Game File, one year in...
Thoughts, worries, dreams, a lot of stats and a chance for you to decide when this site actually started.
Game File just turned one year old. That was fast!
I have some thoughts about how it’s going, how things work around here and my hopes for the future.
I also have some stats to share and some news about Game File.
All of that is below, but, first, since Game File is a no-bullshit publication, I will be up front about a goal for this post:
An anniversary article like this is meant, in part, to drum up support. In this case, “support” is a synonym for “paid subscribers.” I’d love more sign-ups, as I can’t do this work without support from readers. So, yes, if you can afford to, please join the paid ranks of the Game File readership. ($10/month or $100/year).
(Second bit of transparency that hopefully won’t undermine the previous one: While I’d love your support today, please be aware that I’ll be running a sale on annual subscriptions in early February, which is the anniversary of Game File’s paywall going up.)
With all of that out of the way… please join me in pondering whether Game File just turned one last week or if that already happened a month ago. It depends!
A case for January 8 as Game File’s birthday: That’s when I began my standard thrice-weekly publishing schedule. Game File’s first regularly-scheduled newsletter—reporting that Microsoft was planning to bring Sea of Thieves to PlayStation and that Netflix was no longer making interactive shows—ran on January 8, 2024.
A case for December 14 as Game File’s birthday: Back in 2023, that’s when I announced I was exiting* Axios and when I published Game File’s introductory post. (*”Exiting” was the polite, no-drama way of alluding to being laid off from Axios, but no hard feelings. Axios had given me four months’ notice. They were letting me promote Game File in my final Axios Gaming newsletters. They were cool about it!).
Do you want to be a Game File Dec. 2023 Truther? Or a Game File Jan. 2024 Believer? I won’t judge.
How it’s been going…
Pretty good, I think!
I love reporting. I love video games. Since 2005, I’ve loved being able to make a full-time career out of combining the two.
When I was told in August of 2023 that I’d be losing the job that paid me to do the work I love, I was scared. As I surveyed the job market, I worried that landing a gig similar to the ones I’d held at Axios or Kotaku across the prior 14 years could result in another rug-pull that once again had nothing directly to do with my work.
Going independent was a daunting option, but it had the potential to make my chosen career sustainable for the long term. My income would be directly tied to my work, and I’d be able to take my subscriber base—and Game File’s name and content—to any platform of my choosing.
In 2023, I knew I still had the energy and hunger to report on games.
But would enough people pay for my work—and my work alone? Yes, I learned in 2024. People would. Thank you!
Would the stress of having to run my own business detract from my work? No, I don’t think it has.
The best thing about Game File: I learned early on that, when I run original reporting, people sign up for paid subscriptions.
I know this, because the Substack interface shows how many subscriptions a post generates. I can tell, for example, that…
People paid to read my scoop about Netflix shutting down their AAA studio.
They also paid for my deep dive into the fine print of Flappy Bird’s contested trademark.
They paid for interviews, for scoops, for reviews. Get this… one person even paid to subscribe after receiving an alert I sent out that was headlined “No newsletter today…” I’m so glad they signed up! The post wasn’t paywalled, but it did contain a very short preview of Dragon Age: The Veilguard.
Readers are paying for my journalism (and, to a lesser extent, Dragon Age previews)! It’s the dream!
This is the antithesis of how many media companies operate these days. Imagine—pure hypothetical—a media executive who wants their writers to chase “easy” traffic, because this person in charge has no clue what it takes to support journalism and no confidence that readers will show up for it.
In my experience, readers always show up for reporting. At Kotaku (just a random example), our original reporting always got us traffic, year after year, for a decade plus.
Heading into Game File’s launch, I knew my reporting could draw eyeballs. I just wasn’t as confident that people would pay for it. But readers have.
Some key metrics:
Game File is, based on discussions with my peers, the 2nd highest-grossing gaming publication on Substack
By free subscribers, Game File is the 3rd largest gaming Substack—and the largest one done by a solo reporter.
Game File is the 43rd highest-grossing “culture” publication on Substack (writers can pick one category for leaderboard eligibility; I chose culture over tech)
At one (or so) years in, Game File has over 17,000 subscribers—free and paid.
I passed my 12-month goal for paid subscribers about 10 months in (I haven’t hit my 24-month goal yet…it’s a ways off!)
Game File currently has just under 1,079 paid subs. (If you’re doing the math on revenue, bear in mind that Substack takes 10% and payment processor Stripe takes 3%, and I have many more personal expenses than I would if I had a traditional employer).
The average open rate for each newsletter is 40.84%.
All posts are read directly through a mix of email subscribers, app subscribers and folks reading online. Traffic on free and paid posts therefore differs from the subscriber numbers—and even paid posts are also read via free previews of the paid posts and/or free trial subscriptions. So… page view traffic on posts ranges from 12,000 on the low end to 42,300 (highest paid post) and 43,900 (highest free post).
In year one, Game File’s reporting has been referenced by The Wall Street Journal, IGN, Eurogamer, GameSpot, MSNBC, Forbes, VGC, Kotaku, Polygon, Aftermath and countless social media accounts who sometimes link back to my work and sometimes just tag my username.
Even though Game File offers group subscriptions at a 10% discount, some solo subscribers just love to read the latest edition of the newsletter across… uh, 11 devices for one subscriber for one post last week?? Hmm!
The growth curve for Game File has looked solid to me. I think I’m in good shape, but I’m not 100% sure. Also, the curve took a hilarious upswing in late October, when Substack paid for hundreds of free one-month gift subscriptions that evaporated by early December. That’s the orange spike in the chart above.
I have had some worries:
Paid subscriber growth had been healthy from launch until around mid-July, when I began to lose more people than I gained. I spoke to some peers who are in the subscription journalism business and they said summer doldrums were normal. Run a sale, they suggested. I did, and August sign-ups were huge. Phew!
It took me a while to get used to the churn of monthly subscribers. Not everyone can keep paying, and that’s fine. I got used to losing a $10/month subscriber here and there. But losing a $100/year reader? As 2024 progressed, I braced myself for the churn of annual subscribers. I didn’t have to face that until December, and I can’t yet assess how much of a challenge that cycle is going to be. My first annual subscribers signed up in mid-December, and some of them didn’t renew. That led to a dip in December 2024’s paid subscriber count. Then the holidays happened, and I published less (which always slows sign-ups). The dip deepened. We’re now in early January, when people are looking to cut costs, but paid subs are gently growing again. Running some big stories helped. Some of my January articles have been among the most successful in Game File’s history. Yet the modest growth I’ve seen this month has me wondering how severe the undertow of annual subscriber churn will continue to be. I can’t tell yet.
I’m happy to say that one big worry I had—the added financial burden of taking on all of my own reporting expenses—has not been a big issue. Now that I am independent, many of the costs of being a reporter that an employer would previously cover, come out of my income. Because I can see how much revenue a given article generates, I’ve been able to see that the money I spend to commit expensive acts of journalism often leads to making money for said acts.
For example…
When I spent about $1500 to go to the DICE gaming convention last February, I came back with scores of story ideas, new reporting contacts, and helpful gossip. I also got enough reporting done on-site to write a bevy of stories that readers liked enough to cover the trip’s cost—my articles about Microsoft’s AI gaming goals, interviews with Insomniac, Hasbro, CD Projekt RED, Scopely and more.
I pay more than $150 a month for legal files and lawsuit alerts. That’s a silly amount of money to spend to read court proceedings. Happily, it’s been paying for itself, thanks to those files leading to Game File scoops about Nintendo suing the makers of a Switch emulator, the truth regarding Valve’s terms of service changes, Nintendo’s hunt for a possible pirate, the $84 million payout a fired Bungie developer had been expecting from Sony, the development budgets for Call of Duty, and more.
The work (aka My favorite Game File stories from 2024, because how can I choose just one? Or even twenty?)
I’m very proud of the work I did in Game File’s first year. I started rounding it up, and I hope it doesn’t come off as too egotistical to showcase it. It’s just… I work hard, you know? And this list will also be a handy reference for me if I ever want to remember what I wrote in 2024 (It’s easy to forget. I wrote what in 2004??)
I wrote 170 newsletters/articles in year one, many with multiple items. Among my favorites…
My Sea-of-Thieves-to-PlayStation near-scoop* on day one was followed by more scoops, including Nintendo adding more women to its board of directors, Five Nights at Freddy’s’ profits, Netflix’s shutdown of its AAA game studio, the departure of Wolverine’s creative director from Insomniac and his new job leading Microsoft’s Perfect Dark, an Activision studio going independent, and more. (*Jeff Grubb mentioned it on his podcast a few hours ahead of me, but I’d been chasing it for months.)
Lots of exclusive interviews: I landed the first post-Epic interview with Donald Mustard, the longtime creative director of Fortnite. He shared many untold stories about Fortnite’s creation. Somehow, Game File published the first interview Sony ever did about the making of the PlayStation Portal. I spoke to Phil Spencer about the Xbox games line-up and to Warframe’s Rebecca Ford about letting you play as a pregnant character. I was one of the only reporters all year to run an interview with the lead developer of Palworld. I had a chat with Team Asobi about the making of Astro Bot’s bots, and I believe I’m the first reporter to ever get an interview about the PS5 dashboard.
Close readers will know I am willing to ask tough questions, no matter what my interviewees’ talking points. I was on a call with Epic CEO Tim Sweeney to discuss the launch of the Epic Game Store on phones in Europe, and I asked him what his company has spent in its legal fights with Apple and Epic. He told me. When I spoke to Microsoft gaming chief Phil Spencer in February—officially to discuss Xbox games going multi-platform—I also got him on the record about the 1,900 job cuts at Xbox. When I spoke to the executive producer of Assassin’s Creed in June, I was, as far as I can tell, the only reporter to ask him about the very public attacks on the series’ next game. When I chatted with the head of Overwatch esports, I asked about Saudi Arabia’s growing influence in the scene. I don’t consider any of this rude. I’m respectful, still want to hear what people want to talk about, but this is my job. It’s what Game File readers should expect. (Also: not so much a tough question, but when I found out an interviewee used to work in Burger King corporate, I asked her about Sneak King.)
I dug to find secrets that were sometimes hiding in plain site: how gaming executives are paid, the impact of review bombings on game companies, PlayStation’s flattening headcount, the undoing of a gaming accessibility win in the U.S., the barely-chronicled appearance of Kamala Harris in the beloved 2019 game Control, and more.
I did my best to investigate… what was behind layoffs of hundreds of workers at Bungie, why Madden reviews are always “late”, and how gaming’s digital storefronts obscure the details of who made the games they’re selling. (I also collected hundreds of replies from people holding out on upgrading to current-gen consoles).
On rare occasions, I eased up and had some fun. I played a word game with the world’s top game developers. I made up a gaming award and gathered nominees.
I also interviewed developers about some fascinating games: Animal Well, The Remake of the End of the Greatest RPG of All Time, Harmonium, Arco, Kunitsu-Gami, Star Wars Outlaws, Monument Valley 3, After Inc., etc.
More: I chatted with a game-maker about turning negatives into positives and another about making what could be the best horse game of all time. I talked to a blind gamer who learned, as a child, to play Pokémon by ear. I talked to an unfiltered gaming exec about what’s right and wrong with the industry. I talked to a developer about what it’s like to make a video game alongside Nintendo.
And my kids pitched in! They gave us impressions of Princess Peach’s game and Cat Quest III. They also each had a question for the makers of Astro Bot.
Thank you for indulging me in that list (or for scrolling past it and still being here!).
My promises to Game File readers (and how Game File works)
As year two begins, my most basic pledge remains the same: Game File readers, I work for you. My job is to write true and interesting things about video games for you to read. I’m here to cover the culture and business of games, to talk to people in gaming, to play games and to write about all of that in a way that enlightens and doesn’t put you to sleep.
Other promises/pledges/details:
Game File remains a thrice-weekly publication (at least). One newsletter a week will remain free.
No preying on your fear of missing out. Yes, most posts on Game File are paywalled, but I will continue to put those paywalls low enough that free readers will still understand what the news is. Headlines, too, will continue to be written to inform you, not to be so vague that you feel manipulated into clicking.
I’ll continue to write personal notes that set up (and summarize) each edition of Game File. I’ve been running these atop the emailed versions of the newsletter. If you read online or via the Substack app, you’ve missed them. Sorry! I’m aware of that and am considering alternate ways to deliver these notes. TBD.
I haven’t made a lot of noise about it, but Game File has its very own reader chat. (You can access it via the link here or within the Substack app). All readers can participate in the chat by starting threads or replying to existing ones. The chat can also be used for live-blogging, which I think went over really well during The Game Awards. I’d love to get chat more lively in year two and welcome more readers to join in.
Everyone who writes a post like this says they want to do more with video and podcasts in the year ahead. Sure. Why not? Video and podcasts in year two, somehow. Look, I was gazing into my laptop camera to record and post “lunchtime videos” about my reporting back in 2007, from my work desk at MTV News (right next to Kurt Loder’s office). I was essentially a YouTuber before most people had heard of YouTube.
I share Game File work on social media, using my personal accounts: X/Twitter (not using that one as much), Threads (same), and Blue Sky (my preferred option). Please follow those if you want updates in your feeds. I’m unsure if I’ll be more active with Substack’s own Notes network this year. It didn’t seem super worth it in the first year, but I could be wrong.
I syndicate some of Game File’s free stories to Polygon. We began testing that approach in November. Game File’s paid stories won’t be syndicated to outside outlets.
I’m always interested in story ideas and tips. You can email me at stephen@gamefile.news or stephentotilo@protonmail.com (or if you receive Game File via email, just by replying—it goes right to me). I’m also happy to chat confidently with sources over Signal. You can reach out to get my number there.
The future
My hope for Game File’s second year is that growth is strong enough to prove that I can do this full-time for the foreseeable future.
It’s not quite there yet.
I am hopeful that I will reach that point in 2025, but I’m new to independent media and don’t know what twists are ahead.
My dream for Game File, for the years beyond, is that Game File becomes more than just The Stephen Totilo Show.
The media business is a mess. Games media has not been spared. Establishment publications keep cutting staff. And a lot of reporting talent is not getting the support their work merits.
It’s not good for those reporters, not good for readers, and I dare say it’s not good for gaming.
I know what a strong team of reporters on the gaming beat can accomplish. I’ve been there with the teams that I had the privilege to help build at MTV News, Kotaku and Axios.
I am confident that adding even just one or two more writers to Game File would be transformative.
Thinking about this takes me back to that spend-money-to-make-money paradigm. It gets me thinking about just when subscriber growth could be sufficient to try to expand: I think it’d take around 1200-1500 paid sign-ups to justify each additional full-timer. It’d take far fewer to bring in freelance writers, freelance illustrators and other contributors.
If you like the sound of this—if you like the idea of Game File becoming a platform for more reporters to cover gaming with dogged, yet earnest curiosity—then you can help make it happen. If Game File’s growth curve starts showing me that that kind of expansion is possible, I will happily let you all know!
For now… year two is ahead.
It’ll be a year of Switch 2, GTA VI (right?), probably more Ubisoft drama and who knows what else. I can promise you—within the next couple of weeks—that I will deliver one of the most unusual interviews of my career.
I can also simply promise you more of the same from Game File: Which means a lot of original reporting, a lot of info you hopefully haven’t read elsewhere, some picks about games that are worth your time to play, and a lot of words that I hope you’ll be excited to read.
Thank you so much to everyone who has helped make the first year so wonderful. It’s been a thrilling start.
Great stuff this year, the quality of content is amazing for a thrice-weekly, single person publication!
Congrats on an amazing year of games journalism! You are an inspiration Stephen!