AVING News and Games Press have announced the media partnership. Based in the United Kingdom, Games Press has been a one-stop PR resource for the video game industry since its launch in 2000. Used daily by thousands of game journalists worldwide, the site is constantly updated with the latest press releases, screenshots, and videos from game publishers and developers. To commemorate this, AVING conducted a special interview with Jonathan Davies, the Production Director of Games Press.
Q. Could you briefly introduce Games Press?
Games Press is where game journalists find the latest official announcements, screenshots, and videos issued by publishers and developers. They can use these when creating their content.
Press releases and PR assets can be added directly to the site via our Games Press Elite service or submitted via email. We also host a network of online press rooms for several major game publishers, where they announce through our central site.
Games Press includes a searchable database with filters to help journalists find news that interests them, and we send an email to our users each day summarising the latest announcements.
Since we launched Games Press, we’ve published over 220,000 press releases for 56,000 games and enlisted 11,000 registered users from 176 countries.
Q. We heard Games Press has a long history. What’s the background behind its start?
We had the idea for Games Press nearly 25 years ago when my colleague Steve Owen and I wrote articles for games magazines here in the UK. I’d been working in games journalism since the 1980s, beginning on a magazine about the Sinclair ZX Spectrum (did that ever make it to Korea?) and continuing through the Commodore Amiga to Nintendo consoles and PC gaming. They were simple, happy times.
But then the internet arrived, and life as a games journalist suddenly became more complicated. We no longer receive press releases by post. Instead, they arrived by email – sometimes five or ten at a time! And with them came screenshots, videos, links, and logins for hundreds of different FTP sites and online press rooms. Before long, it had become impossible to keep track of all this material, especially during busy times like the annual E3 Expo. We decided something had to be done to simplify life for journalists like us.
Games Press began as a UK website aimed mainly at print magazines. However, we soon started getting registrations from journalists overseas, and press releases began arriving from across Europe, North America, and Asia. We’re now a global site, and our team loves to help developers worldwide spread the word about their games.
Q. What do you think about Korean video games?
Nobody is more enthusiastic about gaming than Koreans! You guys invented online games and esports, and we love the amazing scenes in those stadiums where you hold the finals.
Meanwhile, outside Korea, many Korean games have built up loyal fanbases – MapleStory, PUBG, Black Desert… the list is growing. And while Korean games are renowned for their speed and intensity, it’s great that some of your more esoteric storytelling adventures are also starting to get localized into Western languages.
More generally, Korean culture is suddenly big news here in the West. It started with Parasite’s sweep of the Oscars, and then we couldn’t get enough of Squid Game, but now BTS seems to be everywhere. So, it’s a great time to join the K-wave by sending your games over here.
Q. As the person in charge of the platform providing materials to game media worldwide, do you have any suggestions for Korean companies?
Everyone here is eager to know the next big thing out of Korea. So, if your game is popular in Korea but unknown to the outside world, please tell us about it!
It is a good idea to employ a PR agency familiar with markets outside Korea to help tailor your news to a non-Korean audience. The press releases we receive from Korea are often written and formatted very differently from those from Europe and North America. Some of the cultural references can be difficult for us to grasp. But the games always look exciting!