I Hope You Like to Read

In case you haven’t noticed by now, the website is relatively text-heavy. The magazine will be similar, having multiple long-form articles or stories that are no slouch in word-count. I’m aiming for anywhere between 1,200 to 1,500 words per story.

The reason for this is relatively simple. I want people to read more. I want younger generations to want to read more. A lot of people just don’t read much anymore, and it’s not entirely their fault. With all the technology and media content we have access to every single minute of every single day, it’s easy to get through a week without reading a single paragraph. Hell, I was an avid reader in my youth and even I fell off for well over a decade. It wasn’t until I made a conscious effort to read more, that I actually began doing it again.

While attempting that, I learned something— there is not a lot of new content aimed at my demographic. I tried searching, and I was constantly finding myself falling back to novels and authors that have been around for decades. Magazines are crazy expensive now, and even the ones that used to be “for me” have adopted a more universal approach. Which isn’t a bad thing, in itself, but even when browsing a video game magazine, I was constantly being reminded that I was no longer the target audience. After a while I just lost interest.

Websites are worse for a different reason. These days, they are more aimed at getting as many clicks as possible, and they can’t do that if someone is spending thirty minutes reading one article. So they make short, three-paragraph “stories” so that you can click on a headline, get slammed with ads, spend thirty seconds reading the blurb, and move on to the next click. Even they are getting absolutely demolished by the search engine’s A.I. scrubbing.

This is all a way of saying I wasn’t happy with my attempts to read anything besides a novel from the mid-80’s. So I wanted Dented Arcade Magazine to be more than just a smattering of game ads and shallow short-form articles. I didn’t want it to be ad-driven, and I didn’t want to be shoe-horned into a word count to keep the traffic moving along. I want to be able to write what I want to write, without editing it down to fit a page-count.

I really, really hope there is still an audience out there somewhere that wants to read. That wants to sit and slow the world down for a few minutes and just enjoy the words of others. And I believe there is. We just need to give it to them.