Kill Screen Magazine

Kyle Orland, over at CrispyGamer, just outlined a new gaming magazine that is on the horizon: Kill Screen. This is not the gaming magazine to which we are quite accustomed, however.

The premise is that it began on KickStarter for its funding, and proposes to be responsible to its readers by focusing on their monetary contribution to thrive (though does not absolutely rule out ads at some later point). Instead of focusing on game news, it wishes to present articles. As the project's page states:

There is a single question that we are fixated upon -- "What does it mean to play games?" We want to be what early Rolling Stone was to rock n' roll or Wired was to tech. We want to look like the Fader and walk like the Believer. We're talking about the long format read on the creative minds behind AAA and indie game titles sided by the personal essays about what games mean as part of our daily little lives. There are intersections between the games and everything else that are only beginning to be explored. The minds of the videogame world are woefully faceless and we should change that.

Instead of having to constantly explain again and again why videogames matter, the thought was to make a print magazine that could break out of the vicious review/news cycle, and yet allow for a more thoughtful approach to the medium we happen to love.

Chris Dahlen, another of the founders of Kill Screen, points out that he has been involved with these types of discussion of games online for some time, but wanted to also allow for this discussion to happen offline, and print a magazine acknowledging these contributions.

When Brophy-Warren was asked what he thought was missing in videogame writing to date, he noted:

There's a big focus on immediacy. Clearly, there's nothing wrong with that, but writing on the web works best with speed and volume. That's not always conducive to thoughtful writing and reporting and larger publications are still skittish about videogame content on their pages. They'll do their one big game story a year (or two years) and then never return to the subject. That's pushed a lot of game writing in a similar direction. To be clear, there's plenty of good writing around the web and our hope is to combine some of the homegrown talent with folks with traditional print experience (like me). But really, there's a need for longer, exegetical, and confessional work on videogames, but not from a solely academic background. So we're treating this like a book and less like a magazine. People will read things at length, provided it's presented to them in a seductive manner.

Starting from a dinner conversation at this past year's GDC, to reaching funding on KickStarter, and having its own blog, the magazine is in the process of finishing its issue 0. If you wish to obtain either a PDF or hard copy, you can still donate, respectively, $3 or $20 to the project.