The recently launched Kickstarter campaign for The EGM Compendium was instantaneously well-received, with the ambitious project blowing past its initial funding goal and now well into its many stretch goals. One of the most interesting aspects of a book chronicling the history of one of the more important gaming publications was the work that would have to go into its creation, and it's obvious now that those efforts are bearing fruit in other, profound ways. Not only do backers of the compendium get a digital or print version of the book, but they also get access to the full digital archive chronicling every single issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly.
In an era where gaming publications are the exception and not the rule, the digitization of the entire print run of EGM is a step in the right direction for an often overlooked aspect of gaming preservation. The recent and unfortunate closure of Game Informer came coupled with the shutting down of the publication's website and archive, and print magazines are an aspect of the gaming industry that seem to have come and gone without much effort put into preserving the individual issues for future generations. Not only is EGM's digital archive an enticing reward for backers of the compendium, but it's an incredibly ambitious undertaking that should set an example for other publications.
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The EGM Digital Archive Came About Naturally From Work on The EGM Compendium
Considering EGM's 25-year run, it would be impossible to contain every highlight from across the publication's history into a single tome. However, in an effort to deliver the most comprehensive and definitive history of the magazine in The EGM Compendium, the creators needed to parse through nearly 40,000 pages of issues from across the magazine's print run, searching for the best sections to cherry-pick for inclusion in the book. As co-author Josh Harmon points out, this was a labor-intensive process that really caused the team to consider the breadth and depth of what EGM's legacy had to offer readers.
When we decided we wanted the book to go into detail about the entire print run of EGM, we realized that if we wanted to do the best job possible, we needed to document everything in every issue of the magazine. If we were writing the book and wanted to talk about any specific game, we needed a reference that would let us find every single time the game was covered in the magazine, along with any other important details we might need later on.
But aside from helping to contribute the best possible overview of the magazine's contents to the compendium, this work had the unintentional side effect of jump-starting work on the EGM Digital Archive, helping to inspire the team to include access to a digital version of every single issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly as a bonus reward for contributing to the Kickstarter campaign.
It was only after we started documenting everything in this excruciating level of detail that we realized that we were essentially gathering everything we’d need for an online database. And then we realized that if we built it, we could share that with the world.
Print Media Often Gets Left Behind in the Game Preservation Conversation
Efforts toward game preservation are arguably more important now than ever in the current landscape, with players primarily consuming digital media and raising concerns over ownership of games versus temporary licensing. But one area where game preservation is arguably lacking is in the collection and archiving of print games media. As such, the EGM Digital Archive represents an important undertaking that will hopefully serve as an example to other beloved publications. As Harmon notes, "...it was important to us to be able to go the extra mile and have a way to easily navigate the entire history of the magazine and make that available to the general public."
The EGM Compendium is currently in crowdfunding on Kickstarter with the physical copies of the book expected to arrive February, 2025.