Veteran games industry reporter Chris Kerr has launched Vertical Slice, a new independent trade publication for the games business. The project begins as a one-person, reader-funded operation and sets out a deliberately narrow remit: news reporting rather than reviews, guides or aggregation.

That focus matters. A trade publication is journalism aimed chiefly at the people and institutions working in an industry, though its reporting can be valuable to anyone trying to understand how games are made and financed. Its natural subjects include studios, publishers, workers, business decisions, development practices and workplace issues—not just the finished games arriving in stores.

Kerr has spent 15 years reporting on games, including about 13 years on the trade beat. He most recently served as senior news editor at Game Developer, where he worked for roughly 11 years before leaving at the end of the previous month. With Vertical Slice, he is exchanging the relative security of staff employment for a publication he owns and controls.

His stated goal is reporting that “inspires, informs and interrogates.” In practical terms, Kerr intends to break news daily and provide a place where game workers can speak about misconduct and injustice, as well as the conditions shaping the games people play.

“I want to build something that hopefully stands the test of time, that people can rally behind,” Kerr said, describing a publication intended to give workers a platform.

A subscription-first model, with no advertising

Vertical Slice plans to place most of its reporting behind a paywall and run without ads. Some articles will be free each week, and readers will be able to subscribe to a newsletter that summarizes material published on the site. Kerr was still determining exact subscription pricing, but compared the intended cost to buying a daily newspaper from a local newsstand.

A paywall is a system that limits access to content unless a reader has a subscription or makes another payment. For a small newsroom, it is more than a website setting: it is the central business calculation. The reporting must persuade enough readers that direct support is worthwhile, and recurring subscriptions must cover the reporter’s livelihood before they can fund additional staff or new formats.

That approach differs sharply from an advertising-supported model, where readership is converted into revenue through ads. Vertical Slice’s plan is based instead on the idea that a comparatively small portion of people who value a reporter’s work can make a specialized outlet viable. Kerr has said millions of people have read his work in recent years, and that only a small fraction of that audience would need to pay for the project to reach break-even and potentially allow an additional hire.

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The premise is straightforward, but the stakes are high. Kerr is funding the project from his own savings and is initially its only employee, meaning the operation has no payroll beyond his own salary. He has been candid that the decision is frightening, while also saying he believes this is the work he wants to do.

Reporting, not reviews or aggregation

Vertical Slice’s boundaries are unusually clear. It will not publish game reviews or guides, and Kerr does not intend it to become an aggregation platform. Aggregation generally means compiling, summarizing or republishing information produced elsewhere; original reporting means gathering and verifying information directly, including through documents, interviews and other reporting work.

The distinction is especially relevant to the project’s identity. A site that covers a wide assortment of game releases and buying advice may pursue large audiences across many search topics. Kerr is instead centering the outlet on industry reporting. That can mean a smaller potential audience, but it also gives subscribers a specific reason to support it: coverage that is meant to investigate and explain the business and labor behind games.

The games audience is enormous—as illustrated by developments such as Steam reaching a record 43.5 million concurrent users—but a large player base does not automatically create a sustainable market for specialized journalism. Vertical Slice’s challenge will be converting interest in games into consistent support for the reporting that explains the industry around them.

Kerr has connected that challenge to wider pressure on journalism, including layoffs, shrinking publications and AI-driven aggregation. His argument is that readers who want a particular kind of reporting need to actively support the people producing it. That is not a guarantee of success; it is the wager behind the publication.

Free development documents offer a different kind of access

Alongside its paid reporting, Vertical Slice is launching a free library of design documents and pitch decks supplied by developers including OuterSloth and Kitfox Games. This is a notable complement to a news-focused site because these materials show a different layer of the development process.

A design document is a planning document that can outline a game’s mechanics, structure, goals or creative direction. A pitch deck is typically a presentation used to explain a project’s concept and commercial case to prospective partners, funders or publishers. Neither is the same thing as a finished game, and such documents can represent an early plan rather than the final product. Even so, making them available can help readers understand the language and proposals that help turn an idea into a production.

The library also fits Vertical Slice’s stated interest in the people making games. Coverage of the industry often arrives at the moment of a release, acquisition, closure, layoff or controversy. Development documents instead point back toward the earlier creative and business discussions that precede those public events.

An ambitious newsroom plan with a cautious starting point

Kerr’s long-term aspiration is not simply to operate a personal subscription newsletter. He wants Vertical Slice eventually to become a functioning newsroom of between five and 10 people, while acknowledging that outcome is years away and depends on success at every earlier stage.

The potential expansion includes hiring full-time writers, working with regular freelancers, publishing columns, welcoming articles written by developers and possibly creating a podcast. Just as important, Kerr wants to mentor emerging journalists and create routes into the profession for new talent.

That future remains conditional, not promised. The immediate operation is one reporter, self-funded savings, a mostly paid product and an aim to publish original news consistently. But the larger vision explains why the structure matters: any revenue beyond breaking even would be reinvested into staff and output rather than treated merely as a solo venture’s endpoint.

Kerr has framed the attempt around career sustainability as much as editorial independence. He wants a newsroom that can offer people room to build a life and career, rather than expecting them to endure years without reliable prospects. It is a bigger objective than launching a website, and therefore carries bigger uncertainty.

What Vertical Slice will need to prove

The publication arrives with experience, a sharply defined editorial mission and a clear view of the audience it hopes to serve. Those are useful foundations, but they do not remove the hard parts of independent publishing. It must establish a dependable reporting rhythm, persuade readers to pay, sustain that relationship without advertising, and do so while starting with a single person.

  • For industry workers: the outlet aims to provide another place for workplace concerns and industry developments to be reported.
  • For developers and students: the free document library could offer useful insight into how game concepts are described and pitched.
  • For readers: the subscription decision is a direct choice to fund specialized games-business reporting rather than rely solely on freely available summaries.
  • For the wider media landscape: its progress will test whether a tightly focused, ad-free trade newsroom can grow from individual support.

Kerr has not presented the outcome as certain. He has openly acknowledged the possibility that the venture might fail. Yet the decision to try is central to Vertical Slice’s proposition: a newsroom built around independent ownership, original reporting and a belief that readers can directly sustain the work they value.