We were lucky to catch up with Kate Hunter & Emily Merritt recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Kate Hunter & Emily Merritt, thank you so much for opening up with us about some important, but sometimes personal topics. One that really matters to us is overcoming Imposter Syndrome because we’ve seen how so many people are held back in life because of this and so we’d really appreciate hearing about how you overcame Imposter Syndrome.
As women who are creating content within the gaming space, imposter syndrome is honestly part of the package. Whether you’re a relatively new gamer, or having been playing games your whole life, or whether you generally stick to “cozy” games versus traditional AAA genres like shooters or action titles, it really doesn’t matter. There’s always going to be some faction of the male gaming community that wants to shout you down, and say you don’t have the credentials to call yourself a “gamer.” We’ve been really lucky so far in that we haven’t had to deal with these attitudes directly very often, but you can still feel their presence in the gaming community at large. It can really weigh on you!
We believe that community is the solution to overcoming so many challenges, and it has been essential in how we’ve worked to overcome imposter syndrome. The process of building genuine, deep relationships with other creators who don’t fit the “straight white male” gamer demographic, has been really transformative in how we see ourselves and our content. Feeling the profound impact that our friends’ work has had on us, and how powerful it can be to see yourself represented in gaming media, showed us that our voices are not only valid in the gaming space, but really valuable.
Cultivating a strong community around our work has helped us decenter ourselves from the content we create at times, in really helpful ways. For example, one of the greatest privileges that comes with producing our podcast is getting to highlight other creators with diverse backgrounds, who we deeply admire. So, in that way, whether or not we feel in the moment that we “deserve” to be hosting a gaming podcast, we can put that feeling aside because we get to feature folks who we know deep in our bones have an important perspective to share with our audience.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
We founded, produce, and co-host No Small Games, an indie game podcast where we recap and review indie video games from a wide range of genres. We met while streaming gaming content on Twitch, and bonded over our love of Animal Crossing New Horizons and indie games. Although we both have very different personal journeys when it comes to gaming, we both felt that games had a very profound impact on our lives and wanted to use the podcast to demonstrate how profound games can be and how much work and passion it takes to create them.
We also each bring our own unique perspective on gaming, drawing from our professional lives outside of content creation. Kate is the Arts Office Program Manager at a college in Maine, and Emily is a freelance Software Engineer, so our respective work informs how we think about game design from an artistic and technical perspective.
Another huge facet of the podcast, and something that we got really lucky on as business partners and co-hosts, is that we just really love each other and we love talking about video games together! Not every friendship could be the foundation for a good business partnership, and vice versa, but we hit the jackpot and found both. And the quality of our friendship really comes out in the conversations we have during the show, but also in how we run the podcast from the business side. We both really want to see the show succeed and we also want to see the other person succeed and thrive as an individual, and we hope that comes through in all aspects of No Small Games.
We release No Small Games episodes every other Thursday, covering individual games in depth. We also release one episode on the last day of every month where we discuss gaming news, demos we’ve played and give quick reviews of some of the latest games that were released in the past month. You can find all our episodes, links to the podcasting platforms we’re on, as well as written reviews and other content on our website: https://nosmallgames.com/
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
When we first started exploring this concept of starting a podcast, one of the shared priorities we both had, that signaled to us that this idea and partnership had legs, was the importance we both placed on the format for the show. We had both had previous experiences of discussing starting a podcast with other collaborators, but all our past projects had fallen through in part to the group getting tripped up on the idea of establishing an episode format.
To many people, their mental image of how podcasting goes is that you turn on a mic and just start talking, but most shows live and die by their format. We knew we wanted a format that was flexible enough to generate authentic and organic conversations, but one that was structured enough to prevent us from meandering too much and that would keep audiences engaged. Throughout the year and a half that we’ve been running the show, format continues to be a main topic of discussion between us, as we’re always seeking to refine and improve the quality of our episodes.
The willingness to experiment and try new things (including things we think we might not be good at) is also a quality we both share that made No Small Games possible in the first place. We both knew from the beginning that we had a lot to learn: about producing a podcast, covering games, and about podcast marketing (which has proven to be one of the biggest challenges and greatest mysteries we’ve encountered). Luckily, we’ve both approached running No Small Games with a great eagerness to learn and to support each other along the way.
Our efforts to market and grow the show really exemplifies this willingness to experiment and push our own limits. The landscape of social media, SEO and online marketing never stops evolving, which means we always have to have our finger on the pulse of our online marketing. Whether it’s adding written articles to our website, collaborating with other video game podcasts, or completely changing up our social media content strategy, we both dive in head first to new ideas. We also regularly have retrospectives, although they’re almost always informal and frequently take place in iMessage voice memos, to assess how our experiments are going. The fact that we dive in head first to our new ideas, regardless of who conceived of the idea, helps us to have these conversations without bringing ego into the mix. There’s never any blame or shame around a new experiment not working, or “whose idea it was,” because we both commit fully and really have each others’ back at the end of the day.
Lastly, we both believe in the power of having fun as a driver of our success. Ok, before anyone rolls they’re eyes, hear us out! For one, in any kind of content creation, but especially in one as dynamic as podcasting, which revolves around conversation and ultimately the relationship we have as co-hosts, it becomes pretty clear pretty fast when the creators aren’t having fun. It shows! So even though we experiment a lot, including in ways that take us out of our comfort zone, we tend to pick new directions that we both feel excited about. We also never pursue an idea that makes either of us feel uncomfortable or unhappy.
Another reason why having fun is such an integral aspect of success for us, is that we want to be able to enjoy and celebrate our successes. Yes, seeing great analytics, metrics, getting great feedback, improving monetization, all feel good as business partners, but we don’t seek those things at the expense of how we feel about the show and each other. Maybe it comes from the belief that there are many paths to achieve success. Some may be more direct, some more windy, but we are committed to taking the path where we have a great time and get to enjoy each other’s partnership the most.
Okay, so before we go we always love to ask if you are looking for folks to partner or collaborate with?
One of our missions as a podcast is to highlight the careful thought, hard work and passion that it takes to create a video game. We called the show “No Small Games” because we believe that while some games might be shorter or simpler than others, have a smaller budget, or smaller team building them, there are no small games in terms of the impact they can have, or in terms of the effort that it takes to create them. For example, we have interviewed solo developers, who have dedicated years of their life pouring their time and effort into building a game that will touch people’s lives, and we want to highlight both the end product, and everything that went into creating it.
We look forward to interviewing more folks in our “Dev Chat” episode series, and especially hope to highlight more women, people of color, LGBTQIA+ and other folks from marginalized identities who are working on indie games. If someone is working on an indie game and would like to share their perspective on what goes into creating a game, whether they are a designer, artist, programmer, composer, voice actor, etc., whatever their role, we would love to talk with them. Our dev chat episodes feature information about the games, of course, but we’re especially interested in hearing about the design and development process, and also the human side of building games.
Folks can reach out to us at [email protected], DM us on Twitter @NoSmallGames, or check out our website https://nosmallgames.com/ to find other ways to reach us.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://nosmallgames.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nosmallgames/
- Twitter: https://x.com/nosmallgames
- Other: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0PcLUmoezEgI1m5t5sicQi?si=18b9a25ae3c84dbb
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/no-small-games/id1678674421
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