I'm not here to sell you anything, this is a non-profit project.
What is this Giant Bomb Tiny Zine?
It's a magazine I made in a little over a week using Adobe InDesign. It contains many of the most recent reviews published on GiantBomb.com. Unfortunately, Brad only has one review in this and it's for Fuse. Sorry duder, it's nothing personal. Finish that Brothers review before PAX East 2014! ;)
Why did you make this dead tree thing?
A month before PAX Prime 2013 I had about 100 or so white Ryan head buttons produced. I handed them out at the convention to anyone that asked for one. People loved Ryan and Ryan loved people (among other things), so premium duders wearing a button with Ryan's disembodied head looking thoughtfully off into the distance seemed perfect on so many levels.
But it wasn't enough.
I thought about what else I could possibly do and what people might want to remember Ryan. There's so many videos and photos of the guy, it's almost ridiculous how much of him is out there on the internet. I wondered how much Ryan was out there on paper, sitting on the back of toilet tanks, waiting to be held in greasy hands and flipped through over and over until the pages ripped and the cover fell off. Probably not a lot. That had to be rectified.
Who has a copy? Does the GB crew know?
Penny Arcade Expo is a weird thing. Almost all the internet people Giant Bomb fans care about attend the massive convention in Seattle, some because they have to, but most because they want to. It's relatively easy to "accidentally" stumble across nearly the entire bombsquad having dinner in the darkest corner of the wettest restaurant on 6th Avenue and hand them each a copy of a fake magazine filled with their own writing.
Tracking down the rest of Giant Bomb friends wasn't very difficult either. Finding Jeff Green, former Games for Windows editor, and asking him to critique a magazine laid out in under a week was simple: he's standing at the Popcap booth surrounded by a crowd of folks probably half his age. Want to track down John Drake and the Pope? Drop by the Fantasia not-really-a-booth outside the expo hall on the 4th floor and look for the two guys stuffing blue hats into the hands of balding PAX attendees. Need to give Editor-in-Chief Dave Lang a copy of the magazine he thought was a twitter joke? He's on the 6th floor (PAX's Kentia Hall) peddling DiveKick merch with Keits. One exception: finding Will Smith was impossible. Don't even try it. He moves too fast and blends in with the PAX boardgaming crowd far too well.
Attending Penny Arcade Expo as an Enforcer (volunteer army of nerds) is also pretty weird. No one thinks twice about you being just about anywhere if you're wearing the blue uniform. Want to give something to Max Temkin? You could wait in the CAH booth's huge line...or you can just walk in through the booth's exit, put something that's not big or black into his hands, and walk back out. Being an Enforcer also helps when Brad Muir needs to stay in the expo hall after hours and only has a normal 4-day badge. Surprise escort mission from Double Fine to the expo hall doors! :D
All the GB buddies I could find at PAX, including Mr. Moderator Marino, got a copy of the Giant Bomb Tiny Zine #1 Beta Version. I only had 20 to give away and I still have one left over, but it's trivial to get more printed by HP MagCloud if anyone really wants them.
What does it look like inside?
It looks okay-ish? I need to make a few more changes before I can call it truly finished, the typeface was probably a poor choice and the font weight is probably two sizes too large, but it's good enough for a #1! I've learned a lot and the next issue will probably look considerably better.
Here's what page 2 and 3 look like. It's supposed to look like the bomb on the front cover has exploded.
Where can I get a copy?
http://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/612863
Remember: digital is 100% free. Print costs exactly how much it costs MagCloud to print a copy. I have added no publisher markup. Each page costs $0.20 to print. The perfect-bound spine costs $1.
Although the original PDF is super huge due to all the high resolution images, MagCloud resizes and resamples some of the art for the digital version. The print version still looks amazing!
For the folks who don't have or don't want to make a MagCloud account, here's the PDF on Scribd.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/168410757
Big thanks to Dave Lang for putting up with my bullshit, any artist or writer on the internet I stole art or text from (Steven Plin, etc.), Matthew Rorie for showing up to the panel super early, Max Temkin and the lady that helped place the extra buttons on the front row seats before the panel, the GB Mod Squad, Dan Teasdale for sending over high-resolution files for his free back cover Drake Tracker advertisement, all Ryan's buddies who happily agreed to have their Polaroid picture taken, everyone wearing a Ryan button at PAX Prime and anyone who asked for one after I ran out (I'll have more at East). You are awesome people and it was an amazing four days. I'll be Enforcing at PAX East again and I hope to see you all there.
I'm all outta words now.
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