The Games Press

Latest Episodes:

Episode 18: Quintin Smith (People Make Games) Mar 06, 2024

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Quintin Smith is one third of People Make Games, although hopefully you already knew that. Outside of his work with us, he's also known as the co-founder of board games behemoth Shut Up & Sit Down and now, as of just a few weeks ago, he's started something brand new, exploring the world of TTRPGs. It's called Quinns Quest and it's extremely weird and good, just like Quinns.
"If you just go into a community going 'hey, I wanna understand why this is fun for you', people will tell you! People are able to explain their passions and once you know their passions, you can ask about those passions in more detail and once you've got that, you're able to understand the community. There are no weirdos."

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Episode 17: Stephen Totilo (Reporter at Game File) Jan 23, 2024

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Stephen Totilo has been a games journalist for two decades now, making him one of the most experienced people in the field. His career spans a stint at MTV News as its first ever games reporter, nine years as Kotaku's Editor-in-Chief and until recently, he wrote a twice-weekly gaming newsletter for Axios.
Today, Stephen is looking to strike out on his own with Game File, an independent newsletter published on Substack and funded directly by his audience.
"I have concerns about a younger generation of reporters finding a footing, coming up, because we are seeing in the elimination of a lot of these jobs, lesser opportunity for people who are still trying to make a name for themselves and do it in a way that is sustainable. But, what I see in aggregate is more outlets, right now, committed to covering games than I saw several years ago."

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Episode 16: Nathan Grayson & Riley MacLeod (Just launched Aftermath) Nov 07, 2023

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Nathan Grayson and Riley MacLeod have just launched a brand new, worker-owned games publication called Aftermath, along with some other ex-Kotaku staff you'll recognise. As in, today, right now! Chris grabbed them for an interview a few days ago to talk about the challenges that come with starting something fresh, crowdfunding and what being "worker-owned" really means in this context.
"You know — and everyone knows — that 2022 and 2023 have been nightmarish for games journalism, and for journalism broadly, and also for games studios. And like, what else are you going to do? Where else are you going to go? When I panic and I'm like: is this a ridiculous idea? Should I just go and get a real job where somebody else understands how the taxes work? I'm like... what is it? Where is it? It's exciting to think about, you know, now we're the job! We'll make the job."

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Episode 15: Patricia Hernandez (Former Editor-in-Chief at Kotaku) Aug 23, 2023

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Patricia Hernandez is now the former Editor-in-Chief of Kotaku, having been fired from the position just a few days ago. In today's episode we're going to be talking to her about what's happened and digging into the increasingly strained relationship between Kotaku's editorial team and the company which owns the site itself, G/O Media.
"I can't really go into specifics about the reason because it does involve other staffers and their personal information, so I just want to be sensitive to that. But I will say it was a deeply G/O Media reason. It's all been pretty disappointing.
I feel like, in some ways, maybe it was for the best. I was opening my notes app and kind of scrolling through it and came across a resignation letter that I wrote literally a year ago."

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Episode 14: Rebekah Valentine (Senior Reporter at IGN) Jun 30, 2023

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Rebekah Valentine is a Senior Reporter at IGN and an instrumental figure in the site's latest ambitions to establish itself as a true home for longform video games reporting. She's also just been on the ground at Summer Games Fest, the potential successor to the games industry's biggest, flashiest trade show, E3.
How do the two shows compare from a reporter's perspective and will E3 ever manage a revival? We'll be asking Rebekah all about it.
"I am now two and a half years in and I'm still doing reporting! I'm kind of blown away by it. I'll freely admit that I sort of had an idea in my head of what IGN is... and it was grounded in the way that IGN had actually been. But especially if you're somebody listening to this and hasn't read IGN in several years, I would really encourage you to dip back in and look at some of the stuff we've been doing the last couple of years, because Tina really did set up a legacy of good journalism and good reporting."

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Episode 13: Double Fine PsychOdyssey (2 Player Productions) Mar 28, 2023

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2 Player Productions is a documentary crew that's been embedded with Double Fine Productions for more than a decade now, having first come onboard in order to follow the development of Broken Age and create the Double Fine Adventure series.
However, it's their latest work that's absolutely knocked my socks off. Double Fine PsychOdyssey is, quite simply, the best video games documentary work I've ever seen. It follows the much longer development of Psychonauts 2 and is just the most vulnerable, revealing look into what it really means to create a video game. I cannot recommend it enough. Gosh. It's so good.
"There's a lot of concern about that meeting, rightfully so. It was the most intense thing we've had on camera and everybody was upset, we were upset. I thought that if we cut it out, it would do a disservice to the evolution of the studio and the way that mindsets at the studio were shaped, the way that the culture was shaped... I'd like to think it shaped the way everybody thought about crunch and what that meant, what that word even means."

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Episode 12: Tyler McVicker (Formerly Valve News Network) Feb 08, 2023

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Tyler McVicker has been utterly obsessed with Valve for more than a decade now, having reported on almost every scrap of news, speculation and datamined morsel to come out of this famously secretive company at the heart of the games industry.
Having just published our own report on the reality of working at Valve, with its "flat" structure, no managers and no job titles, I wanted to talk to Tyler about the challenges that come with trying to understand such an unusual business. And one of those challenges, unfortunately, is dealing with the more toxic parts of Valve's community. PMG has faced its own share of that over the last couple of weeks.

"Because of the opaqueness, because there is a vacuum of information, misinformation becomes gospel. So what you're dealing with is a lot of individuals effectively treating Valve as if they are Gordan Freeman; a blank slate that you put your own personality onto. And when somebody else betrays that self-perceived personality, it almost feels like a parasocial relationship being destroyed."

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Episode 11: Sam Greer (Just made a video for People Make Games!) Sep 05, 2022

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Sam Greer is a freelance games critic, having previously worked for Glass House Games and GamesMaster magazine. More recently, she worked with People Make Games (that's us!) on an incredible video about the lack of working class people employed in the games industry. That's what we'll be talking about in today's episode.
"I think when we talked about it before my worry was that the video would just be one of those things that people would retweet and go 'oh this is so important', you know?' and that would be it... But actually what's kind of happened, that I've seen a lot of, is just a lot of discussion and it sparking loads of specific conversations off the back of it. And that's more than I'd hoped for. I was so worried about people getting that this mattered, but not really caring."

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Episode 10: Hirun Cryer (Former Guides Editor at USGamer) May 26, 2022

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Hirun Cryer first got his break in the games media writing guides over at USGamer. And guides content, dear listeners, is perhaps one of the most overlooked part of this entire job. Frequently responsible for the lion's share of a publication's traffic, despite rarely appearing on the homepage itself, video game guides are hugely important to the overall success of some of your favourite games sites. So why are guides writers so often underpaid and overworked?
"You know how people say there are no old games media workers? Because they all move out of the industry because of pay and all that? I don't think I really know any old guides writers, because they're all gone now, they've all moved on to other things. It's churned and burned them and the machine has dumped them and got in the latest worker, because there are always very young, keen, eager writers raring to go. That's not their fault. That's just how the world operates and how this machine treats people."

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Episode 9: Danny O'Dwyer (Founder of Noclip) Apr 29, 2022

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Danny O'Dwyer creates video game documentaries for Noclip, a crowdfunded YouTube channel first launched in 2016. Known for their high production value and behind-the-scenes access to some of the most successful game developers in the world, Noclip has had a huge influence on PMG's work over the years. Prior to starting his own company, Danny is perhaps best known for his work at GameSpot, where he hosted shows like The Point and The Lobby.
"The reason I wanted to do the Bethesda stuff is that there's a couple of studios that if you cover, people just want to dunk on them so bad. And I loved the idea of doing a big retrospective on Bethesda because Bethesda's not cool to people! There's a whole generation of gamers who've all they've ever done is Todd Howard memes and take the piss out of some of the most successful and most beloved games ever made."

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