If you've been online in the gaming community this week, you've probably seen something that shouldn't feel like news anymore but somehow does: Australians supporting quality games journalism with their own money.
CONTINUE magazine hit Kickstarter in March and raised its $25,000 target in seven hours. By the end of week one, it had pulled in $70,000. The campaign isn't a feel-good indie success story (though it is). It's evidence of something more urgent: the collapse of institutional games media in Australia and the people stepping into the wreckage.
Mark Serrels used to run Kotaku Australia. Jackson Ryan reported on games and tech for the ABC. Two years ago, they watched Pedestrian Group shut Kotaku Australia down as part of a cost-cutting exercise that also killed Gizmodo, Vice, Refinery29 and Lifehacker across the country. Then in October 2024, after the site closed, Kotaku Australia's entire 16-year archive became inaccessible. Thousands of stories, hundreds of bylines, gone.
That absence gnawed at them. Last month, they decided to build something themselves.
CONTINUE is described as "a defiant, new Australian print magazine designed to explore, celebrate and examine videogames and the different ways they impact broader culture." That language matters. This isn't a gaming news aggregator. This is a magazine that wants to treat games the way serious media treats film, music, or literature: as cultural objects worth sustained attention.
The creators brought along writers who get why that distinction matters. The first issue will include work from Alanah Pearce, Ruby Innes, Ally McLean, James O'Connor, Jini Maxwell, Ben Armstrong, Dan Golding and Dan Van Boom. That's a serious bench of Australian game critics and journalists.
The cover art comes from Jack Kirby Crosby, who embedded references to Hollow Knight: Silksong, Untitled Goose Game, and other Australian-made titles. It's a signal about editorial intent: this magazine cares about local creators and Australian game culture, not just chasing global trends.
Here's what makes this moment matter. Australian studios generate over $600 million in annual revenue. We've shipped Hollow Knight, Untitled Goose Game, Cult of the Lamb, and hundreds of other titles that shaped global gaming. Yet for the last 18 months, there's been almost nowhere local that treats this scene as genuinely important. CONTINUE fills that gap not because a publisher decided there was profit in it, but because readers decided there was value in it.
The magazine launches as print-first, with the first issue arriving in August 2026, and a website to follow. That's a deliberate choice in an age when print feels quaint. Serrels and Ryan are betting that people will pay for physical magazines about games if the journalism justifies it. The Kickstarter response suggests they're right.
It's the small victory here that matters most: when institutions fail readers, readers figure out how to serve themselves. The Australian gaming media landscape is broken, and the people who broke it don't appear to care. But the people who used to write for Kotaku Australia? They cared enough to start over.