Chris Kerr Launches Vertical Slice, a New Independent Games Industry Publication

Veteran games industry reporter Chris Kerr has launched Vertical Slice, an independent trade publication focused on news, investigation, and the people who make games. The project arrives at a turbulent moment for games media, with established outlets facing layoffs, consolidation, closures, and changing business models while a growing number of journalists attempt to build reader-supported work outside large corporate structures.

Kerr, who has reported on games for 15 years and covered the business side of the industry for roughly 13 of them, previously spent around 11 years at Game Developer, where he most recently served as senior news editor. He left that position at the end of September 2026 to take on the uncertainty of operating a publication of his own.

Vertical Slice is intended as a dedicated reporting outlet rather than a broad games site. Kerr has described its mission as producing fearless work that informs, inspires, and interrogates the industry. Its editorial focus will be news, with an ambition to publish original stories and breaking developments regularly. The site will not pursue the familiar traffic-driven mix of reviews, walkthroughs, and guides, and it is not being positioned as an aggregation service.

A bet on independent reporting

The launch reflects a familiar tension in modern games journalism: corporate employment can offer stability and benefits, but ownership structures can also create commercial priorities that do not always align neatly with aggressive, independent reporting. Kerr said he believes he can do his strongest work without those constraints, even while acknowledging the practical advantages that come with a full-time role at a larger company.

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That decision comes with obvious risk. At launch, Vertical Slice is being financed from Kerr's own savings. He is initially operating the publication alone, which lowers the immediate financial burden because there is no staff payroll beyond his own living costs. Still, he has been candid that starting an independent outlet is frightening, particularly in an environment where journalism jobs are increasingly precarious.

"I believe in it. I don't know what else I want to do," Kerr said of the venture.

The publication's name draws from a game development term: a vertical slice is a polished, self-contained portion of a game made to demonstrate how the wider project may look and play. It is an apt label for a publication aimed squarely at the development business, its workers, and the decisions that shape the games players ultimately see.

Trade reporting can cover a broad range of subjects that do not always receive sustained attention from consumer-facing games websites. That includes studio formation and closure, layoffs, labor conditions, funding, acquisitions, development practices, workplace misconduct, technology shifts, union activity, and the less visible realities of how games are made. Kerr wants Vertical Slice to give developers and other workers a place to speak about injustice and misconduct, while also documenting the creativity and effort behind the industry's output.

Subscriptions rather than advertising

Vertical Slice's business model will largely center on paid access. Most of its articles will sit behind a paywall, while some stories will be free each week. The site will not rely on advertising. Kerr had not finalized pricing at the time of the launch discussion, but he compared the intended cost to the routine purchase of a daily newspaper.

A newsletter will provide a digest of the site's work, but the newsletter is not meant to turn Vertical Slice into a link roundup or a substitute for its reporting. The core product is the journalism published on the site itself.

That approach is a direct response to a media landscape in which advertising has become less dependable, social platforms have become unreliable referral engines, and AI-generated summaries and aggregation have created new pressure on reporting organizations. Games journalism is hardly alone in dealing with those forces, but it has been hit especially hard by years of shrinking budgets and instability at both specialist outlets and larger media groups.

Kerr's argument is straightforward: readers who value a reporter's work may need to support it directly if they want that work to remain viable. The challenge, of course, is translating recognition into subscriptions. Even widely read journalists require only a small fraction of their total audience to become paying members in order to make a lean operation sustainable, but earning that commitment requires trust, consistency, and stories readers cannot get elsewhere.

Vertical Slice enters a market where independent journalism has already demonstrated that readers can support specialized reporting. Yet the games trade space remains a difficult one to monetize. The audience is highly engaged but fragmented, and industry professionals have plenty of information competing for their limited attention. Kerr's plan depends on building a publication valuable enough to developers, publishers, service companies, investors, and games enthusiasts who care about the business behind the medium.

Free development archives at launch

Although much of Vertical Slice will be paid, the site is launching with free material meant to preserve and share practical development history. Its initial library includes design documents and pitch decks submitted by developers, including teams associated with OuterSloth and Kitfox Games.

That archive could become one of the project's more distinctive features. Pitch decks and internal design materials can be enormously useful to students, aspiring developers, and experienced teams alike, offering a rare look at how an idea is framed before it becomes a commercial game. They can also show how studios communicate a project's identity, production needs, audience, and financial case to prospective partners.

Making those documents publicly available serves a slightly different function from day-to-day reporting, but it fits the publication's broader focus on the development community. It can turn Vertical Slice into both a news destination and a resource for people looking to understand the working processes behind game creation.

An ambitious newsroom vision

For now, Vertical Slice is a one-person operation. Kerr's longer-term goal, however, is considerably bigger. If the publication can reach financial stability, he wants to reinvest revenue into reporting rather than simply maintain a solo business. That could mean bringing in recurring freelancers, expanding into audio projects such as a podcast, accepting columns, and eventually publishing articles written by developers themselves.

His most ambitious target is a functioning newsroom of between five and 10 people. Kerr recognizes that such a goal is years away and dependent on the publication first proving that its subscription model works. But the plan is not only about headcount. He also wants to create a pathway for newer journalists, offering mentorship and opportunities in a field where entry-level routes have become increasingly scarce.

That emphasis matters because the decline of full-time media jobs affects more than individual reporters. When newsrooms contract, fewer editors have time to train newcomers, fewer publications can afford to let writers develop a beat, and the institutional knowledge necessary for long-term investigative work can disappear. A sustainable independent trade outlet would not solve those systemic problems on its own, but it could create another place where specialized reporting and professional development are possible.

Kerr's confidence rests in part on the audience he has built over years on the trade beat. He believes that even a relatively small number of readers who have followed his reporting could be enough to support the outlet at its earliest stage. Reaching break-even would be a pivotal point: it would demonstrate that the model can support further investment rather than remaining an indefinitely fragile solo endeavor.

A test case for games media's future

Vertical Slice is not the first independent games publication, nor is it the first project to ask readers to fund specialized reporting directly. What makes it notable is its particular focus on the development industry and its intention to scale beyond an individual newsletter or personal reporting brand into a broader newsroom.

That makes the launch a meaningful test of whether a subscription-funded trade publication can grow at a time when the games business itself is under intense strain. The industry has produced enormous hits and continues to attract major investment, but it has also endured repeated layoffs, studio shutdowns, canceled projects, and intense uncertainty for workers. Reporting on those conditions requires time, sources, expertise, and editorial independence--resources that are difficult to sustain when every story is judged primarily by immediate traffic.

Kerr has acknowledged that the venture could fail, and he has not presented success as guaranteed. But he has also made clear that the alternative--remaining in a professional environment that may not offer a workable long-term runway--is not an appealing answer. For Vertical Slice, the immediate task is to demonstrate that readers will pay for focused, original journalism about the people and businesses shaping games.

If it succeeds, the publication could become more than a new destination for industry news. It could offer a model for how experienced reporters build durable, independent careers while giving game workers a stronger platform to tell their stories. For an industry that depends on the labor and ideas of thousands of people behind the scenes, that is a mission with consequences well beyond any single headline.