Girls on Games: Changing to an Audio-First Product

Personal project

Girls on Games started as a video game and geek culture blog. After dabbling in written articles, video reviews and streaming video gameplay on platforms like Twitch and Mixer, we have focused our content production efforts on our key product: our weekly podcast.

Working from our existing visual branding and editorial style guide, we made Girls on Games an audio-first product.

Above: The Girls on Games Podcast on Google Podcasts

Spark a Conversation

The GoGCast is all about sparking a conversation. Whether it’s the cast discussing news, trends and games or interviewing someone from the gaming industry, we aim to keep the conversation flowing in a natural way. We want to step away from the “rough around the edges gamer” tropes. We mostly aim to entertain with our casual, and sometimes heated, banter. When reviewing our show’s format, we made sure it kept the conversation flowing seamlessly.

We commissioned composer Jonathan Biegen to refresh our jingle. The result is an audio signature that is modern, peppy and undeniably techno.

I made simple effective graphic templates to create appealing assets for each episode. 

Above: examples of episode graphics on the Girls on Games website, Podbean, Instagram stories and Twitter.

Keep Talking

This change in product also means a change in voice for our social media accounts. Beyond sharing noteworthy video game news, we also aim to spark conversation within our community. We encourage our listeners to discuss news events and the games they are currently playing. When it comes to metrics, we focus less on impressions in favour of engagement. It’s all about building a community and keeping the conversation going.

Above: engagement posts on Twitter and Instagram Stories

The Talk of the Town

By focusing on our audio product, we were able to grow our audience at a much quicker pace. Our listenership grew by 35% within a year. We’ve also enjoyed a wider reach thanks to new podcasting platforms like iHeartRadio and Spotify.