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Andrea Rene on the struggles of content creation: "Expectations DIDN'T match":

The following story is spun out of an episode of the Hit The Limit Break podcast. The interview has been edited for concise reading. For the full conversation, check out the video below.


You can also find the interview on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and Pocket Casts.

 

At the end of 2024, after seven years of programming, host and producer Andrea Rene’s weekly show What’s Good Games, that she hosted with several peers, came to a close, but the writing on the wall had been there long before its final episode. “We had been talking about it for a few years,” says Rene. “Really since [co-host] Brittney and I became moms. We came back [from maternity leave] and realized just how difficult it was to prioritize playing games, and making sure we were informed of the news, and getting ready for the show every week, while also being full time moms of infants.”


Of course, like any big decision, other factors played a role in Rene and her co-hosts’ choice to end What’s Good Games. ”We learned over time that we had this compulsion to keep covering what was popular versus what was really exciting to us, and trying to split that balance between doing the things we were passionate about and managing SEO became increasingly difficult when we had fewer hours,” says Rene.


Andrea Rene

On top of that internal pressure, external pressures caused by other games media outlets letting go of staff, or shutting their doors down all together, also had a hand in the team’s decision. ”We didn’t want something to happen where we don’t get to choose what is happening to the show,” says Rene. “Let’s end it on our own terms. Let’s make it the celebration we want it to be.”


When What’s Good Games launched, the industry was in a very different place. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds had just released, and Fortnite was on very few people’s radars. The Electronic Entertainment Expo was still a massive event that took place in Los Angeles every summer, and producer Geoff Keighley’s The Game Awards had only recently spun out from under Spike TV.


Reflecting on the seven plus years since the launch of the show in May of 2017,

”My expectations absolutely do not match. I never in my wildest dreams imagined what What’s Good Games would end up becoming,” says Rene.


Screenshot from first episode of What's Good Games

While many things have changed, some things have stayed the same, including the treatment women (and other targeted groups) often experience in the gaming space. While Rene launched and continued to host What’s Good Games up until the end exclusively with other women (save for guest hosts), there was a very clear desire to not have it be a ”girl gamer show” as she puts it.


“[At launch] We were a show led by 4 professionals with a combined 35 years of experience in the industry, from development to marketing to media to community. All areas we had covered,” says Rene. "We wanted to have a space where we could be nerdy and feel like we weren’t constantly criticized, or ridiculed, or judged for our opinions not being “gamer” enough, which was something that was happening to all of us, and still happens to this day. Even people who know me still ask me if I play video games.”


On the business side of the show, another factor that had an effect was the monetary aspect of production. While What’s Good Games had a Patreon, support through it paled in comparison to the overall viewership of its programming. “Only 5% of our audience supported What’s Good Games monetarily, which is very common, by the way. Most audiences are that way,” says Rene.


Coupled with shifting economic changes, continuing to fund What’s Good Games became a challenge. ”We were so anxious when we raised our Patreon [cost] the first time, but the platform and credit card fees went up. Taxes went up. If we only have a dollar as the tier, we were only taking 25 cents of that dollar,” says Rene.


For more from our conversation with Andrea Rene, please watch the full episode of Hit the Limit Break. Also, consider donating to help build the Limit Break Network into a video game outlet for the future (more details in our FAQ)!

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