Making a play: Rob Leane on how RadioTimes.com is tapping into the video game boom with new podcast One More Life
As the Gaming Editor of RadioTimes.com, Rob Leane is used to working some odd hours. “I’ve always been an early riser rather than a night owl so if there’s a game I’m really trying to put some hours into, I play before normal work starts,” he explains. “There aren’t enough hours in the day if you’ve got a 30-hour game to play by next week and you can’t stop doing your day-to-day tasks. It does seep into my personal time a bit.”
The next-level knowledge Leane has acquired clocking countless hours on consoles makes him the ideal host of RadioTimes.com’s new weekly podcast, One More Life. Launched in late September (In the week Radio Times celebrated its 100th anniversary), the programme is jam-packed with in-depth gaming content, including interviews with top developers and celebrity gamers.
The format, which not only looks at the best new releases but delves into the connection people have to certain games, was born out of Leane’s experiences interviewing industry big wigs and celebrities, in particular on the red carpet at the BAFTA Games Awards.
“I had a few questions I would ask everyone just to get the conversation going, including – what is the game you have put the most hours into?” he recalls. “It gives people a chance to show something they are joyful about rather than something they are actively trying to promote.
“So, you had Sarah Bond, one of the Vice Presidents of Xbox, talking about how she liked playing Overcooked with her husband and James Buckley of The Inbetweeners giving a great answer about his love for Football Manager and how he was playing that when his first child was being born.
“And that was the initial spark for the podcast. There are a lot of people who love gaming, but have not told those stories, so we built outwards from there.”
Joining the game
The launch of One More Life comes at a time when gaming is growing at a phenomenal rate. The global video game consumer market is projected to reach US$334 billion in 2023, dwarfing the music and film industries.
“Gaming is the most interactive form of entertainment that’s out there and investment in games production and games development has increased exponentially,” says Leane. “I think the visuals you’re getting from games are probably better than it’s ever been.
“If you weren’t a big gamer and someone dropped you into a big open-world game, you would be blown away by the attention to detail, the breadth and width of these worlds, the stories and the performances.”
The growing popularity of gaming has been reflected in the traffic to RadioTimes.com, which is run by Immediate Media Co. Since launching its coverage of the industry in earnest and hiring Leane as Games Editor in early 2021, gaming news, features and updates have consistently been some of the brand’s most-read content.
Helping RadioTimes.com get a foothold in the gaming world is the reputation for excellence the website has built over more than two decades.
“Radiotimes.com has existed for 25 years, and people have, I think, learned to trust the information that they see there, whether it’s TV listings, reviews or explainers on various different kinds of corners of entertainment. And I think gaming slotted into that quite nicely,” adds Leane.
“Readers already knew and trusted Radio Times as a place that provides answers to questions to do with entertainment. And we seem to have been accepted into that kind of bosom quite quickly. It’s been quite reassuring, since we thought we had something good to offer in that space, and it’s nice to see people come back.
“There is loyalty there and that’s part of the reason to try and add something a bit more fun and creative into the mix, like the podcast. That’s where we are right now – to see what we can add into the mix to make it not just purely informative, but also entertaining at the same time.
Starting small and providing answers
RadioTimes.com’s journey into the gaming universe was shaped by the outbreak of Covid. With people confined to their homes during lockdown and sports tournaments, new TV shows and films on ice, gaming became the perfect form of escapism.
And it was two of the most popular games during Covid that acted as a launchpad for RadioTimes.com’s new phase of gaming coverage.
“We made quite a nice collection of articles about Animal Crossing, which was a big game for people in lockdown since it’s very wholesome and has a lot of escapism. Crucially for it to work for web content, the game raised a lot of questions that we could then provide the answers to,” recalls Leane. “The other game that also had quite a big spike during lockdown was Minecraft and those were the two pillars that existed when I joined.”
According to Leane, RadioTimes.com’s approach of starting small is a good template to follow for other brands contemplating branching out into gaming coverage.
“Don’t try and do everything all at once would be my advice for starting out,” he says. “Maybe pick one game that you know is coming out, or that you think matches quite well with your readership or where kind of the culture is at the moment.
“Go for a game that’s popular and lots of people are playing it, but also which doesn’t completely hold the player’s hand and doesn’t give them every solution immediately, because although we do news and reviews and previews and lots of other different types of content, a lot of the bread-and-butter work are explainers and guides.”
Making a connection
While you are never too old to play video games, it’s younger generations who tend to spend most times in front of consoles. This means that games could be used by publishers to address one of most pressing concerns in media – engaging Gen Z and Generation Alpha.
“Yes, I think gaming in general is a good way to reach younger audiences, because younger people have grown up with it, and it’s probably been a part of their life for as long as they can remember,” says Leane. “I interviewed a few different pro Fortnite and Call of Duty players at different events and every person who joined the Zoom call looked even younger than the last person!
“But while lots of young people do love gaming, I think there’s also a flip side to that where it also depends on how you define gaming. My mum wouldn’t probably self-identify as a gamer, but she loves playing Candy Crush and she has a Nintendo DS that she does brain training on.
“So, while you can reach younger audiences through gaming, you might be surprised along the way who else you manage to reach.”
And as the gaming realm continues to grow and evolve, so will editorial teams as more gamers like Leane get an opportunity to turn their passion into a profession.
“I never explicitly set out to be a gaming journalist when I first started,” he recalls. “It kind of just happened that I went from freelancing to having a staff writer job to having a section editor job – and gaming seemed to be the door that was always kind of opening.
“Other fields didn’t seem to have as many opportunities because I think lots of media companies and brands have got to the point now where they’ve identified that gaming isn’t going away. This is something that’s growing.”
