Blue slimes and zines
Everything I believe to be true about social media and retro gaming
Maybe my brain is broken, but I think of social media, content and publishing in JRPG terms.
In other words, each activity has an associated number of experience points attributed to it. These add up, and in the process they level up this Forgotten Worlds shtick.
If we want to use Dragon Quest as an analogy*
A Tweet is like a basic enemy, e.g. a blue slime. They’re plentiful, but don’t do much in the way of experience points.
An article is like a mini-boss. They don’t come along as often, they require more effort, but they can bestow a healthy level of brand exposure.
A printed magazine is the big boss at the end of each chapter. It’s a whole thing, but getting it out into the world opens up the next chapter.
Reading all that back I sound like a crazy person. But in my mind it helps to structure the content I produce and the associated serotonin that each produces.
Blue slimes and zines
I’ve been publishing small run indie magazines for as long as I can remember. From video game zines in high school to proper, nationally distributed, lifestyle publications.
I obviously haven’t learnt my lesson, because I keep releasing magazines.
But I have learned a few things along the way. So at the risk of stretching this Dragon Quest analogy to breaking point, here’s some stuff I believe to be true about social media, publishing, and video game zines
The Slimes
You need an angle. Something that helps your account stand out. It can be as niche as you like. In fact, the more niche the better. Congratulations, you are now “an expert in your field.” I obviously went with ‘A magazine about old video game magazines’, because while it’s super niche, it also allows for a broad spectrum of associated content.
Speaking of content, not all video game magazines are created equal. There’s a handful of magazines that everyone remembers and loves. EGM, Mean Machines, Super Play and GameFan will always get good engagement when mentioned. I can’t say the same for titles (I personally love) like Raze, CU Amiga, or Compute!
Original content will help you grow an audience, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to source. When I started, Pinterest was one of my main sources of material. That well has mostly run dry. These days I’m downloading scans of obscure Japanese magazines and trawling those for hours to find one or two pages I can share online. Or searching for GIFS on Tumblr - which, yes, is still a thing…
Neo Geo is the sure shot. You’ll always do well with Neo Geo content and magazine scans. PC Engine, Sega, Namco, 16bit Konami / Capcom and shmups (shooters) are also good ways to game the algorithm and get reach / engagement on your preferred social media platform. Conversely, no one cares about old PC games. Or old micro computer stuff in general. Stick to consoles if you want to get likes and shares.
Which is just a long and convoluted way of saying nostalgia drives retro social media channels. People will click and like stuff they know and remember. You can post whatever you like, but there’s a reason an old ad for Super Castlevania on the Super Nintendo will do better than some obscure Vik Tokai game for the Genesis.
Speaking of analytics, Elon has done a real number on Twitter (x), and engagement rates aren’t what they used to be. They’ve only gotten worse since the recent US election. I don’t know if everyone has migrated to BlueSky or just tapped out for the moment, but posts that might have received 200-300 likes a couple of years back would be lucky to do 50 likes in this new era.
Which is why it’s important to mix it up, and get yourself across multiple social media platforms (and find the ones that work for you). BlueSky seems to be going gangbusters at the time of writing this. But it’s impossible to be across every platform. I use Twitter, BlueSky, Facebook, and Instagram. Facebook is an absolute bin fire of a platform these days, but it’s actually a significant source of web traffic (via boosted posts) when I’m promoting an article. Go figure…
There’s a cadence to posting on social, and platforms have their own internal logic and algorithms. Here’s a tip. If a post is doing well on Twitter, the algorithm is going to prioritize it over other (more recent things you post), so give content time to breath.
That being said, the material you think is going to do well can sink without a trace, while random throwaway content can blow-up. So the main takeaway here is that no one really knows anything, and that includes me and this mini zine I’m being forced to produce, because I made a bunch of crazy promises trying to get this Kickstarter funded.
Ultimately, you need to have a reason to post stuff to social media, otherwise you’re just screaming into a void. In my case the social channels help to build an audience so that when I have a new article to promote or a magazine to sell, there’s a ready-made audience. The slimes are there to build that audience. So there is some method to the madness.
The Mini Bosses
When I first started Forgotten Worlds I was just writing about my memories of old gaming magazines and the impact they had on me as a kid. To be fair, this was when COVID first kicked off, and we were all locked up at home… And, if you happened to live in Melbourne, that meant 265 days of lock-down over the course of two years! A world record.
It wasn’t until I spoke to the former editor of Hyper, Daniel Wilks, and wrote a piece about his final desperate days trying to hold the magazine together that I saw a real spike in readers. Turns out, people will click on original content and insider perspectives. If you wanted to be pretentious you might describe this as “adding value to the conversation.”
On that note, a magazine about old video game magazines is a cute idea, but it’s just the jumping off point for a broader conversation about old magazines and media, and how they influenced a generation of kids. The best people to tell that story are the writers, editors, and designers who were there, knocking out these magazines month after month.
One problem - getting hold of these people isn’t as easy as it sounds. In most cases you’re popping up in some stranger’s inbox wanting to ask them about a job they had 30 years ago. They’ve generally moved onto other things. So they’re not necessarily wanting to talk to some random kid on the other side of the world.
Also, it can also be hard to actually find them. Case in point. I want to speak with Oz Browne who did the design and layout of Mean Machines magazine, but I’m not having any luck finding him. So if anyone does know him please drop me a line. I’ve also been chasing Andy Eddy (former editor of VG&CE magazine) for the longest time. Andy, if you’re reading this, please respond to those interview questions. Please.
As far as the website goes, I tend to write and publish the article first, give that a few weeks, then publish the full interview transcript as a separate item. That’s good for website metrics and SEO, essentially giving you two pieces of content for each interview.
If you’re wondering, two interviews have knocked it out of the park as far as page views go - Julian ‘Jaz’ Rignall and Dan ‘Shoe’ Hsu. As far as the articles proper, the most popular articles are CVG, EGM, and Mean Machines… which correlates with my earlier point about what people actually care about.
Fun Fact - the most visited piece on the Forgotten Word’s website is actually a blog post about the time I got drugged and robbed by Yakuza in Tokyo. It was originally written for Street Carnage, which the website Gavin McInnes launched after being booted from Vice - but before he founded the Proud Boys. That’s a whole other story.
SEO is hard. I have to deal with it for work on a daily basis. Forgotten Worlds does okay when it comes to SERP - search enjoy results position - probably because it’s such a niche topic. Which brings us full circle, and back to “What is the angle here, and is anyone else covering this material.” There’s a bunch of retro sites and content out there. But only one person dumb enough to base their whole online persona around a magazine about old video game magazines.
Forgotten Worlds started out on Medium. These days I use Squarespace. Find whatever platform works for you. My private theory is that the internet is eventually going to collapse in on itself from all the AI / bot garbage out there - at which point bespoke small run magazines will rule the world. So choose whatever platform you want, in the end it makes no difference when the online world collapses.
The Big Boss
I’m starting to think this whole Dragon Quest analogue may have been a bad idea. But I’m too invested to pivot direction at this point. I did consider recycling some online material for this magazine. But that seemed both lazy and not in keeping with the spirit of this Kickstarter. So, I guess we’re all stuck here…
Moving on. Let’s talk ‘visual identity’. Forgotten Worlds magazine looks the way it does for a reason. Two reasons, actually. One creative. One financial. Let’s start with the creative. Old magazines are busy enough as they are, so keeping things clean and minimal keeps the focus on the original magazines.
As for the finances - I have no design skills, so I’ve had to outsource the layout to someone I’ve never met via Fiverr. Turns out finding a talented designer with the time to produce a magazine (on a budget) is difficult. White space, minimalism, and templates can hide a lot of artistic limitations when you’re emailing instructions to the other side of the world.
That being said, it’s the little details that make these magazines interesting. Postcards, inserts, weird gaffer tape covers, individual numbers, signed-editions, and whatever else I can think of to make each issue special.
Turning our minds back to finances for a moment - A5 is the universal standard for small run magazines. That’s not a coincidence. A5 is cheap and easy. It’s just a generic A4 sheet of paper folded in half. If you try and get cute with custom dimensions (like I did for issue #1) you’ll soon find your costs and margins blowing out.
Want specifics? I was quoted $3200 AUD for 200 magazines, 64 pages, full-colour, at a bespoke 180mm x235mm for issue #1. Issue #2 was printed on standard A5 stock. I was quoted $2000 AUD for 200 magazines, 80 pages, full-colour. That’s a huge difference when it comes to cost and profit margins.
I’ve tried selling the magazine a number of ways, including Kickstarter, obviously. Honestly, the quickest, easiest and cheapest solution is to simply set up a shop front via something like Shopfify. A basic package only costs about $5 a month and gives you everything you need to sell, process, and ship a product around the world.
That last bit is important because when it comes to sales, the US is easily the biggest market for anything retro inspired. Here's simple breakdown of sales by region:
USA - 43%
UK - 30%
Overseas (other) - 18%
Australia - 9%
Shipping is a nightmare. When I first started out a few years back, international shipping cost me $3.80. Post COVID it spiked to $11.50.
In case this isn’t obvious, there’s absolutely no money to be made from any of this. You’ll be lucky to break even, and you’ll spend your spare time and weekends working on the material. So please support all the random people out there creating original content for the love of it. Or don’t.
*Yes, I know, just like Ichiban Kasuga in Like a Dragon, but also different.. And I thought of it first.
