Dan Ryckert

Daniel Joseph Ryckert (born June 16, 1984) is an American Twitch streamer, podcaster, and former video game journalist. In 2011, Complex magazine named Ryckert one of the twenty-five "raddest" game journalists to follow on Twitter. Ryckert has made three non-player character (NPC) appearances in video games; in 2011's L.A. Noire, 2014's Infamous Second Son and 2017's 2064: Read Only Memories.

Joining GameStop's Game Informer magazine in 2009, becoming senior associate editor, Ryckert reviewed games and made video content for its website. This included celebrity appearance videos featuring Gwar and Andrew W.K. During his time with the magazine, Ryckert broke two Guinness World Records, after playing two gaming marathons. In 2014 Ryckert, along with Game Informer video producer Jason Oestreicher, would both join CBS Interactive's Giant Bomb website, with Ryckert later moving from their San Francisco office to their New York office. In addition to weekly appearances on the Giant Bombcast and Giant Beastcast podcasts, Ryckert continued to produce video content such as playing the video game Super Mario Bros. 3 while riding the Medusa roller coaster and creating the Metal Gear-based "Metal Gear Scanlon" series with Drew Scanlon. In 2020, Ryckert became a podcast producer for WWE, before returning to Giant Bomb as a creative director in 2022 and becoming a co-owner of the site in 2025.

In 2017, Ryckert and fiancé Bianca Monda were spotlighted in the media when they won a competition to be the first couple to be married at the Taco Bell Cantina in Las Vegas. The ceremony was held in June 2017. Ryckert is also an author and professional wrestling manager.

Early life and career Ryckert graduated from Olathe East High School in 2002 and the University of Kansas in 2007.

Solo Twitch Streaming and Fire Escape Podcast (2020–present) While working at the WWE, Ryckert began streaming video game and entertainment comedy content again solo on Twitch. In 2021, Ryckert began a podcast alongside co-hosts Mike Mahardy of Polygon and Mary Kish of Twitch. Fire Escape is a bi-monthly video game and general comedy podcast.

Giant Bomb (2022–present) On the June 7th, 2022 video "TheRitual.mp4", Giant Bomb announced the return of Dan Ryckert as Creative Director. On a personal livestream on April 30, 2025, Ryckert confirmed he would no longer be appearing in Giant Bomb content due to disagreements with parent company Fandom. One week later, it was announced that Fandom had sold Giant Bomb to its staff, with Ryckert becoming a co-owner.

Media appearances Ryckert appears as a non-player character in the 2011 video game release L.A. Noire, with LA Weekly detailing the motion capture techniques and equipment used to recreate his likeness in the game. This included the lack of a traditional motion capture process, the facial markers associated with facial motion capture.

Publications As an author, Ryckert has published six books. Two are of the fictional Air Force Gator series, inspired by action films of the 1980s. The books are described as a story of a military alligator pilot who is searching for his missing partner in the Middle East. After an altercation on Twitter between Ryckert and former Baseball player Jose Canseco, Canseco agreed to write the foreword for the sequel, Air Force Gator 2: Scales of Justice. ESPN reported that Canseco wrote the foreword under the impression, or pretending to be under the impression, that the book is a "thinly disguised metaphorical depiction of Canseco's life."

Personal life Ryckert is said to have an eccentric personality which leads to a lot of ideas that think outside the box. Former Game Informer co-workers Jeff Cork and Ben Hanson have commented on Ryckert that his time working for Game Informer was "kind of like a Make-A-Wish Foundation for Dan. His life is ridiculous" and "You realize you need to kind of reset your own gauges onto what works and what doesn't, because I've been proven wrong time and time again. Never bet against Dan's is kind of a constant refrain."