Ten Things #2b: Total inversion

The first time I heard about its existence, I was excited to read Invert Look. It’s a creation of The Church of London, the non-religious publisher of Huck, and above all, Little White Lies, a marvellous mono-thematic film magazine that’s deservedly forged quite a niche for itself in the film world, and just celebrated five years of existence.

Due to unfortunate geographical placement, I’ve had to review the 36-page zero issue of Invert Look through its digital edition, though my understanding is that there aren’t any pages or features missing from that.

The magazine has a distinct, one-colour look – presumably selected to save money, though the bright green of 1980s PC monitors is a great choice for its subject matter. It also works well when it utilises simple, eight-bittish graphics, as well as in its retro headline font, and the line illustrations and monochrome photography that make up most of its visuals. It doesn’t really work so well for modern videogame screenshots, however, draining them of life and making them appear flat. Perhaps it would have been served better sticking to the older-style visuals for the whole issue.

The theme of this issue zero is “Origins”, and judging by its articles, Invert Look is a magazine aimed at British people in their 30s who have been into games since they were teenagers (a great demographic for advertisers, and similar to the average age of the game player according to these American stats). So games such as Chuckie Egg and Manic Miner are referenced without explanation, and the first line of the first article is nostalgic: “Things were so much simpler in the 80s.”

Features are very mixed in quality; at their best, such as with the interview with Ralph Baer, the collective piece My First Game, and the well-written profile of Gunpei Yokoi, they feel like thoughtful insider articles about overlooked heroes of videogame history. They’re short, but they do succeed in entertaining and educating, while managing to both revel in a shared nostalgia, and also quietly point out useful lessons for the future.

For the majority of the magazine, however, articles verge on the pretentious or the overly academic. One piece contains the words “plethora” and “self-reflexivity” in successive sentences; another states that “gaming is “a product of socialisation and development that relates to the wider notion of ‘play’”.” While more straightforward in its tone, an interview with Edgar Wright is a tough read for being confusingly structured, as if a rehash of a non-game-themed piece. And unsurprising perhaps given the contacts book of its creators, there’s a lot more film people than games people quoted in there.

I know it’s an issue zero, a statement of intent, and not necessarily a reflection of final quality. However, it has been made public, and I can only review what’s there, which for me was rather disappointing.

Little White Lies succeeds because it’s an insider’s magazine that doesn’t talk either up or down to its readers, while enhancing our enjoyment of movies. There are a few elements visible from LWL in some of the content and design choices of Invert Look – but not nearly enough to create an enjoyable, readable, and above all marketable magazine. It will be interesting to see how different the final product actually is, when it appears this autumn. My hope is, quite a lot.

Continue. Try Again.

You can read issue zero of Invert Look here.