Smith wrote for a college newspaper and weekly papers in Michigan before being hired as one of the first new freelance writers for Kotaku.

At Kotaku, Smith developed his writing style but soon left the site for a staff position as 1Up.com's news editor.

Smith gradually entered into game journalism while working on an English Literature degree at the University of Michigan, writing about media in the college newspaper.

[1] Clive Thompson, a games writer with Slate, interacted with Smith over AOL Instant Messenger and the two began to bounce ideas off of each other for their respective writing projects; when games blog Kotaku started to expand from one writer (founder Brian Crecente), Thompson recommended Smith.

After sending the company his resume, Smith stopped writing about Bungie and Microsoft to avoid a conflict of interest.

[10] Bungie staff hinted in a weekly update that Smith might play a role in the developer's podcast.

"[1] While Bungie had historically been good at letting fans interact via forums and provided updates and artwork via their site, Bungie, the company's releases had a "corporate and muted tone to it," and made less effort and been less successful historically at providing access to the inner workings of the game studio.

As part of a change to become more transparent, Bungie took steps repeated throughout the industry to allow fans more say and recruiting respected voices from the community—namely, Smith.

Robertson credited Smith's tenure as aiding Bungie's greater focus on, "building, supporting and learning from the Halo 3 community.

Brought back after close to a year-long hiatus,[15] the podcast featured Bungie news and interviews with staff members about their jobs and working at the studio.