Interview: Polygon's Chris Plante
This week I had some PR questions for Polygon co-founder, editor-in-chief, and fellow Substack aficionado Chris Plante.
We talk about what makes Polygon unique and how to pitch them, Chris’s top three PR “don’ts,” and why the rise of newsletters may become an increasingly important PR opportunity. Chris had fun, thoughtful, and insightful answers that I guarantee are worth your time!
Here’s the full interview:
First things first, what’s the key to a good interview?
If I had to boil down everything I've learned about interviews into a single rule, it would be this:
Ask questions only your subject can answer -- and hasn't answered somewhere else already.
Polygon has gone through many changes since the site was first introduced, adding an entertainment section, expanding on video coverage, and dropping review scores, to name a few. How would you describe Polygon to someone now? In your view, what do you think makes a quintessential “Polygon” story?
Here’s the elevator pitch I would make at the top of every general meeting, back when in-person meetings were a thing:
The entertainment world is overcrowded, hyper-competitive, anxiety inducing, and intimidating. There are too many choices and too many distractions, so the average person ends up spending as much time scrolling through apps as they do actually enjoying media. Which is a shame, because deep within this mountain of choice, there are works of beauty and joy; there are big and challenging ideas; there is fun!
Think of Polygon as your tour guide through the chaos. We’re local to this messy space. We live inside it and we speak its language. With our expertise, we will point you to what matters, and provide illumination so that you can better understand and appreciate the stuff we find together.
All of which is to say: hey, we’re an entertainment site for young folks who have the entire history of entertainment available from their smartphone and often don’t know what the hell to do with all of it.
As a result, the audience has become both omnivorous (they don’t care about the medium) and fiercely loyal to their fandoms, which help simplify their choices.
So, for example, if our audience loves Animal Crossing, then they will read our guides, but they’ll also want to know about Animal Crossing TikTok memes and fashion inspired by Animal Crossing and celebrities giving Animal Crossing tours. They will share Animal Crossing fan art and Animal Crossing fan fiction. They’ll get Animal Crossing tattoos and maybe purchase illegal Animal Crossing Etsy merch.
They’re fans of Animal Crossing as a pop-culture touchstone, not merely as a video game. In fact, many of them may never even play Animal Crossing. They might only experience it second hand. And that’s not just okay. It rules.
Of course this line of thinking applies to so much more than Animal Crossing. You could say the same things for The Witcher, superhero comics, Disney Channel Original Movies, or the Mamma Mia Cinematic Universe.
Polygon is seeing fandoms and communities bring people together around shared interests, without one medium gatekeeping enjoyment. And we’re actively documenting and participating in this pop culture shift.
So what’s a Polygon story: show me something that will bring my audience together, and I’ll show you something worth writing about. It doesn’t need to be part of a major franchise, but it does need a reason to exist, something that helps us separate it from the infinite other things people can do with their free time, and ideally something our readers will want to share with one another.
What are some of your favorite or the most memorable pitches you've seen in your career? What about them really stood out to you?
When I was still clawing my way into the media, I had dinner with Shaun Norton and a band of developers from a now-defunct studio called Recoil Games. This was at GDC 20… something. Quite a while ago.
Anyway, I’d just gotten fired from UGO and Hearst, and was grasping for freelance work at News Corp’s soon-to-be-forgotten iPad only newspaper, The Daily. Shaun had genuinely liked my writing and how I handled interviews, so despite me not really having an outlet, he wanted to pitch me on a story about Recoil, a squad of ex-Remedy employees making an action-puzzle game called Rochard.
There was no pre-planned pitch per say. Shaun knew he had some genuinely interesting folks and that I loved to get into the nitty gritty, so during that dinner we discussed all sorts of stuff: a canceled game called Earth No More, the Finnish graphics demo scene, the legacy of 3D Realms, and a half dozen other topics. I ended up writing about Rochard at some point, but that conversation inspired at least four other features over the following years at The Daily and eventually Polygon.
The lesson here isn’t to take me to dinner: seriously, please don’t. When I go to GDC, I want to do my job and get some sleep in a hotel room without my beautiful, brilliant, and very loud son.
The lesson is that, should you be so lucky to have interesting clients and curious journalists, don’t be afraid to let everybody go off script. People in the games industry tend to have rich, strange, and relatable stories, and you should trust journalists to uncover those stories and share them. I ended up covering this small studio quite a bit, because I had the chance to discover why I should care about them, rather than have someone tell me why I should care.
So that’s my advice for a big, meaty feature: think of yourself more like a party host connecting interesting people, and less like a referee forcing two sides to play by your rules.
As for more common and smaller pitches, maybe for a trailer or a review, keep things simple.
If you send me an email pitch, be concise and start with the most interesting bits that align with my interests. If you can fit all of this into the subject line, please do! I receive hundreds of emails a day. That is not hyperbole. These days, my favorite pitches could be a great tweet. “Hey Chris. The game is made by “TKTKT” and you loved “TKTKTK” which they co-created in the past. It does [insert interesting things]. Can I send you a Steam code?”
Sure!
If you could list three PR “don’ts” specific to you… ?
Don’t pretend to follow up on a conversation we never had. This one is relatively new. I’ve been getting more and more emails with subject lines like “Following up on our call,” when I never had said call. Some even confess in the email that they were just trying to get my attention. No! You did a bad! Admitting you did a bad thing doesn't make it good!
Related. Only call me if I’m running late to an appointment we scheduled and you’re worried I got lost in Kentia Hall. Or if you have a correction for a story on the site. Otherwise, don’t call me. Please! There are a million ways to reach me that aren’t my cell phone. This doesn’t mean we can’t chat on the phone or Zoom, I love to chat! But ping me via email first so we can set a time that’s good for both of us.
Don’t send me junk. Please, please, please stop. Don’t send me or anybody on my team posters, koozies, t-shirts, beach balls, or who knows whatever else. I already have enough of my kid’s detritus clogging my hallways, the last thing I need is a hoodie covered in fake blood promoting some zombie boat racing simulator. Swag does not endear me to your product. If anything in 2020, it frustrates me having to sanitize, open, and dispose of another UPS package that contributed in some small part to the polar ice caps melting all so that I could possess my millionth novelty USB stick. I swear that if what you’re covering is interesting enough, an email with a GIF or a catchy subject line has a better shot of getting my attention.
More personally, it was cool to see the launch of your Postgame newsletter a few weeks ago. What interests you about the Substack format, and why do you think newsletters seem to be making a comeback?
Thank you!
I have zero idea why newsletters are having a moment again. People much smarter than me have some good theories. Claire Landsbaum wrote a piece for Vanity Fair last year on “peak newsletter,” and I think this nuggets is especially apt:
Yet somehow I never begrudge a new newsletter landing in my inbox. In part that’s due to the emotional connection Cai referenced—the feeling of a one-on-one interaction, even one I know is false. In part it’s because I have an inordinate amount of control over whose newsletters I get, and when. These are people whose work I have explicitly solicited, and who deliver it to me in (mostly) predictable dispatches. If I decide I don’t want it, I can unsubscribe. “If I’m super busy, I’m very quick to just delete,” said Friedman, who sent me an “incomplete list” of 68 newsletters she subscribes to herself. “I don’t feel an obligation to read every single one, nor do I expect my subscribers to read every single one.”
Honestly, I’m still trying to figure out what Substack is and how it works. A few of my friends write newsletters for Vox Media and for themselves, and it seems like a potential area of growth for Polygon. But I don’t want to launch anything serious without having learned the basics.
So, I launched Postgame.
Writing a twice-a-week round-up seemed like a low impact way to gradually figure out Substack and newsletters. I already read, watch, and play a ton of stuff from across the games community. And to be super frank, I don’t have much time to write during the weekdays. I like having the newsletter as an excuse to write before I go to bed and a little more on the weekends. At least, so far!
Here’s what I’ve learned after a month of doing this, admittedly a small amount of time:
Substack is above all else a pleasurable tool for writing online. It’s simple and pretty. It doesn’t have a ton of design features, but that’s probably for the better, preventing folks like me from turning newsletters into gaudy messes.
Readers expect and enjoy personal tangents. Readers subscribe for the subject of the newsletter (in my case, video games) but I see tons of engagement with the silly, non-games stuff I include in each issue.
For a longtime online writer, the newsletter format is high stress. When you hit publish, the newsletter is printed like a newspaper into the subscribers’ inboxes. You can’t take the newsletter back to make a correction. That’s stressful! (You can make corrections on the Substack website.)
For a longtime online writer, the newsletter format is also low stress. There’s an energy to newsletters that reminds me of podcasts. They feel intimate and private. You’re meeting the reader on their turf, rather than them coming to your site. You’re effectively the subscribers’ guest. That’s sort of intimidating because they could kick you out whenever they like. But it’s also a privilege!
I’m still figuring things out, but I have a couple of ideas about how Polygon can do something bigger with the newsletter format, something that’s built for a large audience that would prefer notes in their inboxes over visiting our website or watching a video on our YouTube channel. We’ll see!
Lastly, what's the one thing you wish every PR person knew about pitching you or looking to work with Polygon? What about those looking for coverage who don’t have the support of a PR professional or agency?
Here’s our guide for freelancers. I hope it can also help PR understand the stories we want on the site. And here's our masthead, which will give you an idea of who to pitch.
If you don’t have the support of a PR professional, I strongly recommend you use presskit. And have concise answers to these questions:
What makes my game unique?
Why is my team the perfect group to make this game?
Why does my game matter at this moment?
Who did I make this for and why?
Subscribe to Postgame by Chris Plante on Substack.