At the start of the year, we covered a Kickstarter for a campaign by an Australian aimed at producing a magazine all about stealth games. It was called, awesomely, Sneaky Bastards. Well, good news: The first issue is now printed and headed off to people’s mailboxes.
And it looks awesome.
I’ve been flicking through a pdf copy of the magazine, and loving the 100 per cent original content (a range of essays on Dishonored), but I’ve gotta say, I’m regretting not backing for a printed copy, because that’s where the goodness is. It’s been printed on 100 pages of quality paper, free of annoying ads, and is full of nice screens (and of course led by the awesome cover art by AJ Hately).
Note that this isn’t a traditional magazine run. There won’t be a second issue next month/quarter. The first Kickstarter campaign only covered the production costs for this issue, and editor Dan Hindes tells me that unless a proper publisher loved what they saw and offered some help, they’d have to return to Kickstarter for each issue.
Hardly an ideal set of circumstances, but then, for a mag this nice it might well be worth it.
Traditional magazines are finding that they’re able to survive if they’re able to cater to a niche; it’s nice to see video game writers doing the same.
If you missed out on the Kickstarter, don’t sweat; you can buy a print ($US25) or digital ($US15) copy here.
Comments
5 responses to “There Is A Magazine Called Sneaky Bastards”
Let’s hope Mr Hindes actually pays the people who contribute to this magazine, unlike he did with PCPP. Sneaky Bastards is quite an appropriate name really.
Pretty harsh allegations to drop in here like that. As a friend of Dan’s and a erstwhile writer for PCPP I have always found him to be forthright and professional.
So had I, until he didn’t pay one of my friends who I arranged to write an article for him. I sent him several emails and twitter messages after the article was published, and my messages fell on deaf ears, then he unfollowed me on twitter. Up until that point, I had no issue. I had a whole slew of industry pro’s keen to write similar articles for him, but I’m glad that nobody else got burned. I’m still willing to give him a chance to make things right if he wants, but it’s pretty bad business to promise payment for something, and then just pretend like it never happened.
Check your email – this has been resolved
The design inside doesn’t impress. it’s a copy of Edge, GameInformer and uses generic screenshots.
Be generic screenshots I’m assuming you mean ones released by Bethesda over the course of Dishonored’s preview period. Yes, we do use them! The great thing about them is Bethesda releases them in absolutely enormous formats – something like 7,000 pixels wide. For print, this is a godsend, as it allows us to do a lot more with it. Compare this to screenshots typically captured in 1920×1080 – which, at 300dpi in print, only fills a tiny portion of the page before becoming distorted – and you might get an idea of why Bethesda’s screenshots are featured at all.
That said, James Snook generously donated some screenshots to the layout (http://www.flickr.com/photos/jim2point0/sets/72157631732109336/) and I’d say his composition is anything but generic.
For the remaining shots, we managed to successfully downsample Dishonored so it was running live at a resolution of 3,000 pixels wide – slightly distorted when scaled down to a 1080p monitor, but otherwise perfect when capturing stills.
Tell me more! I used to read PCPP