The EGM Compendium Weekly Progress Update: November 10th
8 months ago
– Mon, Nov 10, 2025 at 05:01:30 PM
Hello, and thank you to our backers!
Today, we can announce that you’ll be able to read the digital edition of The EGM Compendium starting November 28th.
As of today, Mollie and I are about a week out from wrapping up our editing work on the book. That’s when we’ll have clean, edited PDFs of every page in a place she and I are comfortable with. After discussing the timeline with the team today, we decided to build a buffer of a few more days into the schedule to ensure there’s adequate time for final review as well as any small last-minute revisions those reviews may necessitate.
This’ll also give us and our collaborators a chance to give the book one final read-through in its complete, assembled form and test out our digital distribution to ensure everything works well. Speaking of, we’ll share more details on distribution—how and where you’ll be able to download the book—next week.
We also know many of you are most excited for the print copy of the book. On that front, please note that we’re taking steps to speed up the production process and ensure we hit the ground running. This week, we’re providing the printer files to produce a test run of sample books reflecting the exact materials, page count, and page designs of the the final version. We’ll also have the already-approved pages ready to go in the prepress system ahead of time, minimizing the lag between approval and printing.
After all the effort we’ve poured into this project over the past year—and all the love (and, yes, patience too!) we’ve gotten back from this community—it feels a little surreal to be so close to sharing The EGM Compendium with you. We can’t wait for you to read it, and we can’t thank you enough for giving us the opportunity to write it through your support.
Thank you again, and we’ll be back next week.
EGM Compendium Weekly Progress Update: October 31st
8 months ago
– Fri, Oct 31, 2025 at 04:58:57 PM
Hello, thank, you, and a very spooky Halloween to all our backers!
We’re still in the thick of wrapping up the final layouts, copy editing, and approvals on the last book pages. We’ve decided we’re going to spend one more week crunching hard before we announce the specific date—yes, in November—when you can expect to see the digital issue available to read (which is when we’ll also send the book to the printer).
As I’m sure you can understand after the journey we’ve been on together, we want to be absolutely certain how long the remaining work will take. But it’s almost time (really!), and we can’t wait to share the book with you.
We’ve been swamped with all the finishing touches this week, so we don’t have much to share in the way of a fun extra, but we did remember something small that we wanted to pass along. Back when we were building the Archive website, we hid a few minor Easter eggs, just to see if anyone would stumble on them. Well, maybe it’s better described as one Easter egg in multiple flavors.
Again, they’re not major secrets by any stretch, but they are obvious enough that you’d know if you discovered one. To the best of our knowledge, no one has found a single one yet. So we thought we’d see if a little poke could change that. Happy hunting!
EGM Compendium Weekly Progress Update: October 24th
8 months ago
– Fri, Oct 24, 2025 at 05:39:45 PM
Hello and thank you once again to our backers. It’s Friday, which means we’re back with another quick update on our latest work.
Just like last week, we’ve been whittling away at the remaining issue page layouts and working through the copy editing and page reviews. No setbacks to report this week either, so we’re still looking on track for mid-November delivery of the digital version and to start printing of the physical edition.
That being said, we did want to find something new we could share with you, so it’s time to reveal one more surprise we’ve been holding back. As you know, for this project we recorded dozens of hours of interviews with former EGM editors and staffers. (Just a hair under 32 hours, to be exact.) Everyone we spoke to ended up being far more generous with their time than we ever expected, and we quickly realized that if we printed every great story or insight we heard, we’d barely have space for anything else in the book. So we started brainstorming (and getting the sign-off from our interviewees for) yet another way for you to experience EGM history: a limited podcast series, based on our conversations with the alumni.
To set expectations properly, these recordings weren’t originally planned for public release. The audio we’re working with isn’t studio quality. Some folks were even calling in on cellphones. But the conversations were just too good not to share, and we’re confident you’ll have a lot of fun hearing your favorite EGM editors reconnecting—some of them for the first time in years—to reminisce about the good old days. There’s a magic there that’s impossible to fully capture on the page.
But if you’re more of the reading type than the listening type, no sweat. We’ll also publish transcripts online, so you’ll be getting bonus material, too.
You can expect episodes to begin releasing after the book and EGM #265 ship to you. They’ll be accessible to all backers regardless of level, though you will have to register your (free or paid) Archive account. We’ll start editing them together concurrently with the remainder of our work on the Archive. (We want to stress again, after the book is complete—all our efforts are still laser-focused on getting that to you, and this will not have any impact on our timeline.) This is just one more small way for us to say thank you to everyone who supported this endeavor and to reward your patience for sticking with us until we all reach the finish line.
Back next week!
EGM Compendium Weekly Progress Update: October 17th
9 months ago
– Fri, Oct 17, 2025 at 11:33:12 AM
Hello and thank you once again to our backers. Time for another quick weekly check-in as we move toward the finish line on The EGM Compendium.
All of our remaining work continues at the expected pace, and everything is currently on track for a mid-November rollout of the digital version. The two outstanding feature layouts are now done. We’ve also started digging into the remaining issue pages. Copy editing and approvals are also continuing smoothly so far.
This is one of those cases where no (big) news is good news—we’re just continuing to knock out everything on our to-do list so we can get the book in your hands soon. We’ll check in again next week with another update.
On a more somber note…
We’d also like to share how saddened we were to learn this week of the passing of Tomonobu Itagaki, founder of Team Ninja and the creative force behind the Dead or Alive and 3D Ninja Gaiden series. Though he helped craft some the most beloved and talked-about games of the early 2000s, he was also widely known for his outsize personality, which he let shine through in full force when talking to the press. Confident, funny, and rock-star cool, Mr. Itagaki helped shift the world’s understanding of what a game developer could be.
Given Mr. Itagaki’s frequent, always memorable appearances in the pages of EGM, he was high on the list of developers we wanted to reach out to for the book. Neither Mollie nor I had ever spoken with him before, so we contacted him cold and hoped for the best. He agreed without hesitation. What we found was a man who was extremely friendly, humble, and generous in his conversations with us, far from the persona you may have seen in print and online over the years. We’re honored we’ll be able to share a few of his words and commemorate his work, in some small way, in the Compendium.
Our sincere condolences go out to his Mr. Itagaki’s family, friends, and colleagues.
EGM Compendium Weekly Progress Update: October 10th
9 months ago
– Fri, Oct 10, 2025 at 11:21:06 AM
Hello and thank you to all of our backers! We’re checking in as promised to let you know what we’ve been up to and how things are progressing as we advance toward completion of The EGM Compendium.
It’s been a busy week, and we wanted to share a few quick details on what we’ve been up to.
On the layout front, we’ve wrapped up two of the outstanding feature designs after a few rounds of revisions, feedback, and some collaborative editing. That means there are just two left to finalize.
One of those two now-completed features is something we’ve been working on getting right for a long while now: An "Interface" section at the back of the book dedicated to you, our Kickstarter backers. We decided early on that we didn’t want to just dump the "Your Name in the Book" rewards onto plain pages, so instead we worked to recreate the spirit of the reader-driven sections the magazine featured throughout the years, first known as Interface, then Letters, then Login. This section will have a long list of names—unavoidable, with the volume of support we received—but you’ll also find letters and responses, letter art, and EGMemories from the community mixed in throughout. We wanted to make sure there was more reason for everyone to look through those pages and find something fun to engage with. We also wanted to put as much visual flair on them as the rest of the book. We hope you’ll enjoy it and agree the effort was worth it once you see it in the final book!
Copy editing and final page reviews continue at a steady pace. We haven’t encountered anything that necessitated any major revisions, so all good news so far.
All in all, we look to be keeping to our current schedule of get everything wrapped up by mid-November. Just a bit longer, and the digital book will be out to you and the files at the printer.
Back next week!
