Text Tree: A Week of Interviews on New Media v1.1

It’s no surprise to longtime readers of Geekadelphia that we’re big fans of podcasting, and more specifically, the various multimedia that have emerged online over the past decade or so. Over the last two months, I’ve been speaking with a number of different game writers from all forms of media, asking a variety of questions regarding the role that new forms of content delivery are affecting the way we cover games and — maybe more importantly in the light of the recent UGO/EGM/1up debacle — the changing business models employed by game writing publications going forward.

In mid-December, John Davison (Co-Founder/President of WhatTheyPlay.com, ex-EGM EIC/Ed. Dir.) was the first to answer a few questions on subjects ranging from the creation of the now defunct stable of podcasts at 1up to how publications should be adapting from an economic standpoint now and in the future. This will be the inaugural post of seven separate interviews, but in true Geekadelphia slipshod fashion, I’ll post the first two today (the other featuring
MTV Multiplayer blog Editor Stephen Totilo) so that we can finish in a timely fashion next Friday. I hope you enjoy and by all means, get involved in the comments.

(As an aside: I’d like to thank all the writers who took time out of their schedules to answer my questions thoughtfully and thoroughly — Thank You! )

(GEEK): I think it’s safe to say that you oversaw the creation of a lot of the multimedia that 1UP has been producing (i.e. podcasting, a weekly show, video features)? Could you explain why you think that’s an important approach for journalistic coverage?

At the time, the goal in establishing the video and audio shows on 1UP was all about establishing the personalities that we had on the staff. This was true of the individual blogs, too. There was a lot of competition in the gaming media space, and given that we were building the 1UP Network a few years behind some of our competitors, we wanted to really differentiate ourselves. Rather than simply be “just another” reviews/previews/news site, we wanted the audience and the staff to come together as one community, and for people to feel like they really knew the staff. The 1UP Show, and 1UP Yours in particular were a big part of establishing a “voice” for 1UP, and they were very effective ways of introducing people to the Network and drawing them into our other content. In a lot of ways, you can think of them as part of a broader editorial marketing initiative.

(GEEK): When you worked at Ziff-Davis, you witnessed not only several key editorial members leave but also the dissolution of a few print publications. It could be said that the cutbacks we’ve seen budget-wise in games journalism are symptomatic of changing business models, due to the internet, that are effecting journalism on the whole. In that regard, do you believe Ziff-Davis or, maybe more importantly, all publishing houses in the games journalism industry are adequately adapting to changing business models?

The vast majority of the key editorial members leaving actually started quite a while after I left back in August 2007. In terms of magazines closing and business models changing, I think you’re seeing the effects of two quite different factors happening at the same time right now. The first – the gradual decline of print – was always something that we knew was inevitable, and quite frankly we were surprised that print was hanging on for as long as it was. Given the breadth and depth of content available online, and the immediacy of it, you have to admire and cherish the loyalty of a print audience. These people are prepared to wait for, and pay for the content that you provide for them. Honestly though, an enthusiast audience is far better served by the Internet, and while it’s a shame to see cherished print brands fade away, it’s an inevitable thing and part of the “circle of life” in media. Nothing lasts forever. Right now, the enthusiast audience craves information immediately, so shifts online – we’ve even seen phases of this. The rise of the blogs like Kotaku in the last two or three years is a great example. Consequently, the advertisers follow the audience, and shift their ad spends accordingly.

It’s worth noting that magazines, in particular, have been having a hard time for a while now. Newsstand efficiencies (the percentage of the copies sold, compared to the number distributed) have been dwindling for many years now, and the industry average in North America (last time I looked) was around 30%. That means 70% go unsold, and are ultimately pulped. For a magazine to maintain a large circulation, it’s an incredibly costly, and not particularly environmentally friendly undertaking. You essentially have to over produce enormously, and right off the waste as a cost of doing business. Given that the unit cost of a magazine like EGM is about $0.75, the costs are huge to maintain six-figure circulation numbers. To counter this, we’ve seen a lot of magazines adapting their business model so that they can focus on areas that are under more direct control; subscriptions, direct sales with better UPC tracking, etc. Ultimately though, these are steps towards the inevitable.

The other factor to consider is the current economy. Belts are tightening across the board, and marketing is something that is constantly under review. When advertising dollars start to dry up, the media that relies on them has to adapt, and reduce costs accordingly. What we’re seeing right now has happened several times before, and the most successful companies adapt to survive.

(GEEK): What is your business model going forward? As WhatTheyLike is the larger entity that WhatTheyPlay falls under — a rather suggestive name — what are your goals going forward as a product group? Other websites? A family of websites for the family? What does the future hold for WhatTheyPlay.com? (I’ve heard talk of a podcast?)

Our primary source of revenue is advertising, and as we establish the site and build a larger audience we’ll be able to cast a larger net for a wide variety of family-oriented advertisers. Beyond What They Play, we have plans to tackle a number of other subjects in the same fashion that we tackle games. Parents have a lot of stuff that they need information on, particularly when it comes to their kids’ entertainment needs, so we want to build a brand that they trust, and feel that they can rely on to get the information that they need. As you can imagine “What They…” lends itself to a large variety of concepts.

For What They Play itself, our goal is to keep working closely with the audience, and evolve the site and its content to address their needs. We’re currently looking at expanding our community functionality so that parents can discuss their concerns, and ask questions of each other, plus we want them to be able to get more immediate feedback from the team. We’re also looking at ways we can use audio and video content to form a bond with audience. We’ll take what we learned from the 1UP experience, and adapt it to the evolution of a destination for a very different kind of audience. Something to consider is that the way parents consume gaming information is quite different from a hardcore gamer. It’s much more on a “need to know” basis, rather than an ongoing sense of curiosity. If their teen wants to play Fallout 3 – then that’s the game they need information on, and that’s what we need to make sure we address.