphasis on independence and transparency is a defining feature of her work, especially in a retail-funded environment where readers may be wary of bias.

Family gaming and accessible titles

Berthelson’s coverage extends across the gaming spectrum but consistently includes family-friendly and accessible titles, reflecting long-standing experience writing about video games for a broad audience. Her work has appeared on sites including AOL Games, Digital Spy, and Adweek, where she has written about games and technology for general-interest readers. At Restart, her news and feature work includes pieces on licensed and character-driven games, such as the announcement of Sesame Street: Friends & Fun for consoles and PC, a narrative adventure that brings the long-running children’s series to modern platforms. In writing about Sesame Street: Friends & Fun, she highlights practical details - release date, platforms including Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, Xbox, and PC, and the game’s positioning as a major Sesame Street title designed for preschool-age players. Her approach to these games is straightforward and informational, focusing on what the game offers families and younger players rather than hype, and fitting neatly within Restart’s mission of clutter-free coverage.

Industry perspective and metaverse coverage

Berthelson’s editorial decisions at Restart are informed by a broader view of the video game business and emerging technologies. Before leading Restart, she wrote extensively about the video game industry and the metaverse for a corporate blog run by the agency behind the outlet, aiming to inform current and prospective clients about market developments and platform shifts.

She also produced a regular newsletter in that role, combining news and analysis for readers who needed a structured view of trends in games and virtual worlds. Public reporting on the August 2026 shutdown of Restart’s editorial team shows her framing that event as the end of a two-decade career in games media, underscoring how much of her professional life has been spent building and running games sites through multiple cycles of expansion and layoffs.

Even in coverage tied to a single outlet, she maintains a focus on standards and metrics defined by the editorial team itself rather than external performance indicators, reinforcing a through-line of reader-focused, independent games journalism.