Originally founded in 1988 by members of the U.S. National Video Game Team (the country’s firstesportsleague formed in 1983),Electronic Gaming Monthlywould go on to become one of the most recognizable and celebrated publications covering the gaming industry. For nearly 20 years, readers eagerly anticipated receiving a new issue ofEGMor visiting its website, and there’s little doubt that the publication helped shape the direction and style of games media.EGMmay have published its final printed issue in 2014, but the continued operation of the magazine as an online entity has now given way to an incredibly ambitious Kickstarter campaign that is clearly resonating with fans.
Launching on June 29, 2025, the crowdfunding campaign forThe EGM Compendiumwas fully funded in no time at all, skyrocketing well past its funding goal in just 2.5 hours. Game Rant recently had the opportunity to sit down with the compendium’s co-author, Josh Harmon, to discuss both the book itself and how the team plans to continue building on theKickstarter’s momentum to cementEGM’s legacy, including an incredibly ambitious undertaking to fully digitize and archive every single issue of the print magazine.The following transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Response to The EGM Compendium’s Kickstarter Campaign
GR: How does it feel to see the resounding response to the Kickstarter campaign?
Josh Harmon:The response to the Kickstarter campaign has been both overwhelming and hugely gratifying. It’s not just the pledges, it’s also the messages we’ve gotten from backers who are quick to share their fondest memories ofEGM, telling us how important the magazine was in their lives. We heard from someone who was in the letter art section as a kid who grew up to have a career in animation. We’re obviously overjoyed we’ll be able to deliver the best version of the book and the Digital Archive to fans, but it’s been just as exciting to see everyone celebrating their love for video games throughEGM.
GR: The book is currently about to hit its final stretch goal. Did the team prepare any additional goals or bonuses in the event that the response to the crowdfunding was as swift and pronounced as it has been?
JH:We thought the stretch goals we prepared would last us the entire campaign, or close to it. The backers unlocked them all in three days. We’ll be providing some new updates on the campaign page and also will be soliciting ideas from backers to see what kind of new stretch goals they’d like to see.
GR: Can you talk a little bit about the history ofEGM? What comes to mind when you reflect on it?
JH:Steve Harris startedEGMin 1988 and built it up into the most popular console gaming magazine of the era. In 1996, he sold the magazine and a fledging website operation called NUKE to Ziff Davis, which ran the magazine for another 13 years before shutting it down in early 2009. Steve bought back the magazine and relaunchedEGMthe following spring mainly with the intent to do something for iPads and tablets.
The magazine evolved quite a bit over the years, but it was always quick to offer the latest gaming news, unafraid to be brutally honest, and bursting at the seams with its editors’ humor and personality.
To me, one of the most iconicEGMfeatures was the multi-person reviews. You’d always get a pic, and later a little biographical blurb, for the reviewers in each issue. They weren’t some monolith speaking on behalf of the whole publication. They were individuals. If you read the magazine long enough, it started to feel like you knew the Review Crew. You knew their tastes, you knew which reviewers you usually agreed with. Looking back, it feels like an early forerunner of what’s become super common in the internet era with influencers. People gravitate toward streamers and content creators for their personality.
GR: How did this book come about? What was the initial spark or idea?
JH:We were discussing what it might look like to do books under theEGMbrand. At some point, we realized what should’ve been obvious from the start: IfEGMwas going to do books, why not do a book aboutEGM? Trying to imagine the most exciting possible version of that idea led us toThe EGM Compendium.
GR:EGMwas and still is a powerful force in the history and perception of games journalism. What do you think the publication’s continued impact is today?
JH:As I said earlier, it’s clearEGMhad a lasting impact in the lives of so many readers, and I also believe its personality-driven approach helped pave the way for a lot of the modern gaming media landscape. But if you want more undeniable proof thatEGMhas shaped the world of gaming, just look at what its former editors have gone on to do. Off the top of my head,EGMalumni have worked at Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, and Ubisoft, to name a few big companies. They’ve worked onfranchises likeBioShock,Marvel’s Spider-Man, andCall of Duty. The magazine cultivated dozens of writers who thought deeply about what made games great, and then they went out, conquered the industry, and made some great games of their own.
Reflecting on The EGM Compendium’s Content and Development
GR: Were there any guest contributors to the book that the team wanted but weren’t able to secure?
JH:We’re not going to name any names here, because we haven’t given up on including anyone yet. We’re still reaching out and trying to ensure we get as many voices inThe EGM Compendiumas possible.
GR: Several of the contributors in the “Influencer” section are prominent YouTube personalities who specialize in retro games. What were some of the criteria for selecting these individuals? Was it availability and/or audience or did the team specifically want to include modern-day individual content creators with a firm grip on the industry from whenEGMwas at its peak?
JH:We reached out to a wide variety of gaming content creators, but we did place a specific focus on those who might’ve had firsthand memories of readingEGMwhen they were younger, or a particular expertise about the history we cover in the book.
GR: What has been the most satisfying and challenging things about the book so far?
JH:Not to get too cute, but I think the most challenging thing about the book actually led us to one of the most satisfying aspects of this project. When we decided we wanted the book to go into detail about the entire print run ofEGM, 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.
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. Finally getting the Digital Archive up and running, going to an issue, and navigating using the links was by far the most satisfying moment for me—not counting the launch of the Kickstarter and the support we’ve gotten from our backers, of course. Given the landscape today, with a questionable future surrounding other digital archives, 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.
GR: One of the main responses from the community following the success of the Kickstarter was a desire for a similar book to be pitched containing an archive of classicEGMreviews. Will any specific reviews be included in this book or no?
JH:Select reviews that are of particular importance will be included in the book, among other notable excerpts from the magazine. But for anyone who really wants to dive deep into classicEGMreviews, we have the Digital Archive, which we’re offering with some of our reward tiers and as an add-on. We’ve indexed all the issues ofEGMand set up a website where you can read every review the magazine printed. You can navigate issue-by-issue, with a summary page that shows you all the games reviewed, the reviewers, and their scores at a glance. Then you can click through to read the full review if you want. Or you can also use the advanced search features to see and filter every review in the archive. You could, for example, look at all theSega Genesisreviews, or all the reviews of Marvel games. You can even combine filters, so you could see all the reviews of Marvel games on Genesis written by a specific person.
Not quite the same, but our backers have also unlocked a stretch goal that means we’ll be sending out anyone who gets a physical book through the campaign eight bookmarks based on iconicEGMreviews. We’ll be revealing the list of games and a sample design on our campaign page soon.
GR: Building off of that, does the success of theEGM Compendium’s Kickstarter open up the opportunity for a part 2 or a reviews archive?
JH:Right now we’re focused on delivering the best possible version of theCompendiumand the Digital Archive.
The Significance of the EGM Digital Archive
GR: The digitalEGMarchive is an ambitious project and arguably one of the highlights of pledging to the Kickstarter. How intense of an undertaking was it to index each and every issue ofElectronic Gaming Monthly?
JH:We got into this a bit in an earlier answer, but yes, it was an extremely intense undertaking, requiring a few months of serious effort.
Essentially, what you’re talking about is looking at every page of every magazine. I think it was something like 40,000 pages, all told.
For each issue, we documented every single review, preview, and feature, along with a ton of details: which games are covered, whether those games are part of a franchise, if a game covered was even released in the U.S. (or never released at all), publishers, developers, the writer of the piece, any people who were interviewed, and so on. I actually have the spreadsheet used to build the initial database. It has 26 columns—so all the way from A to Z—and then 21,039 rows.
GR: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
JH:Thank you again to everyone who’s backed the Kickstarter campaign so far or shared their love forEGMon social media. We can’t wait to deliver a fantastic book and some amazing extras.
And to anyone who hasn’t backed yet, give the campaign a look. There’s still plenty of time to join in.
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The EGM Compendiumis currently in crowdfunding on Kickstarter with the physical copies of the book expected to arrive February, 2025.
