Why the former editor of Polygon is making a podcast for old gamers

The Verge

3 days ago

In a recent episode of Post Games, host Chris Plante explores how video games can help players understand death. He's interviewing Kaitlin Tremblay, who is working on Ambrosia Sky, a game about death.
'What is it about games that is so useful for exploring the topic?' Plante asks.
'I think there's something really lovely about the way in which games invite players in,' Tremblay says. There is 'something quite lovely about asking a person to cooperate and to be a part of the story, and to move through the space.'
It's a tone, and a substance of conversation, unlike any I've heard on a gaming podcast before. And it underscores what's so unique about Post Games — and how it might stand out from other gaming media, by acting a lot more like a slower and more cerebral NPR show.
Within weeks of leaving Polygon, where he was the editor-in-chief, Plante started Post Games, which he describes as 'a weekly podcast about how and why we love video games.' He's targeting an older demographic and models Post Games after an NPR-like format with tightly-edited segments and weekly episodes that last for about an hour. And he's asking fans for support via Patreon to help keep it going.
'Practically everything in games media targets young people'
Many other video game podcasts are 'almost entirely for people under the age of 30 who can afford to listen to multiple shows that are four hours long this week,' Plante tells The Verge. 'Practically everything in games media targets young people — both because it's being produced by young people and because it's the demographic sales teams believe they have the best shot at selling.' But players over 35, he says, have 'very different interests and expectations.' There are a lot of people that fall in that category, with the Entertainment Software Association reporting that more than half of the 205.1 million Americans playing video games are older than 35.
'It's really basic supply and demand shit,' he says. 'And yet very few places want to meet this demand. The publications older audiences turn to for information — newspapers, magazines, and audio — have given gaming culture scraps at best, and worst, ignored it entirely.'
Before I go any further, I should make a few disclosures. Plante, until May, was the editor-in-chief of Polygon, formerly The Verge's sister site dedicated to gaming and entertainment. He was a co-founder of Polygon when it launched in 2012, and he later worked at The Verge from September 2014 to July 2017. I never worked with him directly, but I met Plante for the first time in person earlier this year over dinner at the Game Developers Conference.
This is all to say that when Vox Media announced on May 1st that it sold Polygon to Game Rant owner Valnet, and Plante said that he wouldn't be part of the site moving forward, I was bummed for him. But by the end of the month, he had published the first episode of Post Games, and he's posted a new episode every week since. It's a great podcast.
Each episode is about an hour long and split into three acts. Much of the show revolves around interviews on a certain topic, and a third act features Plante discussing the news of the week. But the broader topics of the episodes don't always align with the current big thing in gaming.
The first episode was about the history of the Independent Games Festival's Seamus McNally Grand Prize, for example. The second was about sexy games. When the episodes do tackle topics of the moment, Plante tries to put his own spin on things; when Death Stranding 2: On the Beach came out, Plante scored a rare interview with YouTuber videogamedunkey, who initially hated the first Death Stranding but revisited it two years later.
The show is available for free with ads, but people who pay a $5 per month subscription on Patreon get early access to ad-free episodes with a bonus segment and access to an exclusive video every month. While planning out what Post Games would be 'my logic was, if I wasn't willing to spend $5 on it, then why would anybody else?' Plante says. The show just hit 1,000 paid subscribers, and even if things flatten from there, 'that would be enough to cover my family's health insurance.' If the show gets 2,000 by the end of the year, 'I'll feel confident about this being my future.'
Game journalists who leave or were laid off from traditional gaming publications are increasingly doing their own thing, such as the worker-owned Aftermath from former Kotaku writers and Patrick Klepek's parent-focused Crossplay Substack publication. And while publications everywhere are facing pressure from things like AI search engines and Google Zero, Plante argues there are a lot of audiences that are underserved by more traditional business models because of their reliance on scale.
'As somebody in the media, you hear a lot about how great independent media is because of its benefits for the people who make the media, but I think there's a larger conversation that needs to be had about the benefits that it has for the audience, for the readers,' Plante says. 'I think if you focus on the readers and the audience, you will find more business opportunities for more independent creators or more just smaller funded creators.' He also says that if mainstream publications don't want to serve the 'humongous and growing audience' of older gamers, 'I'm happy to.'
Plante sees Post Games as his thing for the next long while. 'My only dream for the future of the show is that I'm doing this in 10 years,' he says.
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