Luis Aguasvivas is a writer and researcher based in New York City. He has written about video games, game studies, and pop culture at large for numerous publications including PopMatters, Ars Technica, Aguas’ Points, and New York University’s Urban Democracy Lab.
Memories of Video Games and Magazines
Prior to the widespread use of the internet and the ubiquitousness of smartphones, my go-to source for all things gaming came from magazines. As I anticipated the release of upcoming games, I read Nintendo Power and Game Informer to feed my curiosity. Magazines and video games buttressed each other during a time—at least by today’s standards—of limited access to information. Video game magazines fed my desire to play games.
One of my fondest memories is playing The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (2002) and being amazed by the orchestrated music while I navigated Link and his boat, the King of Red Lions, through the Great Sea. Outside my window, the moon shone brightly. A digital clock read 3:47 AM, and an issue of Nintendo Power volume 165 lay nearby. At that very moment, I felt enraptured. Video games—complex design artifacts that integrate other mediums to achieve a high level of interactivity—seemed inscrutable to me as a child. Looking back now, being verklempt by games fueled my childhood nostalgia and led me to purchase more magazines. Luckily, I’m not alone in this sentiment. Now, such musings have inspired and birthed a new movement dedicated to creating and supporting independent print magazines to feed, inform, and critically examine our collective nostalgia.
A contemporary magazine that has become a recent sensation is A Profound Waste of Time (APWOT). I interviewed the creative director and founder of APWOT, Caspian Whistler, after reading its first two issues. He had much to say about video games and publishing a physical magazine in our digital age. During the interview, Whistler emphasized that one of the goals of APWOT is to represent the “enigmatic qualities” of video games. Whistler lists Persona 5 (2016), life-sim series like Animal Crossing (2001-2020), and Boktai (2003)—designed by the famed Hideo Kojima that utilizes a solar sensor on the game’s cartridge for gameplay—as some of his favorite games that inspired the creation of APWOT. What follows is a critical examination of Whistler’s insights shared in our interview and my impressions of APWOT.
A Profound Waste of Time
Whistler raved that “games are amazing, and everyone should enjoy them!”. He began working on APWOT while studying graphic design at the University of the Arts London. He was inspired by the rebellious heritage of zines and their use by counterculture movements and subcultures across London in the 1970s. Zines were cheap to produce and offered a venue for artists and activists to build a community while creating their art. This made zines an ideal tool for disseminating information throughout the city and became an integral part of the burgeoning punk scene. Following this example, Whistler channeled his affection for video game magazines and set out to give games the same treatment as films were receiving in the magazine Little White Lies. Created in 2005, Little White Lies became a progenitor to the new wave of boutique independent magazines like APWOT with its combination of illustrations, journalism, and per the magazine’s website “cutting-edge design.” For Whistler, games are important cultural objects like films and should be presented as art.
Aesthetics matter. This is why we judge books by their covers. Whistler knows this well. He is currently at work on the magazine’s third installment after a successful crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter. The design ethos of APWOT, according to its website, is to be a vehicle that “plays host to a rich variety of voices from inside and outside the videogame industry, interwoven with stunning bespoke imagery from leading illustrators and artists. Editorially discerning and beautifully designed, the magazine serves to celebrate gaming culture and discussion”. After reading the available issues of APWOT, I found that its pages do include gorgeous illustrations, stylish graphic design, and a myriad of diverse voices examining video games. I was surprised that by holding APWOT in my hands placed me back in the same room where I spent countless hours playing The Wind Waker.
APWOT is independently produced. It has had four successful Kickstarter campaigns starting with its first installment in 2017. Kickstarter’s success comes from how it incentivizes the fundraising process, making it a natural fit for crowdfunding video game-related projects, as content can be locked behind specific fundraising goals. However, this incentivization does have its downsides, and Whistler admits that it can lead to anxiety stemming from the pressures of raising as many funds as possible for each project. Due to its crowdfunding backing, there are no advertisements and there are no third-party sponsors within the pages of APWOT.
Whistler is keen on keeping APWOT independent. Seeking funding through advertising would risk the magazine’s high-quality production, illustrations, and articles being potentially bowdlerized to make room for advertisement space. As Whistler puts it, crowdfunding is the only way that APWOT can be APWOT, as it offers a direct funding model where the goals and intentions of the magazine can be transparent. Backers have continued to support APWOT on those grounds.
Inside the Pages
I was surprised to hear Whistler say that APWOT doesn’t have a target audience. According to Whistler, APWOT is meant to be accessible to those that enjoy games, illustrations, and quality writing. He declared that “you don’t need to have any interest in video games to enjoy the magazine. You just need to enjoy pictures and words. And if you enjoy these two things then you’ll find something to enjoy in the magazine.” Can one enjoy a magazine simply on its aesthetics alone, especially one that is so referential as APWOT?
I have read the first two issues of APWOT and previously written about them on Aguas’ Points (“Is It a Profound Waste of Time? Thoughts on Issue One of a Magazine Inspired by Video Games”, 2022; and “Is It a Profound Waste of Time? Thoughts on Issue Two of a Magazine Inspired by Video Games”, 2022). I felt that APWOT offered an alternative to mainstream video game publications, like IGN whose coverage mainly focuses on big-budget games and prevailing consumer-based reviews. APWOT distinguishes itself from main-stream publications by how it does not worry about following trends nor does it seek to feed what No Escape (2023) identifies as the “spectacular leviathan” through anti-criticism, placating the hordes of fandom and the mega-corporations that profit from our consumption of games. APWOT is a print-only publication and is not published digitally. Thus, there is no clickbait to be found. It is first and foremost an artistic endeavor undertaken by Whistler to reinscribe the function of prior game magazines to added effect. As a result, it has piqued interest. Though it suffers at times from uneven execution, something especially evident in its first issue, with its varying lengths of articles and use of vibrant presentation and art to augment short and underwhelming articles.
Many video game magazines of the past were tabloid-like in their aesthetics and presentation. Within their pages, they contextually function as consumer guides with a bend toward humorous content. For an example look no further than Game Players magazine. They utilized targeted attempts to capture specific audiences by capitalizing on brand recognition. The video games covered, and their prominent mascots were utilized both as promotions for the games themselves and the magazines. Sonic, Mario, Halo’s Master Chief, and Street Fighter’s Chun-Li have adorned covers, posturing, and enticing us to purchase the magazines and their related games. There was a clear content problem for those not in the target audience (for reference see Figure 1, a cover of Hyper magazine). These magazines crammed information and bold titles in hopes of attracting an audience of teenage boys..
APWOT opts instead for evocative cover art with the only texts adorning the cover being the magazine’s name. A sense of wonder permeates each of its three covers. The first issue has Shovel Knight looking into the horizon at dusk. From this image, one can deduce that their adventure is about to commence. The second has a colorful illustration of Katamari Damacy’s (2004) “The Prince” rolling a city onto itself. The latest cover of the yet-to-be-released third issue depicts the two main characters of The Last Guardian (2016) exploring a ruin. I haven’t played The Last Guardian yet, but after seeing this interpretation of the game I want to explore those ruins. APWOT’s cover illustrations are an example of magazines and video games complementing one another.
I was intrigued by APWOT’s aforementioned cover of The Prince due to my admiration for Katamari Damacy’s designer Takahashi Keita. Seeing the Prince rolling a city around elicited memories of a game that has been a singular reason for my love of video games. It didn’t hurt either that Takahashi’s vision is depicted with a great deal of care. The feelings caused by playing video games – Hollow Knight (2017), Undertale (2015), Katamari Damacy, the Dragon Quest series, Final Fantasy XV (2016), and Life is Strange (2015), just to name a few titles covered – is something that APWOT attempts to capture, celebrate and contextualize. APWOT has articles that discuss colonization in video games, how the medium presents trauma, and the production histories of games. Both issues of APWOT are presented in an approachable manner meant to crystallize why games matter through an emphasis on the human element behind them. The people that make games are at the forefront of the coverage and they express their thoughts and feelings about the games they love.
One article in particular in the second issue “Comfort Quest: How Playing Dragon Quest Helped with a Time of Upheaval” (2020), by author John Ricciardi deeply resonated with me. The article discusses how Ricciardi plays the Dragon Quest series as a means of coping with the trials and tribulations that life brings. I was drawn to it because of the similarities in perspectives that it shares with my article “Chrono Trigger’ and Coping with Pandemic Trauma Through Video Games” (Aguasvivas, 2021) where I discuss how playing Chrono Trigger (1995) helped me deal with traumatic events during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. As I wrote in the article “I turned to Chrono Trigger’s time travel, role-playing, and high stakes story to give me, the player, complete agency vis-à-vis the real world.” This was during a time when I looked to relive a “simpler time amidst the pandemic trauma.” It also doesn’t hurt that Ricciardi and I share a mutual appreciation for the work of Hori Yuri the creator of the Dragon Quest series.
Outside the Pages
AWPOT has not changed much since it launched in 2018. Since its first issue, big-name figures in the industry have appeared on the pages of the magazine. Some of the contributing writers and artists include game designer and composer Toby Fox (Undertale), voice actress Ashly Burch—who voiced the characters of Aloy from the Horizon series and Chloe Prince from Life is Strange—designer wunderkinds Takahashi (Katamari Damacy) and Mizuguchi Tetsuya (Tetris Effect, 2018), and Hollow Knight’s creators Team Cherry. To get these high-profile contributors on board, Whistler compensates them and all other writers and artists with funds raised (close to $600,000 since its first campaign in 2016) through Kickstarter. Whistler asserts that he doesn’t take contributors for granted and that he is “incredibly grateful and humbled by their involvement.”
APWOT has garnered critical acclaim. It was awarded a Merit Honor by the Art Directors Club of New York for its production design in 2019. It was also profiled by The Guardian’s Keith Stuart (2022) as part of “a new generation of lovingly assembled periodicals…bringing the scene back to life”. There has also been a steady influx of independent gaming magazines trying to follow in the footsteps of APWOT, most notably Lock-On and Filmmakers Without Cameras (FWC). These magazines directly cite APWOT as an inspiration. “It was APWOT that got me thinking about making Filmmakers Without Cameras in the first place” tweeted the official Twitter account of FWC in 2021. Whistler in turn makes sure to promote these magazines when possible. Comradery aside, Whistler is preoccupied with making APWOT distinct from its recent contemporaries by striving to make the next installment (issue 3) “the greatest issue yet”. What this means remains to be seen, but we will find out when it is released later this year.
Despite its success over the last few years, manufacturing costs pose challenges for APWOT’s production. In the current publishing environment, the long-term success of print magazines is uncertain. According to Whistler, “paper is getting ridiculously expensive. Shipping has become insane. It’s very difficult to keep a high-spec product accessible.” This is evident in the cost increase in the most current pledge on Kickstarter for the third installment from £20 to £25 (about a $6 increase).
For the third issue, Whistler wants to be able to maintain the high standards and quality that APWOT has provided in its past installments. He also wants it to grow sustainably, stating “I want to create something that feels–no matter what the future has in store–and maintains the core concept of what the magazine is as much as possible.” A Profound Waste of Time has grown from being inspired by video games to becoming an inspiration for designers and writers to discuss and create forward-looking works. Its third installment is expected to be released in the fall of 2023.
Works Cited
About Us. Little White Lies. (2023, February 2). https://lwlies.com/about-us/
Aguasvivas, L. (2022, November 9). Is it a profound waste of time? thoughts on issue one of a magazine inspired by video games. Aguas’ Points. https://aguaspoints.com/2022/08/10/is-it-a-profound-waste-of-time-thoughts-on-issue-one-of-a-magazine-inspired-by-video-games/
Aguasvivas, L. (2021, April 22). “Chrono Trigger” and COVID-19 isolation. PopMatters. https://www.popmatters.com/chrono-trigger-covid19-isolation
A profound waste of time: Issue 3 – kickstarter.com. (n.d.). https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/caz/a-profound-waste-of-time-3?lang=es
A profound waste of Time Ltd: A profound waste of time. A Profound Waste of Time LTD | A Profound Waste of Time | The One Club. (n.d.). https://www.oneclub.org/awards/adcawards/-award/32346/a-profound-waste-of-time
Filmmakers Without Cameras. (2021, September 14). It was APWOT that got me thinking about making filmmakers without cameras in the first place so anyone with even a passing interest in video games should have a look at the reprint that’s coming soon. it’s a bloody great time for games print right now 🥰 https://t.co/2vp0cecs4w. Twitter. https://twitter.com/FWCzine/status/1437838338652876807
No Escape. (2023, April 9). The Spectacular Leviathan. No Escape on cohost. https://cohost.org/noescape/post/1308356-the-spectacular-levi
Stuart, K. (2022, March 11). Paper view: The return of video game magazines. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/games/2022/mar/11/paper-view-the-return-of-video-game-magazines