A New Magazine?
A few weeks back my friend Kit La Touche raised the question “why aren’t there more Gypsy Brewery-like behaviors in game design?” [1]
I had to ask what he meant, and he described a scenario in which a brewery does not maintain its own facilities and instead travels around doing collaborative efforts with other breweries.
The analogy of the brewery facility in this case is that of the publishing imprint. So we could theoretically work together to put something out under a co-branded Transneptune/Brooklyn Indie games label. It strikes me as a really good excuse to go visit my friends, too — with the added benefit that it could lead to additional product/income.
Will Hindmarch chimed in that the description sounded like Freelancers – except that most freelancers are not given real credit as collaborators (with some exceptions). I can think of a handful of reasons why that might be for more formally organized businesses, but its frankly silly for independents not to.
Add this to Rob Donoghue’s thoughtful G+ post [2] about a gaming-focused version of Marco Arment’s new “The Magazine” app (which publishes four thousand-word essays about technology on a twice-monthly basis), and you have a really interesting idea for a new kind of gaming magazine.
There have been/are a few gaming magazines of note. I read Dungeon in the past while its counterpart Dragon was the more essential one. Star Wars Gamer sadly died before its time, and I don’t know the status of RPGirl zine. Which leaves Kobold Quarterly which is really quite specific in its focus as a D&D/Pathfinder/Other-Medieval-Fantasy-RPG extension.
Much of Rob’s thoughts about “The Magazine” occupy a tough space for games as a lot of the concern is about the iOS Newsstand feature vs. general mobile platform delivery. I’m personally much more aimed at platform agnostics and could put together a mobile-friendly web site without much trouble; and then offer individual access/download.
I’m curious if there is a market for such a thing. We’re certainly not short of potential content — it seems like it might just need the means to make it happen.
If you’re interested in either subscribing to such a thing, or producing paid content for such an endeavor – please let me know.
1. http://twitter.com/kobutsu/status/253604742075404288
2. https://plus.google.com/u/0/104915224203075819082/posts/ev238b94rfy
4 comments
Let’s do it.
I’m going to assume that by “magazine” you mean periodical, and not just the form factor.
What you’re talking about will be no small task. People periodically think “hey, a magazine would be cool,” and that we haven’t had one yet from indieland beyond RPGGirl (which was more like two single-shot anthologies than a magazine) will tell you how well that idea gets traction. That was the intent behind Push, vol 1. There was talk about this idea on the IPR publishers mailing list years ago. I was going to do a RPG Podcasters magazine with Chris Perrin at one point. And so on.
A magazine combines all the problems on making a game anthology with all the problems of making a periodical. And it’s not that people wouldn’t be interested; it’s that it’s a lot of work on the editorial end, and what it serves writers in other arenas — paid freelance credit and “omg I’m published” vibes — isn’t something that our subculture is necessarily looking for. We also don’t tend to do things that fit in the space of a magazine article, because our subculture is about many various games, not supporting/creating content for one large game.
I don’t mean to naysay (though I recognize that I probably am), but I do feel the need to point out that this is not a new idea as it is a commonly abandoned one. Maybe you’ll be the ones to change that, and that would be awesome, but you’re talking about a lot of work for potentially low reward. And doing that once is one thing; doing that repeatedly is another.
Also, Pyramid Magazine still exists, so it’s not just KQ.
- Ryan
The problem, to my mind, is not that there’s not enough content – there clearly is – but that there’s *too much*. It is easy to make something that publishes everything, but very hard to curate.
-Rob D.
Rob: I’d say too much potential content. Curating & editing many submissions are not trivial tasks (which you know, and I very much firsthand know).