Mark Serrels interview
Mark Serrels from Kotaku Australia on the evolution of Australian video game websites.
Mark Serrels was a managing editor at Allure media for several years where he oversaw the Australian editions of Kotaku, Gizmodo and Lifehacker. Before that he worked for magazine publisher Future and Derwent Howard, where he worked on titles like Official PlayStation Mag.
Let’s start with your time at Future Publishing Australia. You were managing editor and looking after a number of titles including Official Nintendo Magazine. What was the view internally about developing an online presence for the magazines. Was there an internal acknowledgment that online was the future? Or was too much money being generated with the print titles to worry about it?
“There was never too much money being generated in magazines when I worked on them!”
“I think back then there was a growing sense that magazines were on the decline for sure. Future Australia was a different beast because the websites were all run centrally from the UK and the US. Folks in Australia had a very limited amount of interaction with the online side. Our job was essentially to get the magazines to print.”
“I remember the early beginnings of writing stories for the Official Nintendo Mag website in collab with the UK. The CMS was painful and rudimentary. I also vaguely remember Future paying for a very funny ‘blogging’ course, which was terrible.
“But before I worked at Future I was with Derwent Howard, working on the Official PlayStation Mag and a handful of other games magazines.
“Derwent Howard made a play in the online space with GamePlayer.com.au (I think that was the URL). It didn't go well. Despite the best efforts of Chris Stead and others (Stead was a self driven maniac of a workhorse and still is) the site went under pretty quickly.”
More generally, what was the state of Australia’s video game websites in the 00s? Were there any sites forging a distinct local character, or doing anything unique? What are your memories of that era?
“Oh yeah there were a bunch of websites back then. Both IGN and GameSpot already had AU editions. There were also a number of independent websites like Australian Gamer and Vooks -- which is miraculously still around today -- was also kicking about.”
“I can't say I have too many memories of the websites themselves, but I have a lot of fond memories of just working in that era. The magazine cycle was so much fun, you had space to review games properly, you were working alongside designers and brainstorming fun ideas.”
“Derwent Howard in particular was a mad place to work. I remember waiting for review copies of games to arrive and huddling around the PlayStation to play games like God of War 2, or the first Assassin's Creed. I remember endless sessions playing Halo 3, and 2 am send days because everyone left all the work till the last minute. It was chaotic, frenetic and just heaps of fun.”
Social media didn’t start to really emerge locally until the end of the 00s, what sort of impact did that have on physical magazines and their online presence. Did publishers see the value in this new medium and try to cultivate it?
“I was at magazines at the very start of places like Twitter and, to be honest, we didn't take much notice of it. Back then the way to drive traffic to your website was through aggregator sites like DIGG. Very laughable when you look back.”
“I did have a Twitter account by the tail end of it and actually got kicked off my job at Official Nintendo Magazine because of it.”
“A bigwig at Nintendo Australia noticed my tweets and sent practically every tweet I'd posted with swear words in it to Future's Managing Director, who completely buckled under the pressure. I was taken off the Nintendo mag and switched over the Future's PlayStation magazine. Absolutely wild stuff.”
Broadband was quite late to arrive in Australia, what sort of impact did that have on the establishment of a local online media presence?
“Honestly don't think it had too much of an impact. If anything I feel like Australia's almost been over indexed when it comes to a local media presence. Nowadays that's not the case, but back then almost every major player had an Australian edition.”
The general theme I get from talking to people in the industry is that everyone was so busy with the day-to-day hustle of publishing magazines they didn’t have the time or resources to pursue a proper online strategy. Is that a fair assessment and your experience?
“Yeah I think that's a fair assessment. I seem to remember Atomic (PC Mag) had a great online community and at Derwent Howard we tried to replicate that, but failed. We were busy with the mag and, as time went on, resources dwindled -- which made magazine production even more difficult and intense. So it was sort of a spiral there. The less magazines became relevant, the harder it was to resource a switch to online.”
Let’s talk about your time at Allure. Can you give us a quick overview of how the licensing deal for Kotaku, etc., worked, and what that meant on a day-to-day basis as far as content and publishing schedules
“It was fairly straight forward. Allure Media paid Gawker a fee to repurpose the content onto an Australian URL. It was a very sweet deal for both parties really.”
“In terms of how it worked practically, all the US posts came through WordPress on the back to what we called the ‘refeed’. We then manually republished each post on the site and scheduled the US posts to appear alongside the locally written content.”
“In terms of my own publishing schedule: it was brutal. I published 8-10 posts, five days a week for about five or so years. I think I published over 12,000 posts at Kotaku. Just ridiculous when you look back. There was a trick to it though. You had regular posts like, ‘What Are You Playing This Weekend?’ which took like 10 minutes. But asides from that I'd write everything from 200 word news pieces through to 5000 word investigative features that took me months to finish. The fun part of Kotaku Australia is I got to do whatever the hell I wanted!”
Kotaku Australia shut down in 2024, but I assume you could see the writing on the wall far earlier than that. Was there a moment when it became obvious that company’s were tightening belts and struggling to earn a buck online.
“I actually didn't see the writing on the wall! I think people underestimate how profitable Kotaku was as a business. It was very profitable when I worked there and from what I heard it continued to be profitable after I left.”
“What really happened -- as far as I can tell -- is this... Allure Media was acquired by Fairfax, which was fine! Then Fairfax ultimately merged Allure with Pedestrian, which was less fine and a lot of good people lost their jobs. Pedestrian never really quite understood Kotaku and -- crucially -- how to sell advertising campaigns on it.”
“It still made money, I'm certain of that. But I think after the Nine/Fairfax merger Kotaku was just a line item in a spreadsheet and it got chopped with a single second's thought. A terrible decision.”
Going back a little, there’s very little online info about any Australian video game websites back in the 90s. Are you aware of any sites from that far back? Or was the local industry birthed by licensing deals with larger US sites like IGN, Kotaku, etc.
“To be honest I didn't pay too much attention back then. I didn't arrive in Australia until the mid 2000s. (I'm very Scottish.)”
What’s something most people don’t know about the history of Australian video game websites.
“I think in terms of Kotaku, I just want people to know that it was always very successful! I think there's this horror show narrative from bad actors -- go woke go broke thing. It's simply not true. Kotaku always had a huge audience, punched massively above its weight and made a lot of money. I don't know why, but it's important for me that people know this!”
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