A Profound Waste of Time

The glossy magazines with the game covers consumed more of my money than the games themselves. I remember the weight of them, waiting in line at the shop. The smell. The overwrought fonts that made half the text a chore to read. A profound waste of time and money, obviously. Probably why I remember it so clearly.

The internet killed all that. Screenshots on demand, reviews updated instantly, wiki guides for everything, and strategy videos. By 2005, physical game magazines were already dead—bleeding out in newsstands, obsolete before the last issue shipped.

Except people never quite stopped wanting them. There’s something about paper that a screen can’t touch. You can’t flip through a website the same way. You can’t leave it on the coffee table for someone else to find. You can’t skim while your coffee gets cold in that particular rhythm.

A Profound Waste of Time launched in May 2018 at around 20 euros—a new print magazine betting that people still cared. Not a buyer’s guide or a catalog of upcoming releases. Real writing about games that actually mattered. Life is Strange. Yoshi’s Story. Final Fantasy. Longer pieces from people with something genuine to say about why games were worth thinking about.

The title gets it exactly right. Hours spent on video games are a waste. Money spent on a printed magazine about video games, when everything’s free online, is an even bigger waste. But knowing it’s pointless and doing it anyway—that might be the whole thing.