Why Jason Schreier started a YouTube channel

Like so many journalists — employed, unemployed, precariously employed — I have been ruminating over YouTube. The People’s Platform! The next frontier for journalism. And also, the app that has slowly edged out podcasts on the “stuff I put on when I’m doing chores or showering” charts. So when Jason Schreier, a Bloomberg reporter best known for longform features that pull back the curtain on the game development process, launched a charmingly lo-fi YouTube channel, it felt like a moment. (Maybe this is only true to nerds like me.)

Schreier is, without exaggeration, probably the single best-known professional video game journalist. You might not necessarily assume that from his YouTube channel. In his videos, he sits at his desk, speaking toward the camera but not necessarily into it, and works through a single subject in a seemingly-unbroken 15 to 20 minute take: Why Video Games Cost So Much To Make; The Real Reason E3 Died; etc. The videos are calm and understated and informative and immediately popular — a genuine outlier in the YouTube gaming space. People have described them as “anti rage-bait.”

Naturally, I wanted to know everything. The process. The inspiration. The strategy. As you will see — starting from the very first response — I may have approached the interview from the wrong angle. I think you will enjoy it.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.¹

ReaderGrev: To a lot of people, I think you are the video game feature writer, the investigative reporter. Why start a YouTube channel if you’re already one kind of guy in people's minds?²

Jason Schreier: I don't really have a good reason for that. I just kind of started it on a whim, and was pretty surprised in many ways at the reception that the channel has gotten. I didn't put a ton of thought into it. I was just like: Hey, I have a lot to say about Destiny. Why don't I just record myself talking about it for a little bit? And then from there it was like: Oh, I could just keep doing this.

Tell me a little bit about your process. What steps do you take before the camera turns on?

Schreier: This is also not going to be a very satisfying answer, because the explanation here is: not very much. I see this YouTube channel as social media promotion for my written work. And if it's satisfying to people just on its own, that's great.

There was one video I made about how things got so bad at Xbox where I wrote an outline for myself because there was a lot of story to tell, and I just wanted to make sure I didn't forget any of it. But most of these that I've done have been completely off the cuff, and I've posted a bunch of links to my Bloomberg articles in the descriptions with gift links, so hopefully people can go check those out and read them because I'm still a full-time reporter at Bloomberg. That's my day job, and this YouTube channel is very much a supplement to or kind of a promotion of that.

I also should note: I have not broken, and have no plans to break any news in these videos, because that is what Bloomberg is for.

Tell me a bit more about how the videos might supplement the paywalled work. Is there a world in which you break news, and then a week later you go on video and you say: Here's the news that I broke; if you didn't see it on Bloomberg, here it is? How do you see the relationship between the written output and the video output?

Schreier: You, in that question, have given it more thought than I have. Again, this is really an off the cuff thing.

A rule that I set for myself is that I will not do any video that takes me more than 30 minutes to do in any way. People have been asking me for captions and stuff, and YouTube auto generates captions, but to do your own captions you have to do a whole process — and sorry, I just do not have the bandwidth for that. This channel will only continue to exist as long as it is something that does not detract from my day-to-day workload and breaking news and my Bloomberg duties. I see it as equivalent to my Bluesky or LinkedIn, where I promote my articles. It just stands on its own a little bit more, and offers value a little bit more on its own.

It's so funny that you say that. So many of my questions — I'm frantically leafing through everything I've prepared — are about how intentional this is versus just a byproduct of what you're doing, and it seems as though the answer is generally that it’s not super intentional because this is such an off the cuff thing.

Schreier: I think you can probably tell from my production value and my thumbnails that this is not something that I am putting a ton of time or energy into. I was surprised by the positive reception and how much attention it's gotten, and I think that's a good thing and I'm glad people are enjoying the videos, but certainly don't expect me to start making elaborate documentaries anytime soon. That is not my job, and not something I want to do for a living. I am a writer first and foremost.

I've been podcasting for more than 11 years at this point, through Kotaku Splitscreen and then Triple Click, my current podcast, so I’ve gotten a little bit better over the years at talking and telling stories verbally, and I think this is an extension of that. But it is also not what I want to do for a living, and not what I plan to do full time. This YouTube channel, I see it as another vector of storytelling that hopefully can feed more people into the written work.

I want to ask about the videos you've chosen to make so far. To me, looking back at what you've published, it feels as though there’s a general through-line. But how would you characterize your output — the kind of editorial project you're on, if there even is one?

Schreier: Again, I haven't put a ton of thought into it. I think using this as a place to explain what's going on to an audience that maybe isn't checking Bloomberg for their gaming news is how I'm mostly thinking about it.

I wish I had more satisfying answers for you, but I really don't. This is just something that is kind of like an afterthought for me. I hope it doesn't come across as like a dick thing to say, because obviously it's gotten a lot of subscribers and views, and so I feel a little bit conflicted about saying that, knowing that a lot of people out there have tried to do YouTube channels and not seen that kind of success, and for me to be like, oh, this is just something I'm shitting out on the side, kind of makes me seem like a jerk, but it really is. And I don't want to lie and be like: Yes, I have given this a lot of careful intentionality, when again, it's really just a supplemental thing to my full-time job that I just really haven't thought that much about it.

I mean, I woke up one morning last week and thought to myself: Hey, I've been talking a lot about bleak stuff all the time; Why don't I just share a few fun E3 stories on YouTube? And then I just recorded myself for, what was it, 17 minutes, and just uploaded it. That's the amount of thought that I'm giving to this stuff.

I think that's a fascinating answer. A lot of the people in the comments I've seen have called your videos “anti rage-bait” — and I think I read into, interpreting it as intention and strategy. But you’re just sitting down for 20 minutes at a time and speaking extemporaneously.

Schreier: Yes, that is an accurate way to put it, except for that Xbox one where I had an outline. Again, I think the lack of intentionality just draws from me seeing this as social media promotion and an opportunity to just reach people with the stuff I'm doing.

The next time you see a big investigation from me — I don't know, I haven't given this much thought — maybe I'll do a video companion to it that I'll prepare ahead of time and be able to publish around the same time that the article comes up, and that way if people want to just get the video version of that, they can just watch it on my channel instead of watching some other YouTuber aggregate it and read it out loud. I think that could be a good thing. But again, the idea is to drive more people toward my written storytelling, and if they don't want to read, and if they'd rather just watch videos, then that's okay too.

I did a cursory search, and plenty of people are already live-reacting to and making YouTube shorts about the videos you've been putting out, so I think you will not escape the content mill, even as you go into video.

Schreier: I think anyone who watches my videos will be able to tell — just from the way that I operate and how I talk and how I tell stories and whatnot — that you're not going to find me getting into some shouting match with other YouTubers, or cutting their clips, or, like, talking about all the anti-woke people, or any of that other stuff. I just have no interest in that world.

If this channel can provide a little bit of a bastion for informed analysis and reporting, and talking about games in a way that isn't super rage-bait-y — then great, that's fantastic. To me, it's beneficial to have people on YouTube who maybe wouldn't read my articles or didn't really know much about me, to be able to just come and find my channel and see who I actually am and how I talk about these things. I think that having these other YouTubers clipping my videos and whatnot, if even a fraction of that audience goes and checks out the source for themselves and sees who I am and how I talk about this stuff, I think that will maybe kind of change their viewpoints, or dissuade some misconceptions they might have, because they'll see what I'm actually talking about and saying.

Have you seen the reaction you just described? Has anyone responded to say: Hey, I had such and such misconception about you, but I watched your videos and realized that was not entirely accurate?

Schreier: Yes, quite a few. I've also been surprised at how many other professionals, game developers, have reached out to me and been like: Hey, love your videos. People who have never reached out to me based on an article. I mean, it's actually a little bit bleak and depressing, honestly, how many more people want to watch things than read them.

But I've been pleasantly surprised with the reactions. You can scroll through my comments and I think pretty much on all the videos, the comments have been so uniformly positive that it's been really heartening to see. Hopefully that continues until I say something dumb and get canceled.

Should more game journalists be pivoting to video?

Schreier: I have no idea.

I’ve had a very fortunate career.  I've been very lucky to work for some amazing people and work with some amazing people, and had some amazing mentors and editors. But when people ask me: "Hey, what should I do? Give me some advice," I don't really have good answers for them because my story is so unique. I don't think what works for me can necessarily apply for anybody else. This field has been decimated so badly that it's just hard for me to offer advice.

I try to give advice and mentor people on a one-on-one level whenever I can, but just being like, "Yes, more people should use YouTube," doesn't really seem like an actual stance to take. People need to kind of find their own paths and see what works for them, and I don't know how viable any of them are these days, but hopefully there's at least a couple.

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1  For transparency’s sake, my changes are largely focused on cleaning up “ums,” “likes” and “ahs,” whittling down questions to let you get to the answers faster, and cutting certain parts of answers (or entire exchanges) that are redundant or irrelevant or which make sense over audio but not over text. My goal is never to change the meaning of what’s been said to me.

2  I’ve been kicking myself over how I phrased this question. I wrote “Why start a YouTube channel?” in my interview notes — the point of the question was just “Why did you start your YouTube channel?” — but I couldn’t stop myself from just blabbing on, hence the kind of stupid phrasing. I wrote a bit about this bad habit of mine last year. I could edit it down to the more legible version but that seems wrong: It’s not the question I asked! Jason’s answer, thankfully, was mostly responsive to the question I meant to ask, and not the one I did, in fact, ask.