Thank you all for the kind words related to our announcement that GamesBeat is going independent as we spin out of VentureBeat. We can’t think of a better way to spend our time than serving this industry with our journalistic flair and our community-oriented events.
It was wonderful and heartwarming to see our story go wide. My own Twitter saw more than 160,000 impressions over a couple of days as Variety covered our move as if Gina Joseph and I were celebrities. On LinkedIn and Facebook, I was heartened to see thousands more expressions of congratulations. Our hope is that we can use this love to take advantage of what we see as great opportunities before us.
I felt a bit like Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life, realizing we had friends. After all, this business of game journalism is kind of a lonely road. So many of the people who were my peers when I was younger have dropped out of the trade and moved on to something more rewarding.
But I feel blessed to have stayed in this game long enough to see the less earthly rewards. One of those rewards is to see so many people go through a life cycle of a humble start and wind up in an incredible position — like Jensen Huang, Jason Citron, Phil Spencer, Sarah Bond, Reggie Fils-Aime, Shawn Layden, Mark Cerny, John Carmack, Henk Rogers, Shu Yoshida, Will Wright, Neil Druckmann, Tim Sweeney, Owen Mahoney, Mitch Lasky, Jenova Chen, Amy Hennig, Mark Pincus, Danny Bilson, John Romero, Frank Azor, Brenda Romero, Brian Fargo, Mike Morhaime, Johanna Faries, Geoff Keighley, Robert Kirkman, Perrin Kaplan — and on and on.
There are also so many new creators from the Roblox, Fortnite and Minecraft generation. We’ve benefited from having a number of industry veterans continuously help us with our events. I better stop dropping names, as I’ll feel guilty for leaving folks out. The point is: telling their stories over generations has been a joy.
We serve you. I’ve written more than 26,000 stories for GamesBeat and VentureBeat over 17 years, and I’ve been dedicated to covering the game industry as a business and creative art for 27 years on a daily basis. I’ve covered the tech industry longer and enjoy seeing the seams between the industries. I often say that I’ve written 10 stories in a day, and that speaks to how vast and global the game industry has become — it has so much news every day. And I get to meet new passionate people every day; it’s like finding little gems of sea glass on the beach at night with a flashlight.
Game and tech startups often tell me that I was the only one that chose to write about them as they got off the ground. That seems like a heavy and ever-growing burden, but I don’t see it that way. What I get from talking to all of you over the years — the creative developers or the repeat entrepreneurs or the savvy investors — is a unique perspective on the business of gaming as it goes global and becomes the dominant culture of the world. Gaming is not just entertainment culture. It is global culture, and I am grateful I have been able to travel the world to meet people in the game industry.
The only drawback in covering the business of games so fiercely is that I don’t get enough time to play games. I’m writing this column near midnight. And this is why I’m not the only person here at GamesBeat. We have a strong team in people like Mike Minotti, our managing editor at GamesBeat, and our writer Rachel Kaser. It’s a small team, and we want it to be bigger. But we’re an authentic squad.
Rachel and Mike have near-encyclopedic knowledge of games and gameplay, as they play a lot more than I do. That’s a core value in this business, and it means that they bring a lot of intangible authenticity and cred to the table. I’m just glad to be able to pull out the occasional win in Call of Duty: Warzone battle royale or Call of Duty multiplayer. Sadly, Rachel and Mike don’t like all of the same games I do. They’re not perfect. But hey, this industry is vast. It contains multitudes.
My focus was to track new trends without dwelling on any single category of gaming too much. Follow the money. My colleagues in game journalism — those of us who are left, as well as our readers — keep me grounded in the notion that it’s not only CEOs I need to track.
Amir Satvat, the game job champion, has reminded me with his data on layoffs, hirings and people on the ground floor of gaming are topics that need to be highlighted and recognized. Our industry is only somewhat transparent in giving out the information that could help game developers as they try to break into the industry, survive, and thrive. Over time, our focus evolved. Follow the people.
I am humbled when I realize that we are just one publication, and every surviving journalistic outlet helps shed light on this vast business. It saddens me that PressEngine’s data shows that the top 135 video game websites published 635,000 articles during the first quarter, down 13%, or more than 100,000 fewer articles, compared with the same quarter a year ago. I am not happy my friends cannot make a living in game journalism. It’s like we’re all standing on the Wall in Game of Thrones, doing guard duty and pitied by those that think we have the worst of jobs.
Gina Joseph, our CEO, is one of the only women who is the CEO of a game journalism company. She brings a unique perspective and a couple of decades of media experience on the business side. Gina has made an effort to get to know the game community and embrace its diversity. And she has done more to enable us to become an independent entity so that we can make our own destiny and develop our own unique voice in an industry full of large corporate media.
This has been a tough time for gaming and a tough time for games media. We are grateful to you that we are still standing. More than 2,902 “press contacts” have disappeared from the database of PressEngine, in a report cited by Christopher Dring of The Game Business.
We have survived, or done well, as a business because we have been able to get sponsors for our GamesBeat events. David Glass and Cathy Simpson have been critical to the success of those events, from small high-touch dinners to conferences where the crowds can top a thousand people. There are other things that we can try in hopes of taking advantage of new opportunities and new models.
There are others on the team that I won’t mention for the moment, but we acknowledge their contributions as we get this new 17-year-old startup off the ground. There are those who are staying at VentureBeat to cover the awesome story of our time as AI transforms the enterprise.
None of us got into this journalism thing to get super rich. As I watched others do that around me, I knew that staying in journalism was not the path to financial glory. But at VentureBeat, Matt Marshall provided me with a self-directed platform to do what I wanted for 17 years, and that helped me put my kids through college and stay in this business for the long haul. For that, I am eternally grateful to Matt and VentureBeat. It’s also been a joy to see my family around me grow up appreciating games or the industry — or finding their joy in some other way.
GamesBeat’s own story and its ethos are really about individuals. We are not here to mimic what the biggest game media companies already do. One of the stories I felt best about doing was the mourning of Carter Lipscomb, a game industry veteran who passed away earlier this year. It seemed like just about everybody in the industry had a story to tell about Carter’s bear hugs and zest for life.
Now it’s time to leave the nest so that we can do a better job at our purpose; we are here to serve you. We do not simply serve up traditional objective journalism. We strive for perspective. Unique stories. Thoughtful analysis. A shelter where you put down your shields and swords at the door. And a joyful and inspirational community.
At the same time, we need your help. We have a fresh opportunity to be better at what we do. We can benefit from your own advice for us. This is the part where we feel like it’s our public radio telethon. I know it is exceedingly easy to sit it out and not make a contribution. Then we wonder later where that resource has gone.
We’re not a nonprofit, but as an independent company, we need to grow to continue doing what we do for our community and for the industry. We need your support on many different levels. We would love it if you share our stories or support us with sponsorships. None of this would be possible without the support of our partners. So we can grow our team. Send us your exclusive story tips at tips@gamesbeat.com.
We would welcome you at our events where you can find the right networking opportunities to get ahead. We would love it if you would encourage your friends to come. Or volunteer. Contact us for event info at events@gamesbeat.com.
It’s a tough and uncertain time, but we could use sponsors for our events, such as our upcoming GamesBeat Summit 2025 event on May 19-20 in Los Angeles. You can purchase your ticket here and we’re offering a special 50% off as part of our celebration, in light of our announcement (GBSCELEBRATION50). Message us for sponsors/partnerships at partnerships@gamesbeat.com.
I think we’ll be OK, together. Most importantly, thank you.
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