Had some exciting conversations today, and I think it’s probably all right if I tease a few details of what I’ve been up to… and what I’m going to be up to.

After my post the other day regarding game criticism, the modern games press and ways that we might all do things a bit better, I got to talking with a few people, one of whom was Mr Matt Sainsbury over at Digitally Downloaded. Matt and I have been trying to find an opportunity to work together for quite some time, but the whole thing of there really not being much money in the enthusiast press scene made me hesitant. I didn’t want to get myself into a situation where I was working my ass off and creating work I was really pleased with and not being able to be appropriately compensated for it, in other words. (This isn’t anything against Matt or Digitally Downloaded, I might add; rare indeed is the enthusiast gaming site that actually pulls in enough money to pay its staff, which is one of the big problems with the ad-based revenue model I talked about.)

Anyway, long story short: our conversations about magazines attracted a decent amount of interest, and so we decided to discuss things further. And then we decided to act on these discussions by attempting to put together an honest-to-goodness magazine about games, providing the sort of coverage that we want to read, and covering the sorts of games that could really do with a bit more love from the press in general.

Our approach is going to be to take a different “topic” or “genre” (the latter inspired by literary criticism rather than game mechanics) for each issue, and then focus the whole issue around it. We’re nailing down the specifics of the complete format, but this will allow us the flexibility to write some long-form essays about topics that interest us, as well as shorter reviews for games that fit in with the topic. Crucially, going with a topic-based approach rather than keeping things tied to whatever has come out recently means that each issue can effectively be “timeless” and collectible, remaining constantly relevant rather than only being relevant for the month of release. The traditional periodical model of games magazines is of no use whatsoever in the age of instant information on the Internet, so it’s much better to use the print medium for things it’s particularly suited for — in this case, long-form writing presented in a visually attractive manner. (Hopefully, anyway; it’ll be my first time flexing my DTP muscles for quite some time!)

Here’s a couple of cover mockups I and another Digitally Downloaded staffer put together earlier; that should give you a nice little teaser!

If you think all this sounds quite similar to what we were doing with the Squadron of Shame SquadCast during the period where we experimented with topic-based shows, you’d be absolutely right — though the nature of print means that the approach is somewhat different. Regrettably, we’ve really struggled to get people together and/or fired up for recording further podcasts, so that’s been on the back-burner for a while. In the meantime, then, there is this project, and I’m really excited about it.

I’ve written a lot of things over the past few years — not just on this blog, but professionally, and in other personal places, too — but there’s something that will always be magical and wonderful about print media to me. The prospect of being involved in print media always makes me far more excited than the possibility of getting my words on a website — and always has done. I think it’s to do with the potential for having a tangible, physical object in your hands at the end of it all as the fruits of your labours rather than “just” words on a website. I mean, in both cases the important thing is still the words that you’ve written, but there’s something I just love about being able to hold something I’ve written, pick it up, show it to people, read it on the toilet and whatever.

So yes. That’s what I’m going to be up to alongside the other work I’m doing at the moment. We’re aiming for our first issue to release around the end of next month (probably just digitally initially, we’ll look at genuine physical print options later), so please watch out for it and consider grabbing a copy! Also, if you’re interested in participating and contributing, let me know, privately if need be!