I Will Not Rest Until The National Broadcaster Hires A Videogames Reporter Full Time

Videogame magazines are really not meant to be here.

The internet was meant to kill them off. Plummeting ad revenue was meant to make them obsolete. Vertical video and the attention economy, we were assured, would gobble up the rest of the media. Don't have a TikTok account?–you might as well be dead. Nobody wants to pay for videogames writing, I heard 1000 times, let alone videogames journalism. AI is making you irrelevant. Learn.to.code.

Fortunately, like all millennial creatives who downloaded Fall Out Boy's 2003 breakout Take This To Your Grave from Limewire, I am fuelled by spite. [See: I Will Not Rest, below].

More importantly, I have always believed Great, Important Work Will Win. That, broadly, the public recognises useful and powerful journalism that holds power to account. Appreciates beautifully told and deeply researched stories. Loves longform work, even as attention spans shrink. I have always believed in the power of Great Stories.

So Mark Serrels, one of Australia's best and most important videogame writers of the last two decades, and I had to figure out a way to weaponise my spite. (I didn't sell it to him that way because that's actually mostly a joke.) I wanted to build something new and I wanted to do it with him coz he gets it.

That something new is CONTINUE magazine. If you're reading this, you've probably already heard of it. It's a new videogames magazine in the mould of the greats: Hyper, Edge, A Profound Waste of Time and literary mags like The New Yorker and The Monthly. In April, our Kickstarter raised $102,594. We launched the magazine on October 7 at ACMI, in Melbourne's Federation Square. Lots of people came.

It freakin' ruled.

Why a longform magazine? Because we want to make something intentional, something you have to sit down with. Something unburdened by SEO and algorithms. Something that lasts longer than Kotaku Australia did. And it has to be about the kind of creative work we see less and less of these days. Longform. Beautifully illustrated. Deep.

I flick through the magazine and I'm stunned by the talent on display, in both writing and illustration—and through our design work, too. There are so many ridiculously talented people working in videogames and they have few places to produce great writing and great art or a space to discuss and interrogate and think deeply about their games—CONTINUE is providing that space.

It hasn't been easy. Printing a magazine costs a lot of money, which many people know, judging by the sagely nod provided whenever I said this out loud over the past few days. But, actually, I think the economics of printing a magazine are not that complicated. Some of the major publishers of the past were Too Big, Too Bloated and Too Entrenched in Number Go Up. Their models were built around advertising spend and access. When Major Evil Corp saw the expenditure on their spreadsheets, they nixed magazines. That's the easiest way to save cash when the advertisers fled.

Number Go Up is less of a concern for us because its a small indie print. Two people, many contributors. And top of mind for us is paying our contributors fairly. It's not yet perfect—we spent months on the magazine and our own total compensation is yet to be decided lol—but having both experienced low freelance pay and seen story after story about low pay across the sector, I wanted to make sure we built the mag with an ethos that we always pay people for their creative labour.

CONTINUE, though, I hope can also inspire a deeper look at how our videogames journalism ecosystem currently works. Because it's fucking grim out there. And I think a reimagining needs to begin with some of the organisations that have the power and means to do so, first. As Brandon Hare reminded everyone at his incredible Technically Games talk during MIGW26: You can do whatever you want. (Or maybe it was You can do whatever you want. Or You can do whatever you want. Maybe all of that.)

So, in the Hare-Spirit of doing whatever I want, I am going to talk a little bit about making it less grim out there;

I Will Not Rest

A few years ago, I tried to get a videogames vertical going at the ABC (something, I am told, that has been tried and failed many times before me, and something that sort of half-existed many moons ago). I had meetings about it with lead editors in teams with Totally Real Titles to do with Innovation. I presented a big document outlining what coverage would or could look like. I showed that there was room for this type of content in the muddy KPI world; I'd written six very successful pieces, some of which were part of the ABC's (I believe) first Gaming Coverage award at the Lizzies.

I was told this pitch, the games vertical, was an interesting idea but maybe the best thing to do would be to instead pitch individual stories once my contract ended and I was working freelance, and the Entertainment team could see how they go. In early 2024, for one of my first pitches, which required the use of a translator and took about a month to write, I was offered $450 for 800-1000 words. At best that rate is around 56c/word, or about half the MEAA recommended union rate. I turned it down. I pitched one more time in 2024 – in November – and was told the ABC was at capacity for freelance gaming stories. It was the last time I pitched.

Sadly, the ABC's "Video Games" coverage is suffering from a severe case of We-Dont-Give-a-Shit-About-This-itis. Inflammation of the Content Management System. Prognosis: Terminal. Just look! There's a story from July 28 about a "rogue AI" that's tagged in with games coverage, a "Feel Good" story about the Pokemon 30th anniversary discussing how the game is "still finding new fans". It's not even that a Pokemon 30th anniversary story is bad or shouldn't be covered, it just shows that, for whatever reason, we're mostly engaging with videogames at the national broadcaster on the most surface level; it's gawking at a subculture. I thought we were past that.

There are writers covering videogames at the ABC. There are freelancers (paid at a pitifully low rate that hasn't gone up in three years :/) and some staff who occasionally get to, quote-unquote COOK. CONTINUE magazine knows this—one of our authors is with the ABC!

But this MIGW weekend there were a whopping TWO whole stories listed under the Video Games topic. There are maybe more to come, but what exactly are we doing here?

You may read into this that I am Big Mad the ABC has not covered the launch of CONTINUE and revival of videogames magazines (or even responded to my emails about it) but if the Perth Mint puts out a new coin or A-list celebrities are at Vogue World in Milan, well that's big news. Do I sound Big Mad? Please, no, I am not mad, I am not mad (slowly turning into a corn cob).

I am disappointed.

It's not actually the magazine coverage I want to see more of (would be nice!) but more coverage of the industry in general. How many games were at PAX this year? What are those games saying about society and culture and business and life? How many indie devs put themselves through three days of thick air and ethanol wipes to exhibit a thing they made with their whole damn heart? Were there any problems that we should highlight, so the next PAX is better for everyone? What stories did we miss entirely? Because according to our national broadcaster, the event came and went with basically one game on display (Penguin Colony, which looks sick).

Tl;dr—ABC, let a national videogames reporter cook. The demand is there. The need is there. The stories are there. Sort it out.

Okay back to CONTINUE: What's Next?

The first issue of CONTINUE is on its way to our backers and many people have got a hold of it during Melbourne International Games Week.

We've still got copies to sell and I'm sure we will find ourselves at conventions and stalls throughout the year with copies on hand, too. We're doing caps. They cost $40 and they rule. Here's some:

In January, we'll go full steam ahead for Issue 02, and by March/April we will launch the Kickstarter for our follow up. Please follow all the CONTINUE things (Instagram, YouTube etc).

From the beginning, this project has been about asking the question: Do you want to CONTINUE? Because this magazine is really about whether you want this kind of magazine. You said yes.

I absolutely feel the pressure to produce an issue 02 that delivers even more, and we hope to maintain the energy and enthusiasm for this type of project beyond one beautiful magazine. Sustainability is possible! Discoverability is key! So, if you love it, share it with your friends. Shout about it. Tell everyone. And let us know what you love at continuemagazine[at]gmail[dot]com.

If you hate it, let Mark Serrels know at his email address. It's in the magazine.