As more and more long-established games publications shrink, vanish, or consolidate, an ongoing rise in independent journalism is working hard to keep the fire lit.
Today, we’ve got a brand new publication on the block; a trade publication, to be precise. It’s called Vertical Slice, and it’s run by long-time investigative games reporter Chris Kerr.
Kerr’s been reporting about games for 15 years, on the trade beat for about 13, and at Game Developer for around 11, concluding as its senior news editor. He left the publication at the end of last month, trading the (relative) stability of a full-time role for the great unknown of owning his own website.
As someone currently enjoying the former type of stability, I had to know…why?
“I feel like I can do my best work outside the confines of a publication that is owned by a globally traded corporation with wildly different commercial interests,” Kerr said. “Often those interests can overlap. That’s not always the case. I suspect that is true of many publications that have a corporate backer. And, you know, there are many positives to being corporate-owned, right? It offers you more security. I had a pension. That was great…But I feel like in order to produce journalism that is as punchy as it can be, properly fearless. You need to potentially go it alone, depending on your circumstances.”
Eschewing that stability then, how is this possible? Kerr is funding this with his own savings, saying he’s been “quite sensible” with his money over the last decade. He’s also, at the start, going it alone, so he only has to pay his own salary. But it’s still a risky venture. “It is scary,” he says. “I believe in it. I don’t know what else I want to do.”
Kerr describes Vertical Slice as “fearless reporting that inspires, informs and interrogates.” The key there is reporting: Vertical Slice is a news-focused publication. No guides, no reviews. It’s not an aggregation platform, though there will be a newsletter readers can subscribe to for a summary of what’s on the website. And specifically, he wants to be breaking news stories every day. I note that that’s ambitious, but Kerr just says he’d “pick up where I left off” at Game Developer.
Kerr is deeply passionate about the state of games media, and what he hopes will be his own forthcoming role in it with Vertical Slice. “I want to build something that’s mine,” he says. “I want to build something that hopefully stands the test of time, that people can rally behind, that does give workers a platform to speak out against, you know, misconduct, injustice, all of those things…I want to give those people a voice because ultimately they’re the ones who are making the video games that we all play.”
And also quite critically, most of the website will be paywalled, no ads. There will be some free articles each week, and the site will also launch with a library of design documents and pitch decks submitted by developers such as OuterSloth and Kitfox Games, which will also be free. When we spoke, Kerr was still working out the exact pricing, but he compares his vision of it to be like paying for a newspaper from a local newsstand every day.
“I think readers need to just start picking a lane,” he says. “And it’s like, look at all the AI aggregation. We’re all being subjected to death by a thousand cuts because AI is going for our jobs, people are getting laid off. People don’t want to pay for reporting, you know what I mean? Like, we’ve got to figure out how to make this work. And I think there is a fairly simple equation, which is just, if you enjoy a journalist’s work, pay for it. Like, it sounds simple and it maybe sounds a bit reductive, but it sort of is simple, isn’t it, really?”
Kerr’s ambitious. He talks about wanting to eventually hire on more full-time writers, mentor up-and-coming journalists, take freelance columns, eventually get developer-written articles on the website…his dream is to someday have a fully-functioning newsroom of between five and ten people, though he admits that’s years down the road, and dependent on a lot of success between now and then. “I want to create pathways for new talent,” he tells me.
I point out that while many other excellent independent publications have emerged in recent years, none have quite managed to do what he’s proposing yet, certainly not at the scale he wants. What’s Kerr doing differently that makes him think Vertical Slice will break through?
“I suppose why I believe I can make this work is I don’t see anyone else doing it,” he says. “I mean, particularly in the trade space, right. I know for a fact that millions of people have read my articles over the past few years. And it’s just a fraction of those people were willing to pay.
Not everyone, just like a super small percentage. I’d be able to break even and probably bring someone else on. And as soon as you’ve broken even, I want to reinvest from that point just into the site, whether that’s bringing on a regular freelancer with a view to them potentially as a full-time hire, whether it’s starting up a podcast, something.”
Kerr good-naturedly tells me that he’s aware of the ways in which this venture could fail, but he’s made his peace with it. If Vertical Slice doesn’t work out, he says he’ll “melt away into the sunset and maybe become a soccer journalist.” But for now, he feels what matters most is that he at least tries to build something for both his future, and the future of the space.
“I think we’re all grateful to be doing what we’re doing, but is it actually working for us in terms of the career prospects? In terms of our ambitions as, you know, healthy, functioning adults with our own personal lives who want to go on holidays, maybe want to have kids, whatever it is? Like, how could you do that, in an industry that won’t give you any sort of runway? That’s what I want to offer. And again, I know it’s ambitious, but I feel like if it isn’t feasible, then I can’t stay in the industry because I’m not going to put myself through another 10 years of that.”