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Episode Summary

You sent the pitch. You checked your email obsessively for two days. Nothing. No reply, no rejection, just silence. If that’s happened to you more than once, you’re not alone, and you’re probably making one of a handful of fixable mistakes.

This week I sat down with Bradly Shankar, Gaming Editor at MobileSyrup, one of the most consistent voices covering Canadian indie games in the country. Bradly has spent close to a decade in games journalism, writing for MobileSyrup, The Financial Post, and BetaKit, and interviewing hundreds of developers along the way. His team has shrunk from seven people to three over the past year, which means he has to be sharper than ever about which pitches actually get his attention.

We got into the details that most devs skip, the GIF that gets a journalist to keep scrolling instead of deleting, the estimated playtime that removes friction from a review decision, the personal story that sells harder than any feature list, and the exact reason a Friday embargo before a long weekend nearly broke a AAA game’s review coverage. We also talked about timezones, follow-up etiquette, press kits, and what to do once your article actually goes live.

If you’ve ever wondered what’s really happening on the other side of your press email, this one’s for you.

Meet Our Guest: Bradly Shankar, MobileSyrup

Bradly Shankar got his start writing for The Eyeopener, the student paper at what is now Toronto Metropolitan University, while finishing his journalism degree. He interned at MobileSyrup in early 2017, joined as a staff reporter that April, and has been there ever since. In September 2022 he was named Gaming Editor, a role that put Canadian indie coverage front and centre in his beat.

Nearly a decade later, Bradly’s byline covers everything from smartphones to streaming services, but his renewed focus over the past few years has been Canadian game makers specifically. He’s written a feature on nearly twenty games set in Canada, followed up individually with several of the developers behind them, and become one of the few journalists in the country dedicated almost entirely to spotlighting Canadian indie talent. He also covers major industry events like Summer Game Fest, Gamescom, and the Game Awards, and somehow still finds time to write movie reviews on Letterboxd and a weekly streaming column on the side.

What he’s building now, on a team that’s gone from seven people to three, is a sharper filter for what actually deserves coverage. That’s exactly why this conversation matters for any dev trying to get his attention.

Website: Mobile Syrup

LinkedIn: Bradly Shankar

Bradly on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bradshankar/

Bradly on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/bradshankar.bsky.social

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Key Takeaways

“It’s a really effective, quick, succinct way to show what the game is about. If that piques my interest, I can keep scrolling.”

— Bradly Shankar, Mobile Syrup

• Put a GIF at the top of your email. Bradly pointed to Pop Agenda, a Canadian PR firm, as one of the best examples of this. A short GIF at the top of a pitch shows what the game is about in seconds, without forcing a journalist to click through to a two-minute trailer. It removes friction and gives your pitch a much better shot at actually being read past the first line.
• Include your estimated playtime. Whether you’re sending a demo or a launch notice, telling a journalist roughly how long your game takes to finish is a small detail with a big payoff. Bradly was direct about this: knowing if a review is a five-hour commitment or a twenty-hour commitment changes how he plans his week, and devs who leave that detail out are making his job harder for no reason.
• Let your own personality come through. Bradly called out Evolve PR specifically for injecting wit and charm into their pitches instead of writing a stiff, generic press release. People are more likely to keep reading an email that feels like it was written by a real person with a sense of humour. There’s no reason to sound like a legal disclaimer when you’re excited about the thing you built.
• Know exactly who you’re pitching, and make it personal. The Evolve PR team reached out to Bradly directly because they knew he covers Canadian games specifically, and pitched him a feature on Studio Reset, a new Edmonton studio founded by three former BioWare veterans. That kind of targeting, knowing Bradly’s beat and tailoring the pitch to it, is what separates a pitch that lands from one that gets deleted alongside a hundred others.
• Your personal story matters as much as the game itself. Bradly brought up Cuphead, made by two brothers from Saskatchewan who remortgaged their homes to finish it, and Venba, inspired by the developer’s family immigration story, as two of the clearest examples of this. Journalists are looking for a story, not just a feature list, and the studio’s own journey can be the thing that gets a game covered in the first place.
• The channel doesn’t matter as much as being direct. Email, a DM, tagging a journalist when it’s actually relevant, all of it works according to Bradly, as long as it cuts through the noise instead of adding to it. He also pointed to in-person events like Meet to Match, used at conferences like XP Summit and the Montreal International Game Summit, as one of the most effective ways to build a real connection that outlasts a single cold email.
• Keep your email tight and link out to a press kit. Bradly’s advice was simple: don’t dump seventeen paragraphs into the body of an email. Give him the essentials up front and link to a full press kit or press release for anyone who wants more. He pointed to The Caribou Trail, a game from Montreal studio Unreliable Narrators, as an example of a press kit that included everything he needed in one place, images, press releases, storefront links, and a thorough content warning FAQ given the game’s heavy subject matter.
• Ask one specific question, respect timezones, and follow up with care. If you want a review, a preview, or coverage, say so directly, a vague “check this out” doesn’t tell a journalist what you actually need. Be mindful of when you’re sending, too. Bradly mentioned that pitches landing at 7pm his time from PR teams working West Coast hours regularly get buried under the next day’s inbox. And if you do follow up, give it a few business days and skip anything that sounds like “moving this to the top of your inbox.” Bradly was clear that phrasing like that reads as passive aggressive, and that kindness in how you word a follow-up genuinely goes a long way.
• Give way more lead time than you think you need before an embargo. Bradly brought up 007 First Light as a cautionary tale. Review codes went out to journalists on a Friday, with the embargo opening the following Tuesday, over a US long weekend. Journalists were expected to drop everything and finish a twenty-hour game in three or four days. Whatever lead time feels generous to you, give more, and always be explicit about your embargo date so nobody’s caught off guard.

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Show Notes & Mentioned Resources

About Bradly Shankar and MobileSyrup

• MobileSyrup: mobilesyrup.com
• LinkedIn: Bradly Shankar
• Blue Sky: @bradshankar.bsky.social
• Instagram: @bradshankar

PR Agencies Mentioned

• popagenda
• Evolve PR

Events and Platforms Mentioned

• XP Game Summit, Toronto
• Summer Game Fest
• MeetToMatch, a meeting platform used at conferences like XP Summit and the Montreal International Game Summit

Games and Studios Mentioned

• Cuphead
• Balatro
• Venba
• 1000xResist
• The Caribou Trail
• The Caribou Trail Press Kit
• Studio Reset
• Red Barrels
• Lil’ Guardsman and Curse of Resthaven, Hilltop Studios, Toronto, this weeks episode’s Play It Forward pick

Key Frameworks from This Episode

The lead time rule: Give journalists as much runway as possible before an embargo, especially around major showcases when everyone’s inbox is already flooded.

The GIF-first pitch: Open your press email with a short GIF that shows the game in action, so a journalist can get the gist in seconds instead of clicking through to a trailer.

The specific ask: Always tell a journalist exactly what you’re looking for, a review, a preview, or general coverage, instead of a vague “check this out.”

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