London-based publisher Kepler Interactive has launched 'Reset', a print magazine that aims to draw on video games as a core cultural medium.

Kepler Interactive

Kepler Interactive, the London-based publisher that has found overwhelming success with games such as Sifu, Tchia, Pacific Drive, and the multi-award-winning Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, is expanding beyond digital releases with the launch of a new print magazine, Reset.

The bi-annual publication aims to place video games at the heart of the cultural landscape, arriving at a time when the industry is increasingly moving beyond debates over artistic legitimacy and toward broader cultural influence. With Reset, Kepler is making a case for games as part of a wider creative conversation spanning fashion, music, architecture, and design.

Reset will be overseen by Simon Sweeney, creative director at Kepler Interactive, an Irish-born designer and art director whose past work includes projects for FKA Twigs, the V&A, André 3000, and the Barbican. Reset isn’t his first rodeo on the printed scene; he also created Raid, which invited designers to create and develop identities for fictional games.

“With the world moving to more digital and ephemeral ways of communication and interaction, we’re really interested in creating something tactile and physical that people can engage with. Something beautiful that can have a place in their home, that they can hold in their hands,” says Sweeney. “We’re also interested in the permanence of a printed object, something solid that can be referenced in the future.”

Editorially, Reset is structured around conversations between game creators and figures from across the broader creative industries. The first issue includes contributions from developers such as Yoko Taro (Drakengard, Nier: Automata) and writers such as Darren Wall (Read-Only Memory), as well as designers and artists whose work intersects with gaming ideas and practices. Its three covers spotlight figures including Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 director Guillaume Broche, fashion designer Yaku, and artist Mélanie Courtinat.

“We’re interested in highlighting the myriad ways in which games influence and are influenced by the broader cultural landscape,” Sweeney says. “We’re the first generation to grow up with video games. They exist for us now in the same way that books, music, film, fashion, and art have done in the past, as a core element of the media spectrum.”

Perhaps Reset’s most interesting editorial choice is its focus on individuals rather than specific titles or franchises. “Our focus is not so much on the work itself or heavily reliant on IP, but on the individual,” Sweeney explains. We also want to elevate how game designers and developers are celebrated and represented. Our approach is to make the magazine feel almost more like a fashion publication.”

While this approach has, in many ways, been successfully deployed by Caspian Whistler’s superb journal series, A Profound Waste of Time, Reset aims to delve deeper into contributors’ careers shaped by gaming media, with a specific goal of reaching a wider audience.

“If someone from a traditional games background reads about a fashion designer like Yaku because they both share a love for RuneScape, that feels like an easy bridge for us to make,” Sweeney adds.

He intends for Reset to be an ongoing publication with a biannual release schedule and a focus on expanding its contributor network. Sweeney also has a few big names on his wishlist for future issues, and wants to speak with director Alex Garland about Elden Ring, composer Soichi Terada about Ape Escape, and Remedy Entertainment head honcho Sam Lake about David Lynch.

“Success for the magazine would be building on the foundation that is present in this first issue, one of bringing together artists and designers from across media together with video games as the connective tissue,” Sweeney says.

You can order your copy of Reset for £20 ($27.20) at Kepler Interactive’s new online store, which the company says will also offer “carefully curated objects inspired by its game worlds and creative projects.”