Kickstarter

Dear early supporters of Kill Screen,

For the last couple months, we've been working on a new Kickstarter project, and now we can finally announce it.

When we started Kill Screen (thanks to all of you!), we wanted to show the world why games matter. We think an integral part of this story lies at the intersection between videogames and the rest of the world. Games are a lens to view life in a new and fantastic way. We believe games have a lot to teach culture and culture has a lot to teach games.

We've worked with game designers in the past, but we thought, what better way to nurture cross-pollination than to bring some of the brightest gaming minds and sharpest folks from outside games into the same room?

We're calling it Twofivesix. It's our first ever videogame arts + culture conference.

If you've ever read our vision statement, you'll find that we've spent a lot of time thinking about how games fit into the world. We believe that games are an amazing place for exploration, entertainment, and education and this conference is a natural outgrowth of that philosophy.

We've lined up an amazing day of speakers and we can't wait to see you there. You can buy tickets, back our project for other great rewards (including games!), and see more info here!

Sincerely,
Kill Screen

Want to subscribe and can't find the donate button?

http://killscreenmagazine.wordpress.com/2009/11/27/subscribe-to-kill-screen/

Danke!

So we did it! Thank you to everyone who donated. We're really psyched to get this out.

We'll be contacting people about your addresses over the next couple weeks.

And if you know people who are interested in getting copies, email killscreenmagazine@gmail.com. We'll just handle it over PayPal.

-Jamin and Chris

Hey gals and guys --

So we're almost at the end of our funding period and I just wanted to tell all of you thank you so much! I have one last request before the day is done -- help us hit $6,000! We're about $400 short and hitting $6,000 would be amazing and allow us to print more copies. So tell your mom, tell your dad, tell your nanny. Let's make this happen!

-Jamin

Hello all,

First of all, an apology. You have no idea who we are! You fund our project and we never write! I apologize for that. (It's just like Don Draper says -- it's all about leverage. "You want me but you can't have me" or something like that. At the very least you were curious, right?) Seriously, there are legitimate reasons that I can explain to you when we inevitably meet.

In any case, let's make this introduction formal. My name is Jamin Brophy-Warren and I am an outgoing reporter for the Wall Street Journal. (Last day on Friday!) I met Chris Dahlen many years ago as we both were writing for Pitchfork Media. In fact, Chris still writes for them along with the Onion AV Club, Edge, Paste and so on and so on.

Kill Screen was born during a conversation that Chris and I had with others at the Game Developer's Conference this year. We were asking "Why doesn't something like this exist?" We talked about games all of the time but there wasn't something that met the bar, both intellectually and aesthetically, for this genre. That's not to say there aren't lots of lovely blogs that write wonderful things about games and their obvious cultural import, but we wanted something we could hold. An artifact. An object. It had to be beautiful. The sort of thing that stays on your shelf and you pass on to your children. We wanted Kill Screen to be an heirloom.

We have been blessed to have a cadre of talented writers that volunteered their time and thoughts for the first issue. They are Leigh Alexander (news director for Gamasutra), Tom Bissell (the New Yorker, GQ), Rob Dubbin (writer for the Colbert Report), L.B. Jeffries (PopMatters), Jason Killingsworth (editor at Paste), Ryan Kuo (Crispy Gamer), and Matt Shaer (Christian Science Monitor). Photography and illustration comes to us courtesy of Christophe Beauregard, Lincoln Colding, Brock Davis, Vincent Diamante, Reinier van der Ende, Chris Sweeney and the Autumn Society.

So that brings us to the tricky little relationship that you and we have developed. We have less than 30 days left to keep Kill Screen growing. You've helped us make this project a possibility so tell your friends! We want to get this in as many hands as possible.

More updates, we promise.

In games we trust,
Jamin (and Chris)