The Future of Games Media: AI, Substack, and the Rise of Independent Journalism

Welcome to the Naavik Gaming podcast, where it is our mission to explore the business and future of video games. We bring together the industry's brightest builders, investors, and thinkers to keep a pulse on current events, dissect emerging trends in games, share lessons learned, and have a great time. This podcast is also part of Naavik's growing ecosystem, which ranges from free and premium research to consulting and advisory services. For more information, visit www.naavik.co. Today's episode is brought to you by Model AI, a team using the latest breakthroughs in agentic AI to transform how games are tested. Instead of relying on brittle scripts or deep integrations, Model QA Plus uses computer vision and reasoning models so AI agents can actually play your game, finding bugs the same way a human would, only faster.

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Welcome to the Naavik Gaming podcast. I'm your host, Kaylee Moore. We've talked a lot on the podcast about how the games industry is changing, but we've talked a little bit less about how the media industry is also evolving and how that impacts how games are being covered. Most legacy outlets have downsized immensely, a lot have disappeared over the years, and journalists who've built their careers at major publications are now increasingly going independent, running their own newsletters with readers, well, at least some of them who are paying directly for that content.

Today's guest has a front receipt into this evolution. Stephen Totilo got his start at MTV's News as the first ever video game reporter, spent years as editor-in-chief at Kotaku, and then moved to Axios, where he built games coverage from scratch. And then when Axios decided that gaming wasn't in the budget, Stephen did something that would have been impossible a decade ago. He went independent. Game File, which is his Substack, launched about a year and a half ago, I believe.
A little over 2 years ago. So, a little more than that. A little more than that, but still pretty new.
2 years ago, and has grown substantially since your launch. And today we're going to talk about what it actually looks and feels like to make that leap, how the power in media is shifting from institutions to individuals, what AI is doing to journalism and PR, and how this impacts the gaming industry, and what this means for people in the games industry who are trying to build relationships with journalists in 2026 and beyond. Stephen, welcome to the podcast.
Thanks for having me, Keighley.
Thanks. So, we're actually here in San

Francisco at GDC. I know that this podcast is going to come out later in the months, so we won't speak too much about the trends as it will be old news. But, I did hear a really interesting panel that you were on with a lot of I think three other fellow journalists who also went independent. And I loved you actually called your layoff from Axios the nicest layoff of all time. I think they gave you 4 months notice and some severance. So, you had a little bit of runway to figure out what was next. But, I imagine even with that runway, there had to be a moment where the math got scary. I would really love to hear your thinking process of why you went independent at that time rather than going to another outlet.
Sure, Keighley. I've been a journalist for over 20 years. Um the first reporting I think I ever did, I covered boxing when I was in high school.
Um I was just really interested in in sport. I was able to do an internship for a guy named Bert Sugar. Had a typewriter, fedora, cigar. It was like total old school. And so I've always loved journalism. And at some point in my 20s, I figured out that combining

games that I loved playing and learning about and journalism, which I loved doing, would be a exciting career path. And I was fortunate enough to discover that MTV News was hiring for the first ever games reporter in their newsroom. So I joined them. And I would I had the a real good fortune to be able to have carve out a full-time career covering video games. A kind of career that was never really easy in the first place. Yeah. You had movie critics at every major newspaper back in the you know the the mid-2000s. You had you know sports desks you know so in addition to politics and some of the other more the bigger beats, you would see full-time career pathways. If you were interested in television, even if you were interested in covering the opera. You know the New York Times had multiple people covering opera. But if you were interested in covering video games, it's always been a challenge to find those spots in the mainstream. And then there of course were the enthusiast publications which there still are. And you had magazines and you had websites. So initially my career was mainstream, MTV News. Then I decided that I would

like more gamers to be reading my stuff directly. I joined Kotaku and I was there for 11 years. I didn't like the way Kotaku was going after a while. Some private equity people bought us and were kind of running roughshod over the newsroom. So I pitched Axios about would you guys be interested in having a newsletter? That was their main thing and still is, email newsletters that are sponsored. Would you be interested in having a video game coverage, video game industry newsletter? Initially they said no. I kept trying and eventually they said yes, which was great. They'd found a sponsor so it made it easier risk to take. And so that was great. And so I was able to leave my third my second major full-time games coverage job that those two had spent 15 years or so. And it was great and Axios was wonderful until it wasn't. Until they decided we don't know that our sales strategy around sponsored newsletters is working so well for some of our ancillary beats. Suddenly they were no longer going to be in the business of having a sports newsletter despite the fact that that was widely read and the gaming newsletter which also had good

readership same decision. And I thought okay I've I've been fortunate to have a career this long but has my luck run out? So that was the first thing I thought about. Maybe just like I got to spend almost 20 years covering video games full-time did not have to jump ship into another career as you know a lot of games journalists go into public relations. That can be a more steady career for people. Others go into game development. I don't want to make games. I like writing about them and telling people about them. And so I thought maybe my time's up on this. But I don't want it to be up. I'd loved it and I felt like I've built up a you know index of sources and stories that are that are that I'm proud of telling and many more stories that I still want to be able to tell. What do I do? Do I go and I look do I look for another Axios experience? Well who's to say it wouldn't be great year one and then be done with it by year three. Or do I do a thing I thought about even when I was at Kotaku which is look at platforms like Substack that can allow

you to have a direct relationship with readers. And I thought okay the last time I thought about that I was the editor-in-chief of Kotaku. My byline was not as prominent cuz now I was more behind the scenes. It was my reporters who were better known. And I just was I feared that I would not be able to draw in enough people for what I wanted to do. Axios the best thing about it was that they let me be a reporter again. I wasn't managing anybody. My byline had been back out there for almost three years doing the gaming newsletter. And then I did the math and basically what I needed to prove out was that if in year one I could get about a thousand people to pay I'd be in good shape. As you noted I had the four months of severance from Axios so that made year one's targets a little easier to hit. I exceeded those targets in year one. I got to discover really good news, which was that people will pay for journalism. Not a million people, but I only need a thousand people. And so it went from being very scary, but having a certain amount of safety net. But I was really I did feel like I was at a crossroads. Does this make sense?

Is this an opportunity that you know, maybe like I've gotten the most out of, but thankfully no. And I've been able to continue this journey.
Well, congratulations. That's amazing also to do it all within your first year. I'm curious though cuz you know, yes, you're a reporter, right? I everyone that I know reads your newsletter, but in a way you're also an entrepreneur now. Like what does that split look like of what what percentage of your time is spent reporting versus what percentage of your time is all the other kind of that also comes with running your own business. And did you ever want to be your own boss less entrepreneur is this just I want to be a reporter, this is the best way to do it and so therefore I'm now also an entrepreneur?
It It only dawned on me like belatedly that I was basically launching a startup, right? Not only that, I'm launching a subscription service. So, you know, I'd covered Xbox Game Pass for years and you know, listen to their ups and downs with you know, or Apple Arcade and look at the ups and downs of like how are they building up a library and how are they

retaining subscribers and you're hearing about this they're not hitting their goals and I'm like, wait, that's my business now as well. I'm having to convince people to pay monthly or pay annually and think about the trade-offs and think about what the you know, the content is and drawing in new people versus retention. So in some ways it was interesting to suddenly realize that I was like a lot of the people that I was writing about. I never really aspired to do that. My father had who's the clothing designer had gone from working for large corporations to kind of running his own shop very small thing. So there's a little bit of like family experience with kind of running your own business. So I'd seen a little bit of that. He had some advice to me about how to, you know, sort of launch it. I also had some peers who had already kind of been pushed off of whatever ships they were on in journalism. It's been an amazing learning process, much much of it well with with me learning on the fly. Like, I discovered the things that people have known for hundreds of years, like the power of a sale. And like, who would have thunk it? That when you tell people it's just a little bit less, you know, it's only 20%

less, suddenly all these people who weren't paying for the product will now pay for the product. And I'm like, you know, the part of me is like, wait, really? Like, $80 is that much more achievable than 100? Aren't they kind of the same amount of money?
The mindset.
Exactly. It's exactly, it's the I'm getting a deal thing. And it's, you know, so I'm learning these very fundamental lessons of of running a business, of running, you know, selling a product.
Mhm.
Uh but what I am away from, what I got away from, and what feels so refreshing is that I'm not dependent on somebody else's, you know, one other person's economic decision. It's not a sales team deciding they can't sell a gaming newsletter anymore. It is not private equity people buying a media conglomerate and not expressing the values that it want make the reporters who are there want want to stick around. It's a direct relationship with readers. And any one of those readers deciding to continue or to bail out on it doesn't make or break me, you know, financially. And it's I can sort of do things about the finan- financial situation if I need to. That said, to answer your question, I put relatively little effort and

energy into the entrepreneurship because I love the reporting. And I'm I'm glad that, you know, Substack and Stripe, which is my payment processor, does a lot of that work for me. A lot of the marketing that that I do for the newsletter is simply the articles, right? It's I have a scoop. Hopefully people find out about it. They they see it directly or they see other people citing my work. But I'm sure I would benefit from having an actual marketing plan, right? But I don't you there's it's not quite zero-sum cuz there is that overlap where scoop is marketing, but I know that if I wanted to build a business more, I would have to do less reporting, and I'd rather do more reporting.
Yeah, but I also think, you know, my next question is about, you know, you've spent 20 years at these different, like, you know, extremely credible outlets.
Right.
And I think a lot of launching Game File was a bet on that accumulated trust, but I also think is you have I think almost close to 100,000 X followers, right? Like, you're you're

Right.
known in the industry. And I think what I've seen a lot of journalists, whether they're independent outlets or if they're still at major news publications, they kind of have to be a content creator in their own right as a sales funnel as well. And I think you've done a phenomenal job of building that over time. Do you think that's important for journalists more than ever before or not as much?
Oh, more important than ever before. There when I was at that moment of Axios, you know, told me in August of 2023, we're not going to have the gaming newsletter in the budget for 2024. And I had those 4 months, almost 4 months plus to, you know, I put out some feelers and sort of tested the waters if was there a, you know, a corporate media reporting job that I would like. And even though I heard about some that seemed kind of interesting uh covering games, it was that same thing of like, well, why would it be any better than the Axios arc?
Mhm.
So, maybe I try this other thing. But, um in the process of kind of thinking about that, I thought, if I launch a Substack,

what do I have? Um I was in the mindset that the reason I got the Kotaku job, and this is literally true, is because the editor-in-chief of Kotaku at the time liked my MTV work and poached me, right? So, you think of one job as a pathway to the next job. The reason I was able to get the Axios job, in my mind, was cuz I chose to leave Kotaku. So, I went from the security of that to joining Axios. Being laid off, which uh had never been laid off before, was suddenly a moment where I'm like, "Wait a minute. What do I have?" And, you know, there's a bit of panic.
Of course.
And then there's a recognition, well, if nothing else, what I have is that credibility, the familiarity people may have with my byline, that that opportunity with Axios, as I mentioned, of rebuilding up that byline by sending out a newsletter every day or every other day that, you know, was coming into your inbox from Stephen Totilo. And you were seeing I I was seeing that, okay, there's hopefully enough awareness. That's what I got at a 20

years. That's what I took with me from there. Where I worry for journalism is that you can be me who's had 20 years of building up a name and then only need a thousand, 1,500 people or whatever to have a sort of healthy sustainable outlet. Um But if you are newcomer newcomer to journalism, you don't instantly have that recognition, that credibility. Or if you do, will the incumbents like me have already taken so many dollars from the relatively small number of people who want to pay for their news, um such that the newer people will have a harder time. And so that's a bit of what concerns me is that this may be an opportunity for people who either have a big name or can or or have proximity to a big name. Hey, you may not know me, but I was the New York Times reporter on such and such beat. Oh, it's that former Times person doing this. It's harder if you just trying to, you know, start out.
Start out. That was actually one of the things that surprised me the most about the session that you did at GDC. There

were lots of questions after the the panel and the session and a lot of the questions were from kids just starting out. And I think it would be such a like I guess in the indie industry, it's not just games, it's not just media. It seems like such a a different time, perhaps a scary time to be starting out, but I would say particularly in journalism. The one thing and I'm kind of jumping in it from topic to topic here. The one thing that I would see younger people doing quite well for better or worse is in the creator economy, right? So, influencers are now news broadcasters in a way. Um I would love to hear your thoughts on on journalism, creator economy, and how they intersect, and like what you think that future is going to be.
All right. Well, the the thing about reporting is that anybody in theory can do it, right? You don't have to go to medical school or a law school. I went to journalism school, but you don't have to do that. And so, anybody can do it.

Um that means anybody everybody thinks they can do it or potentially thinks they can do it. And so, people who who who, you know, whether they call themselves journalists, they may not actually be very good reporters, or they call themselves influencers, and they might actually be doing reporting without even realizing it. So, I just look at it as you know, there are people who are ideally telling the truth in some way, sharing truths, sharing information. And whatever they want to classify themselves at, so be it. It's Right now, we're just in a a moment where people are trying to figure out the different distribution channels for news and information, and figuring out how to monetize them is is key right now. Where where I look at kind of YouTuber and some of social media influencer relationship with journalists is that a lot of it I experienced, especially when I was writing Kotaku, was either people aggregating our work or reacting to our work, um you know, building up a YouTube channel cuz we didn't have a big video presence at Kotaku. So, we were one of the biggest games outlets out there that you

could read online, but we didn't bother to build up video. And so, there were people who just made a made a career out of taking our news, presenting it as their own with light credit, um and then building up something in the YouTube ecosystem. And it's a shame on us for not having or done that ourselves. And so I see pe- there's more hunger for information than ever before. There's hopefully hunger for truth that is more subjective. Some people think they're looking for truth, but they're really just looking for affirmation of what they already believe or what they what they want the reality to be. Uh so a lot of it is kind of the information marketplace needing to sort itself out. I really believe in this approach of having readers directly pay for work and re-establishing the value of reporting. Like being able to come to to GDC for example, I paid my own way. That costs money, right? And you can imagine a plane ticket and hotel. It's not the most
here.
It's expensive, but it's not the most exorbitant expense, but it's enough that like literally I can say well

the if that cost me $1,500 or so to come out and do this trip for a week, that's the equivalent of I need 15 people to have subscribed in order to do that. So I can see again that direct relationship. Um and that's the model of Substack. And to me that's a little health- ier than having to be dependent on some algorithm of that's going to sort of play ads for me on YouTube or whatever the decision matrix is for paying people out on X or something like that. So I like this approach. You see a lot of reporters kind of leaving a lot of different media institutions. And we'll see how it shakes out, but I think it it it's key to think of it as a media issue, not a games media issue
Absolutely.
of figuring out what is going to be the pathway. Look at the New York Times. They are one of the only truly successful media organizations right now making a lot of profits. You can see they're publicly traded, but of course we also know that the subscriber subscribers that they attract are not strictly because of their news. The reporting is very good and high quality in a lot of regards, but it's Wordle and the subscriptions to spelling bee, the

games, and it's the cooking, it's the recipes. It's
Oh yeah, I
It's the recipe app and
that one, too.
right? And so the and so, you know, the difference between the New York Times and the Washington Post is not necessarily even the quality of the journalism that the respective organizations have done over the last decade. It is was the Post smart enough to build up these ancillary revenue streams that you know, and they weren't. Like the Times figured things out better about how to diversify their their income. So I don't know, maybe Game File needs to have its own Wordle or something to accompany my reporting. I don't have the bandwidth to do that or we'll do recipes on the side or something. But it's it's it's so interesting to see people experiment and I'm glad that that there's a platform that I can sort of build. And part of what I'm testing is okay, people clearly want to pay for my reporting. Is there a chance that I could turn this into something where I can bring in other people? I've had reporting teams in the past. Done a little bit with freelancers and I honestly don't know how to go from where I am right now with a subscriber base that sustains me to a subscriber

base that can sustain an entire other person and do I wait until I'm closer there or do I grow slowly and you know, do you It's it's that learning to be an entrepreneur thing and figuring that out.
Have you seen any Substack that have not just within the gaming industry, just Substack overall that where a almost an outlet has been built over time with multiple journalists that was um
Usually Usually you see it start. You see like Bari Weiss leaves the New York Times and she starts The Free Press and she has investment money from outside which helps her, you know, so it's not just bootstrap from just subscribers. And instant outlet with editors and reporters and critics. Mehdi Hasan leaves MSNBC, formerly Al Jazeera, I think he was at as well. And he starts The Teo, you know, left-wing political site. Instant staff because I actually don't know what kind of funding he got, but anybody who's on TV is like easy mode for Substack is being on TV, having been on TV and or covering politics because there's so many people that want to pay for

proximity to those those personalities that they're familiar with. And then also people like to pay for like being told the politics that they already feel. So, um oh, finally I'm going to the one bastion of you know you know place that's going to tell me you know how how right I am about you know things being woke or how right I am about MAGA being out of its mind. And so, you can find you know that your affirmation and and receive it for $10 or $12 a a month. So, I see outlets that start as group outlets and I see individuals like myself who go solo. I haven't seen anybody start as one and build up. Casey Newton Platformer.
Oh, yeah.
Was doing something like that and he brought on a second writer. And and had some expansion plans. Think that cuz his second writer moved on to The Verge I believe Zoe and so I don't know like where he's at haven't talked to him in a bit about whether or not he likes maybe being more smaller or if he has you know sort of

expansion goals in general. But a lot of it is is dependent on I think what what you think you can do in terms of drawing people in. I know that the value that I provide I think is is strong for what I charge given my experience and my ability to get stories and I work very hard. But I also know that the value would be greatly improved if I had a second reporter and I wouldn't charge any more and it's again it's that sort of entrepreneurial thing that I now have to think about in terms of you know sort of where to go. And I see some people exploring sponsorships and whether advertising has a role in independent journalism. You the platforms themselves are sort of testing that. But Substack has not been that aggressive in putting advertising and like sort of making it easy to sell ads. So, the folks that I know that are doing that kind of thing or kind of going out on their own and seeing if they can they can get you know find advertisers. So, it's there's a lot of economic experimentation which again gives me some feeling of affinity for the very people that I've covered cuz for so long what I've you know recognized that the games industry has been one of constant

economic experimentation you know from the arcade games that were all about how many quarters could they get out of you, you know, to free-to-play games, to the business models around, you know, Facebook games back in the day, console games, you name it. So,
All the direct-to-consumer stuff that's happening now, if you Yeah.
So, I'm just like another node of economic experimentation, you know, off in a gaming-related job myself.
I have one more question about Substack specifically before we switch gears a little bit. So, I I don't know if you know this, but to the people out there, I also am a PR person in my day job since I'm not at Navic full-time.
Won't hold that against you.
Thank you. And the we, you know, in the beginning of the year, there's always the PR weeks that do like, what are the trends in PR this year? And every single person's one of the top three trends was that we are pitching more niche media, which are Substacks. And part of that is there aren't as many journalists to pitch in legacy media, but I think another part of it is we've been able to see a lot more ROI with specific clients when you're in niche media cuz maybe you only

have a couple thousand readers, but these are thousand readers who care deeply about the games industry. Are you getting more pitches from companies and PR people now that you have your own independent Substack, or were you getting more when you were at Axios?
Well, I've gotten a lot for a long time. And just to be clear, by the way, on the numbers to the extent people care, my numbers are all public. I publish an annual report basically every January, so you can you can And while Game File is partially paywalled, the annual reports are free, so you can see. I have 27,000 overall readers right now that are that are subscribers, rather, that get get the newsletter. And then there's about um between 1,400 a little over 1,400 who are paying directly for the work, which is just kind of a standard ratio.
Okay.
Um one edition is free every week, and then two have a paywall. So, there's a little bit that's free, and then you pay to read the rest. And then it kind of spreads from there. Anybody can read it online. So, there's a I I in year one, I was very, you know, uh sure to make the numbers public. Just thought that the readers deserve to understand where their money was going.

But I one of the things I I worried about when I put the numbers out was what were the gatekeepers of the industry that I covered going to think, right? Um having run Kotaku, which was I think for a long time the third largest English language gaming site behind IGN and GameSpot, um in terms of like enthusiast press as it's called, I was certainly cognizant of the fact that IGN could get a whole lot more access opportunity first cuz even though we were big, we were not IGN big, right? And so I was used to that. I knew the editors of Game Informer in its heyday when it was something that you got with every time you signed up for a GameStop, you know, you know, subscription or whatever, you automatically got Game Informer in the mail. So they were one of the biggest magazines in the United States. And so I would see at industry events the Game Informer editors and watch them get, you know, sort of feted by the all of the PR folks who would bring them in to want to show them their games cuz of course the the goal was to get it on the Game Informer cover. That was like the

biggest status opportunity if you had a new game coming out. Uh as in as the having started my career at MTV News, everybody wanted to be on MTV. They hoped that if I was going to do an interview I was going to bring a camera crew. Most times I wasn't. Most of what I what I did was online and video online wasn't as much of a thing. It's the late 2000s. Um but I did do some honor stuff. So very early in my career PR folks saw opportunity in interacting with me. I had multiple stints where I freelanced at the New York Times on the side. People sized up that, okay, we deal with him, we might get in the Times. Uh Kotaku was big, a a bit more raucous and rowdy, so some people were a little afraid of us. Um but they recognized that we had credibility with with readers. And so you had enough people who were sort of like would size up the risk versus the reward and would want to interact. Um going to Axios, people recognized it as a startup, but I think they also uh saw opportunity in another the rare instance of a new mainstream publication opening up. They actually cared about games and took it seriously. And so

people wanted to seize that moment. So all of that made it so that when I went independent, I it all kind of carried over. I didn't with I think one company that I can think of that's that is an exception. Everybody else in the industry just treated me like it mattered. My audience was going to be with me. It still mattered. Um the types of things that I was pitched I think had changed a little just from going from Kotaku where it was assumed it was like hardcore gamers reading to when I was at Axios and people noticed that I was covering more of the business. And so you would get more of the B2B kind of stuff and just you know, we have a we have a new you know, sort of game financing system or this we have you know, funding round is for this startup. Are you interested in that stuff that Kotaku wouldn't have covered? Uh so there was like a kind of a medley of those. Um at Game File I can't I can't say that I feel like people have for better or worse Game File is sort of like whatever I want it to be on any

given day. So I think it's harder to pigeonhole exactly what my niche is other than the niche is my adventures as a reporter 20 years on the beat and my instincts for what I think is interesting and worth you knowing. Um but I still hear from you know, just about everybody and if anything, you know, I'm I'm as at fault as any reporter is for not being able to keep up with my inbox of all the all the pitches that come in.
Yeah. I want to talk a little bit about ethics in journalism and how that's changed going through independent outlet. So one of the things that you mentioned at your GDC panel is that you see familiar company email suffixes pop up in your subscriber list and actively having to push that out of your head. So I think there's a lot we could dive into when it comes to direct reader relations and how they could be a conflict of interest. So I'd love to hear how you handle that, but also how that's changed since you've gone independent.
Right. There's always some ethical pitfalls that you're facing as a journalist, and

some of them I think are subtle enough that a lot of folks outside of media don't think about it, but there's the um you know, there's getting a quote slightly wrong, but you think it's close enough, right? You don't go back and listen to the tape cuz you trust your notes, but you may have misphrased the person a bit. I think that's unethical. I think you should do your due diligence and check the quote. People get fired up about headlines, often not read articles. But there's And And then you'll see a defense of like, "Well, the reporter doesn't choose the headline." Well, there's a responsibility of publication to make sure that the headline delivers that the story delivers on what the headline promises, that you're not misleading the reader, and that also the headline is, you know, sort of true to the experience and not just done there um to to sensationalize or to to bait people, although by design a headline is supposed to draw attention. What There is the historical pressure of advertisers who are going to have a say or want to have a say on how their products are appearing or what their products are appearing next to
Mhm.
um in advertising in media. And historically, at least, news organizations understand that conceptually there should be a firewall

between the two. Some actually support that and erect that, and some, you know, it's more porous. For me, as soon as I launched Game File, Substack's whole thing is they want you to feel as good as possible about what's happening. So, you look at your charts on Substack, by the way, and then you'll get your revenue, your estimated revenue, and they will take, if you sign up for a monthly, which is $10, they will say that my annual revenue just went up $120 because they optimistically think you're here for the year. So, the number is is big. If some If you sign up for a sale, so monthly is usually 100, but I'll I'll put it on sale for like 80 at times. They won't If you buy you get a annual subscription on sale, they don't add 80, they add 100.
Again?
Well, because eventually that person's going to convert over to the 100. So, everything is very rosy. And so, consistent with that is that because you put your email address in to have a Substack account and launch it, as soon as you start getting subscribers, you're getting alerts every time. And for me, who like a kind of was, you know, nervous and wanted some

affirmation that I was getting subscribers, it was good. But it was also like, oh, I know who that is. I know who that is. Oh, I now I know this person in the industry is directly supporting me. He's directly paying me money. You know, uh Phil Spencer running he was public about it. He he publicly commended me for, you know, the for for launching it, you know, he's until recently the head of gaming at Xbox for Microsoft. And he publicly commended me for for launching it, and you know, this is part of the like good guy Phil Spencer, you know,
Yeah, a lot of pressure, though.
He's he's a man. But I'm like and I'm like I appreciate it. He wrote a a note like you subscribers can write notes like that other subscribers can see and it's like, you know, Stephen is, you know, one of the great journalists out there or something like that. It's like, yeah, it's all very nice. But I also like now I knew that Phil Spencer was paying me. Not paying somebody else. He's paying me for my journalism. And and to think like what does that do to my coverage of Phil Spencer in the future? Does that get in my head? Even if I say it's not going to get in my head, is it in the back of my mind? Is there a part of me that's going

to think, oh, well, if I piss off Phil with what I write, that's $100 less of income. Thankfully, I'm able to say $100 less doesn't matter, right? Like I'm not so desperate in clawing this together. Like I had good momentum with subscribers from the get-go. But it's it was a whole new paradigm that I hadn't thought of. And you have, you know, people out there in the public who want to, you know, historically, whether it's Gamergate or other things, want to say they're policing like the pitfalls of ethics in games journalism. And this one is somehow not one that I've ever seen anybody really go off on, and yet it is one of the most vulnerable one of the biggest vulnerabilities I think of independent journalists is that this you're being paid potentially by people who you're covering.
Mhm.
I got regular, you know, gamer folks from the public I'm sure subscribing as well. Early on though I realized it was healthier for me to not look too closely at my subscriber queue, to deactivate those emails or like send them immediate

to immediately archive. The funny thing and I mentioned this at the GDC panel was the experience not of seeing who in the C-suite was paying to subscribe. It was when I would see C-suite people subscribing for free and then I couldn't help but think like, "You could afford that?"
You should start calling them out on X that is not not supporting Games Journalism.
Surely you can expense this. Um but that was but that again was like I'm like now I'm like I'm having feelings about how these people spend money or not and I'm like and I'm even by just having that reaction which of course was was amusing. Um but technically if you analyze what's happening it's me wishing that this person I cover had been spending more money had given me money.
Mhm.
And I would never think about walking down the street seeing a CEO of a game company and say, "Please hand me $100."
Yeah.
And yet functionally the business that I'm doing incorporates some aspect of that. So I considered like, "Should I Is there a way to like wall off industry people from subscribing?" And I thought,

"A, I'm not in the luxurious position to immediately disqualify potentially hundreds of subscribers if not potentially thousands down the line." But I also thought like there's going to be a compromise somewhere and this particular ethical vulnerability I think diminishes with scale. The more subscribers you have the less that any one person can be an influence and and really that is part of what this crowdsourced support does for you. It was only like it only needed to be like one or two people at Axios or at Kotaku who could make a decision about the direction of the company that would send me fleeing or that would somehow could that that could potentially undermine my reporting. And I can't say that that I was ever undermined in my reporting at Axios certainly. Um had really good editors there. But it only took like one or two people. Everything that I'm doing now, as long as it operates at scale, it solves a lot of those potential problems.
Absolutely. One more ethics question before we dive into AI cuz I want to leave lots of time for that.

For the listeners out there who aren't journalists or PR people, a lot of different publications have different rules when it comes to treating journalists. For instance, I have
going to talk about the private jet example.
I have a Bloomberg friends that I can't even I can never buy them a coffee, right?
Right.
Um but then there's the some Forbes contributors where it's more loosey-goosey. But when it's your own platform, what are the rules here? You had a great private jet example at GDC that I'd love to hear you speak about.
Oh, I'll give you that one but I'll also share that I I recently had lunch with somebody who's they're they're an entrepreneur, they've got a startup right now, and um they had a $75 uh GDC card for like if you're a speaker or whatever at GDC, you're given these cards and you can use them. And they give them to the press as well. And it's just a way to be able to get some lunch or whatever at the official vendors. Um so it's a perk, you know, make of that what you will. And I sit down and have lunch and the guy says to me, he's like, "You know, I'm leaving GDC and I've never used my card. Do you want my card?"

And I said, "Sure, I'll I'll take your card. But the reason I'm taking your card is because there was a glitch when I registered and I never got a card." So I'm like, "You're not actually giving me money." He's like, "Why are you even saying this? You're making it awkward." And I'm like, "Because for me, like I need to establish that I'm you're not just handing me $75, you a person I might write about. That instead, you're giving me something that I'm not trying to be a jerk about it, right? So I'm trying to accept it." He's like, "Well, you're kind of making it awkward by doing all this." And so, you know, but I'm working that through. And some of it is just simply a matter of I think one good core ethic is just to re- be open about and sort of be willing in those moments where you think a line might be crossed to be clear about where things still stand. Um I had a breakfast the other day that uh a gaming PR person was at, and she was laughing to me about how like she's like, "Oh, last time, you know, I felt so bad because I paid for the bill with the with the people that you were interviewing before you and then you were uh belatedly you were like, 'No, I needed to split it and and I couldn't do it and then I couldn't figure out how to reimburse you.' So, this time, you know,

what what what do we need to do?" And I'm like, "It's fine. Like, as long as you understand that my expectation is this." So, I don't I don't have like a code of ethics that I published. I have a good sense of what's happening. The The private jet thing is funny because uh I'm out of the Game Awards, December 2024, and I knew that the CEO of Saber Interactive, the company that made the Space Marine game, uh they made World War Z, they've been sort of doing very successful licensed games for uh for well over a decade, maybe two decades. And I knew that the CEO, this guy named Matt Karch, lived in the New Jersey area, near where I live, and I've been trying to make a connection with him. I see him at there, and I say, "Hey, Matt, you know, fellow New Jerseyan or whatever." And he made the connection. He I'd written some some articles. I'd written about uh Saudi Arabia's uh public investment fund or Saudi Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund pulling funding from uh company that he used to be part of when the Saber was owned by Embracer Group. So, I had a big scoop about that. Um it was Savvy Games I believe it was going to be doing the investment of two billion. Now, they pulled it. And I had that scoop. I had that scoop, by the way, the day after Axios laid me off. I had like

my biggest scoop for Axios. I'm like, "All right, you don't want any more scoops about like the Saudis pulling two billion dollars of investment from company. Okay. Well, I'll do this I'll do this somewhere else." Um but again, they gave me a they gave me a long runway. So, Matt knew my work from stuff like that. And so, Matt's like, "Oh, yeah, we should talk. We you know, we could have lunch back in New Jersey." He's like, "But, you know what? When are you flying back?" I'm like, "Tomorrow. It's was a Thursday evening. It's tomorrow morning. He's like, "Oh, well, I have a jet. Do you want to just go, you know, fly on my jet back?" And I like froze and I'm like cuz like the alarm bells are going in my mind. I'm like, "I should be saying no to this. Like this is clearly no. I cannot accept a flight on a private jet." But I'm also like interview with a gaming CEO on a on a private jet. I get to I get him like his undivided attention flying across the country plus like no PR people, too. Uh there was. He was sitting across the aisle. Um but uh in addition to all of that, just like, you know, access can be so hard to come by these days. Um so there's just the opportunity of access and also like again, people are subscribing to Game File to sort of

follow my adventures as a reporter. And this is a fun adventure. I bet my readers would all be like, "Dude, the private jet. We want to know what it's like to be on the private jet with Matt Caruana." So I call my This is right before the Game Awards. I go to the go and I watch the awards uh and then I I text my wife and she's like, "I told the kids." We have nine-year-old twins cuz they were about seven at the time. And they're like, "They both think you should go on the plane." And of course they That's going to cool. Daddy's going to go on the plane. And I'm like, "I don't know." I'm like, I text I text Matt and I'm like he just gave me his number cuz now he's like, "Just text me to confirm." And I'm like, "Can we do an interview? Can we do an interview on the flight?" He doesn't respond. But he told me that I had to I had to meet him at 8:00 a.m. the next morning to go on this flight. So I text him at 6:00 in the morning, Friday morning. Still don't know. By this point I have figured out that if I'm going to go on the flight, I can't cancel the flight I already booked. So part of what made me feel at ease about this ethically is that I already spent money on a commercial flight back. So if I got this this private jet flight, technically I'd already paid to go across the country, right? So there was that. I text him. I'm like, "Just to be clear, can we do an interview on the record during the flight? That would

make it easier for me to make this decision." He says yes. And then you can read the results, a three-part article on Game File that all ran in early 2025 where he really opened up in a way that I think very few gaming executives have like in terms of speaking for that duration. And and with some some really good history about his company and about Embracer Group at Microsoft and some of the other companies that he worked with. And plus I got to find out what it was like to be on a private jet, which was pretty
Yeah, incredible access and an incredible adventure.
It's very sunny on a private jet cuz the plane is small, so the sun is coming in from both both sides. Not a lot you don't you're never in that sort of dark middle. Um, Wi-Fi is just as bad because other than having a Starlink or something like that, there's nothing that makes expensive private jet any better of Wi-Fi than than otherwise. But uh, it's amazing when you don't have to go through security and you don't really have to check your bags. So suddenly you're like, wait, it takes way less time to get across the country. It was amazing. So.
That's awesome. Let's shift gears to AI cuz there's so much that we can cover here. I want to start with how are you using

AI as a journalist?
So, I could say I'm not using it, but then that would be lying. But I don't use it in ways that you might expect because I haven't found the things that people think I should use it for to be sufficient enough. So, for example, ChatGPT, which some people use for research. And is it cuz is it hubris or is it am I correct that I feel like I can still kind of out research ChatGPT for the things that I need. Um, I haven't like tried to build anything with Claude or anything like that, so I haven't really sort of road tested that. Although I have some AI true believer friends who are like, you got to you got to try this stuff out. You'll find it very empowering. But what I do use it for and like I was using it before I realized it was AI, was I use an interview transcription program.
Yeah.
I do a lot of interviews. They're digitally recorded on my phone. I have the audio file and it's not somebody somewhere else typing really fast. It's AI that's doing it. And that alone is very helpful. But what I discovered almost exactly a year ago, I came out to GDC. I interviewed a a Korean game developer

for the company Neowiz and um, I asked questions as often happens with with interviews with people who who are not native English speakers. They know enough English that they don't need the question translated, so I spoke in English. The interviewee responded in Korean. The translator then spoke in English. So, that's English, Korean, English. The transcript came back English, English, English because what tran- the service I used was now doing was not just doing using AI to transcribe, but to translate. So, it was giving I was reading my question and I was confused at first. I'm like, why is the answer showing up twice in English? Oh, they've automatically translated what the developer said from Korean to English and then I'm getting the English. And that of course then got me excited because I thought, I'm finally going to know with these foreign language interviews if the translator is truly telling me what the interviewee really said or if the interviewee is annoyed and, you know, grumbling about the question and the translator's cleaning it up. So, if

you think about AI in part as an an empowerment tool, something that can expand your capabilities, this was a this certainly fits in that category. Cuz suddenly I had this ability. I did a story for Game File uh last summer, so summer of 2025, where I'd gotten heads-up that Yves Guillemot, the CEO of Ubisoft, which is a French company headquartered in Paris as as I'm sure most people listening to this and watching this know, um he'd been called in by French Parliament by some of the communist senators there. There's a lot of communists in the in the Senate in in Paris in France. He'd been called in because there'd been kind of a national question about whether or not large corporations in France should still receive tax subsidies cuz some of them that were receiving that had had a major layoffs. And so, the question was, especially from these from these communist senators, is why are we giving you tax breaks, large corporations, if you're then hurting the people by laying them off? So, they called in Ubisoft and they called in Yves because he's the largest

video game company and one of the great uh recipients of tax credits both in France and elsewhere. And so, it's French senators interrogating a French CEO for an hour. You almost never see gaming CEOs called into government test to testify for the government in any language, in any region, anywhere. So, this fascinated me. And it was all in French, so I got the audio knowing what I knew from a couple months prior with the Korean interview that I did. I did all the translation. I had some French-speaking sources and I bounced some of it off them. But the result was an article that not just spoke about this event and describe what happened in the interchange between the the the the politicians and the CEO. But also through that we learned a lot about how Ubisoft actually uses its tax credits and it's this whole aspect of how that company's economics work.
Mhm.
They go to go go to a level of detail that otherwise was not discoverable anywhere. And so, before AI audio auto translation or transcription, there are other ways that

I guess I could have done that. I could have hired somebody to translate it all for me. And, you know, there is that push and pull of how much is AI kind of taking away from other people's labor, which I'm certainly sensitive to. But in this case, I'm like this just would not have happened. This just not would have would not have been written about. And instead I was able to provide an insight into an aspect of gaming that none of my peers covered, maybe knew was even happening. And that's what I'm trying to do with Game Files. I'm always trying to tell stories about things you didn't know were happening in gaming. Um I sort of envision my job is to fill out, you know, if there's if you sort of imagine a a picture frame that covers all of what's in gaming, right? Most of it there's no light on it. You can't see anything. Um some areas are now illuminated quite effectively by the companies themselves with through, you know, sort of the corporate blogs and social media accounts. Um people can speak directly to customers in many ways. But there's still so much that is sort of like shrouded in darkness. And my job is, I think, to go look at the places that are

not yet illuminated and say, "What can I What can sort of light up here? What can I show?" That just helps people understand overall. So, it can be a business story one day, it can be a culture the other day. And for me, the AI made that French gaming tax subsidy story, which also sounds very esoteric.
Mhm.
But to go back to what you're saying previously about kind of niche publications, that was a niche story that like really did well for me. You know, I I had the affirmation of seeing that when I have a scoop or a good story, I can see the subscribers who sign up just for that. Um and so like I saw all that happen. And so that's like I mean that's definitely one of the sort of success story aspect of that.
use case.
Yeah.
Okay, so one of the other things I did in San Francisco besides GDC is I went to Edelman, which is a big PR agency. They had an event with a lot of San Francisco AI reporters and there was a lot of Q&A. And one reporter, I believe from Forbes, said that 99% of her pitches now are AI slop. And I have to say, on the Navic podcast, if you're planning on pitching, 99% of the podcasts I get are also AI generated.

Or, "We listened to your last episode. It was great because of XYZ."
Are you seeing that too? Are you getting any more thoughtful pitches?
I get thoughtful pitches, you know, I when I started opening Game File up to freelance writers, I got a number of very suspicious freelance pitches. So, I think these were people who were trying to scam getting your freelance payments by being like fake journalists. Just all doing it through AI. So, you know, there there is that. Um you know, what I'm looking for when I'm emailed a pitch is is it an interesting story and um you know, I don't really care if you need AI to help you write that. That's fine. But things that don't you know, things that read very formulaic or language, um you know, that act like something's important, but it's clearly not interesting to any human being on Earth, you know, that for better or worse, it didn't take AI to reach those depths.
Bad pitches.
So, but you know,
Maybe just more of them.
Right. Right. Maybe more. Right. Cuz people can operate with again at scale

in in other words. But so I see some of it, but I I wouldn't say it's a huge problem on face.
So, uh uh one of I think the most prevalent topics at GDC this year is AI, right? And how people are embracing AI, how game developers are embracing AI for better or worse. I've only seen a couple of really interesting AI companies though. I I thought there would be more and I wasn't on the full expo floor. I think you mentioned that you saw one interesting AI company. I'd love to hear a little bit about that.
Yeah, I went to this talk by this company called EchoMark and there's this guy who formerly worked on missile defense for the Navy.
Interesting.
And now he works on basically leak defense for for companies to stop to stop leaks from insider leaks. And the the title of the the talk was very provocative because it was about how to use AI to stop leaks from your company. I was very curious what that was about. So he gave a talk and afterwards I approached him. I said, "Oh, you know, there were game developers there who were very appreciative." I'll explain how it works in a moment. But I walked up to him and introduced myself. I was like, "I'm a member of the media." He's

like, "Oh, you probably don't like us very much." And I'm like, "Well, no, it's an interesting story, so I'm intrigued." But I certainly in my in my day have written stories or could talk or whatever had others, you know, write stories under me that came from people leaking the name of a game or an email that had been sent by by an executive or art assets or something like that. And there's always a decision tree that you go through in terms of should this run or should this not run? Is it kind of just pure interest for the readers, sensational interest? Um but this it was interesting because they're branding what they're doing as using AI. And so what they'll do is if they'll they will, for example, uh say if you use our service, the CEO can send an email to all employees, but we can run it through an AI that will create variations, phrasing variations, if you're okay with not the the the the CEO's email not being verbatim. And so we will have variations and so every single recipient will have unique phrasing in some way, and so you potentially can catch somebody. They had another example where they had

a PDF of like a like a brief of a game, you know, a couple paragraph summary, and so imagine this is an unannounced project yet, and they want to internally pass around what the proposal is of the game or what the what the general pitch deck might be. And think of it as like fully justified text, right? So it goes from one edge to the other. Now, you've seen enough text like that that you know sometimes there's weird wide spaces between words. Well, imagine that the AI from as he was promoting it can change the spacing uniquely for each one.
Wow.
So every line is the same words, but the spacing, maybe the the is a little over this way or a little over that way cuz the words still always go to the sides, but they go a little bit more, you know, within, they move around a bit. And so he said that you can create unique mailings. And so when you think about one of the potentials for AI, which is to do things in large volume that no individual could do really by hand, they're pitching this idea that if you're a game company, and he says they work with, you know, the government governments, they work with all sorts

of, you know, uh you know, major, you know, tech firms and other corporations, the service that they're selling is, you know, don't be damaged by internal leaks, be able to identify who's doing them. Consider the strategy of telling your employees that you're doing this to maybe make them afraid.
Mhm.
Don't tell your employees you're doing this so that then you can catch people. But it's AI mixed with human behavior, and this was I think key to anything you think about related to AI. There's no such thing as effective AI use, I think, that excludes people. And so one of the things that he pointed out in his talk was that they can run an investigation, which is what they call it when they are sort of run things through and they try to figure, okay, who leaked this document? Do Did we have some sort of digital fingerprinting in some some in some way? Well, it may tell you that it came from Kaylee's computer, but does that mean that Kaylee leaked it? It could mean that Steven was looking over Kaylee's shoulder and took a picture. So, yes, it came from your computer, but it was me

who was the leaker, right? And so, he's like, you know, you you the technology and you know, the robot can only do so much.
Yeah.
So, I thought that was really interesting because it was a good example of using AI in a way you wouldn't expect. I think people keep going to you know, the same you know, it's going to make NPCs in games talk in more authentic ways. Well, I see that technology it has its pros, it has its cons. I don't know. But, um wait a minute. This this is interesting, you know, is is a major gaming company going to shore up all their leaks by creating these these things, you know.
That is really interesting. We'll make sure to link to that company in the show notes, too.
I can't vouch for them. I haven't used them. They are the enemy.
Yeah, right. That had have a direct impact on some of your stories. So, last AI question for you is I think maybe actually I was going to say maybe we've reached peak AI slop, but I don't think anyone knows. But, in a world with so much just crappy content, do you think people are are

going to be more willing to pay for long-form high-quality journalism? Are you already seeing this or is this just the hope for the future?
People pay for Game File, right? The numbers largely keep going up. I'm discovering seasonality and other things. Going back to being an entrepreneur, I'm learning, you know, the numbers in January are often not as good as the numbers in December cuz people spend a lot in December. Um August have been weird, but I've been running sales to counter the that. So, I'm you know, I'm learning a lot about that, but in the process, you know, I'm finding that I'm able to convey the idea that there's value in human reported work. Um there might be somebody who figures out tomorrow how to show there's even greater value in AI augmented human reporting and that outmaneuvers me. That makes me feel like, okay, I'm not what I'm trying to do doesn't really work. So, I I think it remains to be seen. A lot of it is really in training your potential customer to see value in whatever it is that you're doing. The same way that a game developer is hoping that people see value in the game that they're making or

somebody who's got a startup in a new in a payment processing plan, you know, a a platform or whatever else the the the endeavor might be. Right? It's just trying to convince people that there's value in what they're doing. Um I'm able to give a lot of it away for free
Mhm.
through the the free editions. The fact that there's that sort of force multiplier of when I publish a story that's, you know, strong, others outlets will write about it. And that becomes more of a promotional uh vehicle. But you will also have platforms where people are so locked into that platform and if they're just exposed to people, you know, AIs aggregating my news, they never may never know that I existed.
Yeah.
Um and then we could have like a fundamental breakdown where that doesn't come back to revenue for me to pay for me to come out to San Francisco, you know, and Matt Carches's private jet is not available cuz I can only do that once. I think as I told you, a second flight I think would be far more ethically dubious than the first. I can do
I like the mental gymnastics there.

So, we'll see. We'll see.
Okay, I have a couple final questions for you. Mostly related to advice. You know, I think there's a lot of game studios out there who are struggling. Maybe they don't have PR agencies. Maybe they're just starting out. Journalism has changed. What would be your advice to those companies that are looking to gain some traction in the press, some initial traction?
I think you have to have a sense of what why what you're hoping to get out of the media. So, if you're looking for you need to get a clip that's really impressive to other potential investors, you're probably looking for like a New York Times clip. You're probably looking for something in prestige media, something established. And so, it's a matter of figuring out how to get access to those those sort of narrowing, you know, or winnowing places in terms of the number of them that are that are established and known names. Um but there are ways to do that. And one way to do that is to figure out who the people are who handle gaming or tech or whatever it is that your sector is. Um another way is you step up to that by interacting with

reporters like me or PR folks like yourself who can be the gateway to that cuz either you do a story with me and then the Times folks who read my work notice it or I can then tell you how to get in touch with Times people. Um you know, and it's and it's those sort of things. But it's figuring out what you want out of it. If you just want your story told in an interesting way or if you even want to road test whether your story is interesting, like a good way to do that is to talk to a journalist and see if what they what they make of your story. Um you know, maybe it's too risky because then they run a story that is boring and you're like, "Oh, my story was boring." And I only found that out when it was put out in front of the public. But um you talk to a good enough reporter, they will figure out what's interesting about you and they will figure it out. Hopefully, it's what you think is interesting about you as well and it's not that you know or or secretly, you know, a kleptomaniac and they've discovered your your major fault and that's out there for everybody to see. But it's it's sizing up, you know, assessing what do you want out of the media. Um recognizing the risk and the reward, right? So, you are putting your story out there in front of other people. Um it is having a sense of who in the media

makes sense to work with. And be in this age of more and more independent journalists, it's less than ever a matter of thinking about the institution. You know, what do I think of interacting with CNN or Fox News or um you know, the LA Times? It's what do I think of interacting with Stephen Totilo? What do I think of interacting with Casey Newton? Um even please play me if you recognize bylines at publications, you know, two of my former Kotaku reporters, Jason Schreier and Cecilia D'Anastasio, who both do excellent reporting at Bloomberg. Um and I would say you should go to them not cuz they're Bloomberg reporters, but because of who they are and the track records they have in the in the reporting that they do. So, it's it's educating yourself about that and that's one case where I think PR folks can be very helpful in sort of showing people, okay, these are the reporters that actually would be the people worth your while to talk to. And these are not. It's like everything else these days is a discovery challenge. It's You have an abundance of options and how are you going to narrow it down?

You have greater potential proximity to reporters like me because I'm directly available. I'm right there. Um you certainly don't need to subscribe to Game File for me to, you know, give you the time of day. Um it's just if you email me at, you know, at [email protected] and if you have an interesting pitch, then then then I'm interested. But it's not what you want. I was at uh the DICE Summit in February. I had a couple people approach me uh who said, "You were the only reporter who paid attention to me 10, 15 years ago." Whatever was the difference the little slightly different scenario for each one. And that really helped me in one case gain confidence to keep doing it. In another case, it was to get my game recognized and to and to move on. So, sometimes the interaction with the press may not have the immediate thing you're hoping for. Um and sometimes you might say it's still better for me to just work to, you know, communicate directly with the the people.
Yeah, going direct is a lot of value.
What and what is the point of the the reporter? But to me, it's I have an ability to tell your story in a way that

um might frame it in a way that you hadn't imagined, that may bring it to people in a different way than how you were already presenting it. So, you already have one way of talking about your game, but now I'm talking about you as a person and that creates a whole new angle from which people might be interested in what you're doing. Or you know that Game File is read by a lot of industry people and so okay, now my work is, you know, now what I do is in front of you know, this this audience of of people, you know, we know Phil Spencer's a subscriber. We don't know if that's even useful anymore to get in front of him cuz he's only advising and he's not going to be running Xbox anymore. Um, but you know, one of the most formative experiences for me as a as a journalist was back when I was in journalism school and they paired us up as as students to write profiles of each other and that exercise it has stuck with me to this day because I had the experience of sitting across the table from somebody interviewing them about who they were what their story was, having them do that to me, knowing the next day that whatever I wrote they were

going to read and so kept me honest about like did I accurately represent them? And they're going to I'm going to have to live with them knowing that I got it wrong if I got it wrong. And also having that happen in the other direction and having somebody all reporters should have reporting done to them, I think, right? So they can understand the intrusion that we make, you know, just the the fact of writing about somebody is inherently going to present a truth that feels to the person who's being written about different than the truth that they thought this is because we all have our own perspectives, right? So even the best intention reporting, the most accurate reporting is going to feel a little different to the subject of the story than what they thought the truth was. And every reporter I think should experience that themselves and understand what that's like and it's not the same by the way as it's not enough to get yelled at by people on social media or whatever like that and that isn't what I'm talking about. I'm talking about if there is an opportunity and it's how often is it going to happen but this was Megyn's one of the reasons

you pay absurd amounts of money to go to journalism school at Columbia because you have exercises like that and it has stuck with me for you know, nearly uh, nearly 30 years ago when I when I did that.
Was your partner in that project? Is that person a journalist now? Have you stayed in contact?
with her anymore um, but you know, she was a very good journalist during the time that I was in that I was in J-school and you know, other friends of mine who are from from journalism school of that year, class of '99, we still talk about that exercise cuz it really stuck with us and and it's just, you know, I I've I impress that upon my staff at Kotaku, I impress that upon people I work with, and I often will hear from young reporters who are looking for advice. And even the experienced reporters will come to me for advice cuz I've been doing this for so long. Um, you know, want to bounce a story off me or think, well, you know, what do you think? I'm trying to figure out how to navigate reporting this out. And I'm often trying to put myself in the shoes of the person being written about. Um, to think not to sand the edges off the story, but to think like are we are potentially representing something that is going to feel true to that person. I say to people that I'm writing about, especially if

it's a contentious story, I'm not asking you to like the story. I don't expect you to like the story always, but my goal is for you to consider it to be have been fair, right? And so it's that kind of dynamic that I'm trying to be sensitive to.
What's the best pitch you've ever gotten?
The best pitch I've ever gotten. Oh my gosh. Uh I mean, certainly in terms of access, when Nintendo, you know, tell me that I could fly across the country to interview their CEO, you know, and I who I'd been wanting to speak to for years, you know, something like that is a is a is a great opportunity. Um, there's just sometimes like in the fourth paragraph of a pitch, you know, you find out that this game is actually about, you know, surviving in a war zone and it's not a war game about, you know, fighting the war, but it's about survival of it. And that was 11-bit and This War of Mine, which is a game I first saw GDC about 15 years ago, maybe a little bit less than that. Um, so it's it's just those things that kind of were those details that even the best-intentioned folks may not recognize

is the hook. And it's going to they're going to be different hooks for different people, too, right? So, one person might feel like, oh, it's that company whose last game I like. That's why I'm interested and want to book a meeting. And for others, that name of the company doesn't mean anything, but it's wait, that's what you're making a game about? Or that's who is who's involved in this project? So, things like things like that stand out. I will say it is a waste of time to send a pitch that you yourself don't find interesting.
Oh, 100% yeah.
that as a PR person you may be you know you're paid to do that, right? You're on contract, you have to represent this this project, this product, whatever it is. But there are so many choices of what to write about.
I think there's always a human angle, right? To where there is a story. Maybe the product isn't particularly interesting, but there should be something of the founder that's compelling.
If you wouldn't read the story yourself
Yeah. Don't pitch it out. That's
Well, I'm not going to say don't pitch it out. You may again you may be obligated contractually pitch it out. But don't be surprised if nobody picks it up. And be suspicious of those who do if it's inherently boring. Just like you know if it's interesting.

And in so many stories you don't have to have like category expertise. One of the reasons that politics and sports are such like sort of major categories in society isn't because everybody cares about politics or everybody cares about sports, but those are those are fields of life that are so much about people.
Mhm.
Right? You know, I don't care anything about football, but wait one of those football players is dating, you know, a you know, a pop star, you know, dating Taylor Swift. Okay, now I now I care. I may be tuned out of politics for better or worse. But that politician just said that outrageous thing. Okay, suddenly I may engage. So, to your point, people wind up almost always being a The people I know can always kind of cut through and compensate for a lot of other things. This is an interesting person, they have an interesting story behind them, you know, they it's it's a grassroots effort, it's a person from a part of the world or economic class that hasn't you know, that is sort of achieving beyond what you might have expected. It's a person on a comeback after having a failure and hoping for a success.

Um there's so many things like that where it's a human story where you're right, it can be that ultimately what they're doing the reporter and the reporter don't care. Like the reporter shouldn't care if it's like a great product. Is it a great story?
Yeah.
When I was um pitching the New York Times many many years ago when this would be 2005 their tech reporter was going to go to E3 rest in peace to the E3 trade show and they were very fired up about covering Sony's entry into the handheld gaming market with the PlayStation Portable. This was the story they should cover. Now I grew up playing Nintendo and more of an affinity maybe more of a soft spot for Nintendo let's say okay maybe bias for them. But I was on the outside pitching wasn't on staff and I'm like y'all don't you think the more interesting story to do here at E3 is what Nintendo is going to do in response and they were they they had watched Sony PlayStation take the home console market away from them Nintendo had battling Sega and then here comes PlayStation with their CD-ROM based console and they take the home market away from them

become the lead platform. And here they were about to do the same to Nintendo and that is an interesting story in and of itself. But there was Nintendo that which had saved the industry from collapse in the 80s with the Nintendo Entertainment System saying okay we've got something we've got something experimental we're teasing what it is and it has two screens we're not going to say much more about what it is and it's going to and it's going to come back and it's like how are these guys going to pull this off how did Sony's already beat them once how's this going to work and to me that was the more interesting story maybe not so much of people story but a story you're more interested I think in the the the once mighty underdog somehow is the underdog so there's narrative right that can that also I think can animate um so thankfully they greenlit that and so then I you know I got it was my second my second time story in the Times was was about that it's very cool.
What's your favorite story that you've ever gotten to tell?
Mhm.

A couple come to mind one is Uh, was a guy named Vile Rat who that's not his real name, and he was there was an attack on the US Embassy in Libya during the Obama administration. And he was one of the three people who was killed. He'd been a big player of Eve Online. And when he died, the players realized that Vile Rat had actually been a State Department official. He'd been known within the game that Eve Online is known for being an MMO with a lot of diplomacy and skullduggery and cloak and dagger and betrayals and people are in these virtual science fiction corporations and they spy on each other and people discover that Vile Rat, who's one of the great diplomats within the game, had actually been a member of the State Department. Um, and that he'd been killed in this attack. And um, his widow who uh, opened up to me and was willing to do an interview and talk about him and his life story and how this game sort of

impacted his life. And you know, this was the only interview she'd done about it. So, that comes to mind is just something where I was really grateful that, you know, a lot of what the reporting that I do is about the trust that people put in me to tell their stories. So, that one um, that one stands out. It was a Kotaku story. Um, there's another story that I published on my birthday or I found out about on my birthday. I don't remember which it was. But I often think of it as like the best birthday gift I could ever get is a great story. And so, Tomb Raider game had come out, Shadow of the Tomb Raider. And this came out, I don't know, like a little less than a decade ago. And I'm watching the message boards cuz a lot of what's interesting, and I I want to emphasize this. Um, one of the things we learned at Kotaku, one of the big learnings was that so much of the media and games media is way too future focused. Always covering what's next, not what's now. I wrote an editorial in 2014 called The Future of Video Game Coverage is the present. I felt like people were way too focused on hype and that there is gaming communities that are doing interesting things. We're not talking about human stories, by the way, about games, about products. It's not just the human stories of the developers or the

entrepreneurs. It's also about the customers. If the gaming community is doing something interesting, maybe even something a little out there, risque, or whatever, but that can be compelling to readers. Oh, that's what these people are doing with this game, this product, this gadget. So, I'm looking into the community of Shadow of the Tomb Raider. What are they What are they up to? Game has just launched. And there's this thread where this person is like, I can't believe this thing happened at the end. And other people are responding like, what are you talking about? That's not what happened at the end. And it's like, and they're like, what are you talking about? This is what happened at the end. You get the Lara Croft goes back to her manor and she opens up this letter from this character, this villain from like three games ago. And people are like, come on, that would be incredible if it happened, but it didn't happen. I'll eat my shoe if that happened. The guy the next day, he he he he he writes back another message. He's like, I just went and I replayed the entire game so I could take a screenshot and show you this. And people like, that's doctored or whatever. They don't believe him. They tell him he's wrong. And then, one of the biggest skeptics in this thread shows back up. And they say, okay,

I have a friend who lives on an island off the coast of Japan where the internet is very bad. And they have played through the same game. And they tell me you're correct. And that actually their version of the game ends with Lara Croft getting this letter. And they realize at that point that the game had secretly been patched. And what I realized as a reporter is that these people have accidentally discovered that the game shipped with the wrong ending. And that I So, then I go to the publisher, I think it was Square Enix at the time, and I'm like, did you guys secretly change the ending of the game the day this game shipped? The day one The day one patch notes don't say that you changed the ending. And they admitted that they had. And so, these people collectively around the world had discovered this incredibly bizarre circumstance. And I, as a reporter, just kind of lurking there, had witnessed this and then pieced it together and then used my access to be able to go to the the game companies, and just like

you know, it's a good story. And I I that's the other thing, it's a story, right? It's not just I'm telling you about a thing. It is action, it is people discovering something, doubting something, the the twist that happens with the person, you know, in the aisle of on the island of coast Japan. And it's putting that all together into a story. And so that I think again, I discovered that on my birthday or I filed it on my birthday, and so I always think back to that story as um you know, something where I'm like, "Hey, that was a that was a nice birthday gift for myself." And certainly, you know, those are stories from prior to Game File, but I'm very proud of a lot of Game Files, of the stories I've done there, too. Um and I'm I'm very excited. There's so many more stories I want to do, so it's like I'm glad I can keep doing it.
Well, I was going to end with a future-forward question, but I'mma walk that back, and let's talk about the present for our final question.
I I I future's interesting, too. But I can we go for it.
Well, let's let's stick with the present, though, and I keep coming back to your GDC session, and all the people in that room who want to get started in games journalism. If you had one piece

of advice for those people getting started in 2026, what would it be?
You got to figure out what you can write about or make a video about that nobody else is doing. So many people want to review the same game. Yeah, I want to you know, I want to be a games journalist, I can review GTA 6. Yeah, well, there's going to be a thousand GTA 6 reviews. And this reviews are reviews, so critic review, how much is that even going to stand out? A lot of people conflate games criticism with games reporting. I think about how they're two different things. What is the thing though? You might have a a kind of game nobody else is writing about or reviewing. AI experimentation in games, maybe there are and there are some AI games out there. Maybe you're going to review them. Nobody else is doing it, right? Oh, I I don't want to do that, it got a bad rap. Right, but it might be interesting. Who cares what its rap is, it might be interesting. Um or as a reporter, you might realize nobody's been talking to these people. Will you talk to them? Or there may be a thing that you know as a player that you

a question you have always had and you've never seen an answer. Well, you can tell yourself you're a reporter. Like I said earlier, anybody can be a reporter. Tell yourself you're a reporter and go ask the question. Yeah. Find out. Produce something that no one else is doing. It doesn't mean instantly people are going to see it. It doesn't mean you won't have the experience of somebody else aggregating it and taking credit. But the best path you can put yourself on is to be unique in your work for it to stand out and to trust your gut about what is interesting and not worry so much about what everybody else is doing.
Thank you so much, Stephen, for taking your time out today to talk to us at the Naavik Gaming Podcast. Everyone who's listening, please go subscribe to Game File. We're going to link uh link the website in our show notes.
My pleasure. And as much as I hope people get something out of reading Game File as a newsletter, you can also read it online. Also, I think the Naavik newsletter is great. So, I'm a happy subscriber to to the Naavik newsletter and um I think it's just great for

people to be able to get so much more information about games.
Awesome. Thank you so much.
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