The Games Press People Make Games

Sarah Parvini was a games reporter at the LA Times until just a few months ago, having been among those who were hit by a staggering round of layoffs at the paper earlier this year. In fact, the publication is meant to have shed around 20% of its newsroom in one fell swoop. Journalism is in a rough state, folks.In this episode you'll hear guest host Nicole Carpenter talk with Sarah about what it's like reporting on the games industry for such an established publication and how she managed to ...

Chelsea Reed Miller is a video editor for IGN and a spokesperson for the IGN Creators Guild, a brand spanking new union that's been officially recognized by IGN's parent company just a couple of months ago.In today's episode, you'll hear guest host Nicole Carpenter talk to Chelsea about what that means for people working at one of the biggest publications in the games media and why it's important to think about collective action before things start falling apart, if possible."The best time to...

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! Peopl...

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 generat...

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 journ...

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...