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Ziff Davis Teeters
Longtime Reader writes: "It is a short article with links all over the place, but Linux and Main is running a story that says Ziff Davis might file for bankruptcy this week. The company plans to stay in business by expanding its focus on computer games, the story says." To get you started, reader idiotnot contributes this link to coverage in the NYT.
When ZD published PC Magazine, you could read Machrone and Dvoraks ramblings, read a round up of 50-60 PC's on the market, and there was a real tech section.
Computer Shopper, the 'Hard Edge' with Bill and Alice, PAGES UPON PAGES OF ADS....
The Internet has ruined magazines.
Nobody will accept Ziff Davis doing games. At least nobody will be willing to accept that they are impartial. Considering how many of "our own" seem to be bought, Ziff Davis would give the impression that they are pre-bought and just waiting to close the deals.
Personally, though they seem an amazing resource, I only use their website when I encounter software thats not popularly reviewed such as obscure mp3 creation or audio ripping programs, and scanner programs, and web site creation software that I have never heard of. Best they stick to what they do but focus their attention at serving their customer base and not catering to the OEMs. Cultivate a relationship with groups like slashdot, anandtech, HardOCP, etc...
I hope Ziff Davis folds up completely and collapses.
... Nah, I'm dreaming too much.
Their magazines don't offer any straight journalism; they're just pure advertising, page-for-page. All their product reviews and reports read just like the ads that follow on the next page!
Maybe if they fold and these awful rags go away, the CIO-types of the world will actually get some literate, technical information instead of marketing BS!
Goodbye, ZD. And good riddance.
--NBVB
I hate to see people loose their jobs, but zdnet and pcmag have been useless for over 5 years now. PCMag in particular stop reporting back in 95 and only rehashed PR junk. It is time for new crop of magazines to take the place of all the dead weight in the tech reporting industry. Zd used to have solid in depth articles that were fairly objective. But soon after win95 came out, that all changed. Of course these are my own biased opinions, but I know other techies share similar perspectives.
Microsoft suddenly decided to cut their advertising budget by 70%.
Did they do Computer Shopper too? That was great way back when, before they shrunk it to normal size and all. You could find some damned good deals in there (and I think there were some good articles at times too, but that wasn't what I bought it for...).
I hope they come back to a technical crowd at least. There's too much crap about the business of the internet and computers - I want more technical information available to the masses.
-N
I've nothing to say here...
Enjoy the smirk while you can!
I clearly remember ZD as one of the pioneers of misleading mail-order campaigns. They sent a renewal notice that was designed to look like an IRS notice. That was over 10 years ago, and I immediately cancelled the remainder of my PC Magazine subscription, and have avoided dealing with them ever since. As they took over other magazines that I subscribed to, I let those subscriptions lapse. That was partially because I disliked ZD's behavior, and partially because the computer magazines were gradually becoming a waste of time anyway.
I try to avoid dealing with companies that use unethical advertising. Latest example that comes to mind is VeriSign.
Concealed Handgun License Courses in Plano, Texas
Sorting through the NY Times Article here were some interesting tid-bits I picked up.
* Willis Stein & Partners paid $780 million for the company during the bull market.
* The company's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization are projected to be $6.5 million in 2002
Translation: At the current rate of profit, it will take over a hundred years to make up the initial investment. Ouch.
* (Earnings) are expected to rise to $34.4 million in 2003 if the restructuring goes as planned.
* Savings will be gained from the closing of money-losing magazines and the layoff of 700 of the company's 1,150 employees the last year.
Translation: We plan on making close to six times as much money as we were before, primarily by firing over 70% of our workforce, cutting our costs drastically.
Now, here's what bothers me to some extent, and by no means do you have to agree with me on this issue. But according to those numbers, this company is profitable. Granted, its not profitable enough to justify the high price it was bought back in April of 2000, but its in the positive, and appears to be staying there for awhile. However, it seems that being profitable isn't good enough these days. Not only does a company have to be profitable, but it doesn't appear to have any room to do anything that is 'extra-profitable', that is, things that are not done solely for profit.
For example, the article makes mention that the company in question had discontinued its Yahoo! Internet Life Magazina, which had a distribution of over a million. So clearly, some people liked the product. However, it wasn't discontinued due to declining interest, but rather because the number of ad pages had decreased by 50% over the past 2 years. My translation: "If you aren't in a good demographic, you don't get anything published for you."
That's not to say that ZD is under any obligation to operate at a loss for the benefit of the masses. My issue is that ZD is not operating at a loss, but they still plan on putting 700 people out of work, and discontinuing publications that have readership. If there ever was a place where the mythical 'invisible hand' of the market were giving lots of people the finger to enrich the few, this were it. After all, the only people who have to gain from this restructuring are the share holders, while hundreds of workers go unemployed and millions of readers lose their reading material.
So much for the market automatically doing what's best for everyone, eh?
So if ZDNet is focusing on their gaming coverage, here's my own little wish list:
- For the love of god, hire some more women. How many women are on the gamespot.com staff? I'm looking at today's Gamespotting, and it's all XY chromosomed folks. No wonder games like DOA Vollyball are coming out - there isn't someone to stop that jiggle fest from going out of control. (Not that I don't like good looking girls running round, but if they made it fair and featured guys in speedos, I wouldn't feel like it's being marketed only to 14 year old masturbating teenagers who don't have a like).
- Stop it with the positive previews. I have yet to see a preview of a game that says "You know, we're working with an early build of a game - and it sucks. I mean, you thought Daikatana was bad - this game takes the cake." I don't even read reviews anymore - I just check out the synopsys of a game, download the demo, and that's it, because I know I can't rely on what game journalists say about the game before its released. I know it's hard, especially when a game in beta might be better in final version. But if you only have something nice to say (when it isn't deserved), don't say anything at all.
- Ziff Davis also owns gamers.com, Official US Playstation Magazine, etc, etc, etc. I almost hope they go under, mainly because a good chunk of the paper gaming magazines are owned by one company, and you can tell. They're all pretty much the same (much like there's no reason to go to zdnet.com if you've already scanned the headlines for cnet.net). Anyone remember the Gamefan magazine? Great rag, and I was hoping GameGo would take off, but with a near monopoly on gaming magazines, Ziff-Davis has made sure everything is covered in a macho bullshit shell.
- No booth babe pictures. Ever. Again. Look, maybe it's because I get laid on a regular basis, but I don't feel the need for computer gaming news to feature silicon injected flesh peddlers. I want to know about the game. Is it fun. Is it entertaining. I was annoyed after visiting E3 to see the high level of insults to women depicted there, and even more so after checking out a gaming magazine to see they focused the first section to pictures of the girls. Stop it. Please.
That's my little wish list, and I'm sure I'm forgetting other things.52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
SysAdmin, and Server-Workstation Expert
The latter is free, and really worth a read, but they lie about not selling your name to advertising agencies.
Hey...at least they're being honest about their cash flow!!!
Amen. Game magazine / website "journalism" is below the level of the Weekly World News. I think I saw that Gamespot is starting to charge for downloads of demos now, so maybe they've caught on to this as well.
Back before I had broadband, I used to subscribe to PC Gamer. I'd pitch the rag and try the stuff that looked interesting on the CD.
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
Computer Shopper was great in its day. Waiting for it to come each month so you could see what new equipment was available and at the cheap prices, checking a bunch of the ads for the lowest price, then calling up ready to make an order only to be told you needed to wait a few days to get the new price. The article were just something to skim through before you tossed it for the new month.
However the internet killed it. What value does Computer Shopper have when you can go to places like pricewatcher and do a quick search and get the lowest price. In addition the internet provides quicker access to new equipment.
"Hey Jesse, don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out!"
I can only hope this guy gets the axe. Then again, I giggle at the thought of his Duke Nukem Forever review.
I gave myself to Jesus, but now he never calls
For the love of god, hire some more women. How many women are on the gamespot.com staff? I'm looking at today's Gamespotting [gamespot.com], and it's all XY chromosomed folks. No wonder games like DOA Vollyball [gamespot.com] are coming out - there isn't someone to stop that jiggle fest from going out of control. (Not that I don't like good looking girls running round, but if they made it fair and featured guys in speedos, I wouldn't feel like it's being marketed only to 14 year old masturbating teenagers who don't have a like).
No booth babe pictures. Ever. Again. Look, maybe it's because I get laid on a regular basis, but I don't feel the need for computer gaming news to feature silicon injected flesh peddlers.
This guy's chick is *so* watching him post over his shoulder...
I personally think thier problem started when they trashed C|Net and started mirroring all thier content.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Ziff-Davis in my mind still stands out for being the ones that bought, then folded, Creative Computing, which was the original very first computer magazine.
To my mind, this is roughly equivalent to USA Today buying out, then folding, the New York Times.
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
Don't worry; sysadmin is published by CMP, not ZD. :-)
sPh
I wrote about the problem with PC Mag a few weeks back. Nice to see I'm not the only one who feels that way...
this is getting old and so are you
blog
The end was obvious for PC Magazine when they started selling advertisements for hair plugs and sex-enhancing herbal supplements (check the marketplace section of their latest issue).
This from a magazine that pulled the plug on advertisements for pr0n sites a few years back. With the pictures they're using now, what's the difference.
For the folks telling me "99% of all gamers are men, so we don't want girls in our club", according to the IDSA, 40% of all console game sales were to women.
Guys, take down the "Girls not allowed" signs off the treehouse and lower the rope ladder, for pete's sake.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
This is sad, and it has nothing to do with PC Magazine. It's sad because before many of Slashdot's readers were born, I was a preteen electronics geek and Popular Electronics -- published by Ziff-Davis since sometime in the fifties -- was my favorite magazine. In fact I almost got busted in junior high for reading it in class. Electronics class, no less.
I subscribed to PC Magazine for over 10 years and its cousin, PC/Computing, for almost as long. I finally dropped PC/C after they changed their name and slant to a business emphasis that didn't interest me. PC Magazine followed soon after when I came to the realization that I was paying good money for a stack of paper that contained information I could get for free on the 'net.
Someone you trust is one of us.
In the late 80s I actually read PC Magazine. I thought it was a half-decent way to keep abreast of things happening one particular platform -- "IBM PC Compatable" type machines. Of course, if you relied on it, you would end up with a very narrow and distorted view of Personal Computers.
In the early 90s, it seemed to get progressively worse. It kept its focus on only one hardware platform (which is almost, though not quite, justifiable today, but ten years ago, no way), but also focused almost exclusively on a single OS vendor -- you can guess who.
The last straw came in 1995 when they gave their "technical excellence" award for OSes, to Windows 95. Compared to some of the other things around at the time, such as OS/2 Warp, this was a complete joke. You can talk about market realities or whatever, but when it comes to pure technique, Windows 95 is to Warp, as a Model T is to a modern car.
Up to then, I knew I was getting distorted information from them, but just how distorted it was, I guess I just hadn't fully realized it. I took a look around at some other ZD publications then, just to make sure I wasn't jumping to any unjustified conclusions, and then safely concluded: ZD was just Microsoft's PR arm. They were not journalists.
I stopped reading anything published by Ziff-Davis. The words "Ziff-Davis" actually became a negative-value trademark, a badge for unusually poor quality. Worse than random noise. This is a company who can put goodwill on the liabilities side of their balance sheet.
They could even have reformed in the last few years, and I wouldn't know. They established a such horrible reputation and it would take a miracle to bring them back. I can't imagine that anyone reads them anymore.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I stopped buying PC Rag after their ridiculous "comparison" of OS/2 and Win95. It was only two pages, with 80% covered by a single graphic, correctly stating the differences in how each OS protected its running apps. After showing clearly how OS/2 was superior in crash protection, they chose their winner: "Verdict: Windows95 by a mile." After the barrage of hate mail in the next issue's ed page, they responded that they chose Win95 because they knew it would win the bulk of the market share. Technical merit had nothing to do with it. They went with MS, against the facts they presented, because they knew MS would win anyway. That was the last straw for me. They deserve what they are getting now.
Didn't CNet buy ZD in 2000?
1 25 3&mode=thread&tid=149
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/07/19/113
Does this mean CNet is going belly-up?
about ZD's PC magazines is Penn Gillette's column in PC/Computing. It only ran for two years, it was dropped with no fanfare whatever (not even a mention in the Letters column) and he proudly billed it as the only non-computer column to appear in a computer magazine -- but he had a lot to say about privacy issues, communities and the Net, illusion and reality, and the like. His explanation of how public-key cryptography works is still the best I've ever seen. To this day I'm not sure whether that's because or in spite of the fact that he framed it around an account of him sending love letters to Uma Thurman that he didn't want anyone else to read.
I may be in the minority but whatever it was they replaced him with -- I think it was some kind of lame top 10 list -- I didn't think it was nearly as good, useful or entertaining.
Someone you trust is one of us.
Cheer! Here's one woman gamer cheering your comments.
I quit EQ when they redesigned the boobs to be lethal weapons. I'm 33 years old, married, the mother of three kids, and buy WAY more games a year than your average 14 year old gamer. Why? Cause I have a job, and cash to buy them. I buy pretty much whatever catches my fancy. I don't have to save my paper route money, nor do I have to beg my parents for the money.
Attracting new customers should be the goal of every new game. Instead of all those companies catering to the same, tired, cliched gamer, perhaps they should start looking at the gamers everyone forgets.. women. Oh, damn, you know, I forgot, someone already did that... The Sims. And wouldn't you know, its the best selling PC game... EVER.
Catch a clue guys. We're here. We just don't talk to you all cause you are so damn RUDE. You treat us as if we aren't anything more than a pair of breasts and a pussy and that we're on this planet only to provide you with masturabatory material.
Disclaimer: I do not mean all of you. I mean some of you who also replied to this thread. Shouldn't take much brainpower to figure out to whom I am referring.
Back in the last century, I used to love reading Interactive Week when I was working for a big networking company that was making tons of money, and so was Z-D. It was full of news, gossip and ads that were useful to my niche. I read and quoted from the online edition in my work several times a week, and my boss agreed to pay for a print subscription for me. But there was no apparent way to order and pay for a print subscription online. They wouln't sell you a subscription, but they would send it free - if only you filled out a lengthy survey of how much budget you controlled in a long list of categories. If you left out one, when you hit "submit," it erased everything, you got an error message and had to start all over again. You really had to want that magazine pretty badly to go through all that. My boss told me to just check off $50,000 for every category. I eventually started getting my magazines, but by then the tech bubble had burst, the magazine was barely thick enough to swat a fly with, and I had moved on to another sector, where my magazines nonetheless continued to follow me. So I don't see how they were making money on subscriptions, although they were probably told advertisers that they had a lot of powerful executives with big budgets reading their mag.
You must be present to win.
I think one of the root causes behind the decline, at least in terms of gaming magazines, is that they can't keep up with the instant-review, demos and walkthru's available on the internet.
If you are a hardcore gamer, you've usually purchased, hacked, and beaten the game weeks before the review appears in a magazine. With the ability to access demos, previews, reviews, and walkthru's with just a few clicks (and usually avoiding having to wade through pages and pages of ads), I just don't see how the print medium can keep up.
Dr. Wu
I read ZD's Stereo Review magazine for thirteen years before I ever heard of personal computers, so its impending bankruptcy seems especially poignant to me - even more so, the end of an era.
However, "poignant" != "too bad, I'll miss them," by any means. Cranks (such as Dvorak and Berst) posing as journalists really soured my opinion of their latter-day efforts.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, write technology blogs.
Too bad ZD is having tough times.
Funny that CNet Community Manager blamed the lower use of ZDnet on Microsoft critics rather than the company violating the law.
I know that is pure bunk. But, that is what he claimed. Check out my web site for the email from the CNet guy.
I do not believe him for a second.
NexuSys - Linux support by the best
Having the advantage of being non-US-based, I only know ZDs website. Any decent computer magazine (like the german c't magazine) would put ZDs "articles" in the advertising part only, if not directly in the bin.
Well, seeing how Jesse Berst crawled far into BillGs ass it is not at all surprising that the odeur drove the customers away.
Good Riddance! And (no) good look for Berst at the employment agency...
I remember back when Ziff-Davis bought up many fine computer magazines (e.g. Creative Computing, Color Computer Magazine) only to destroy them, leaving a scorched earth landscape with essentially nothing but Ziff-Davis magazines and no coverage of anything save PClones. Computer Shopper was bought and then all the columnists writing on non-Intel systems told to go away...so as far as I'm concerned, die, Ziff-Davis, home of Intel and MS shills. I'll dance on your grave.
Hey, is it okay if I treat women as masturbatory material provided I let them treat me the same?
(He says, anonymously, with girlfriend still asleep so that she'll never know.. Ahaha.)
Computer Shopper? It's dead meat. The pontificating columnists are worthless, and advice and prices are far easier and faster to get on the Web. Publication lead times are what, two or three months?--an insanely long time for technology.
Before the Web, back when Computer Shopper ran near a thousand pages, it was worthwhile (actually, it was worthwhile even longer ago, when Stan Veit owned it and you could still read something about computers other than IBM clones)...now, with the magazine running at barely two hundred pages and shrinking, I'd be surprised if Computer Shopper lasts another year in dead tree format.
So why am I leaving? Because I've started a new company called IZ Inc. -- a next-generation digital publishing firm that creates email newsletters and Web communities around affinity topics. This type of targeted email is an explosive market. Jupiter Research expects revenues to soar to $7.3 billion by 2005. I want to be part of that boom.
I'm sure it's right on track to $7.5 billion!
sulli
RTFJ.
I was in my favorite magazine store (Hub Cigar, Edmonton AB -- it rocks) purchasing the latest Linuz Magazine and thought 'hey, I wonder of PC Mag is still publishing'. There wasn't a ZD rag on the racks.
"Remember, any tool can be the right tool." -- Red Green
Yes, and their treatment of WinCE/PocketPC versus Palm has been similar. Back when WinCE handhelds were new, PC Mag touted their "familiar" Windows-like interface as this great advantage, despite being double the price and half the productivity power of a Palm. They simply bet with the projected winner instead of publishing an objective and truthful comparison. Feh!
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Is their an opposite to f*ckedcompany.com? Like "backfromthebrink.com" or "wefiledchapter11-andalligot-was-this-tshirt.com". I have seen how many companies crash and burn. I want some feel good, back from the dead success stories.
P.S. All of these mags go over the same thing every month...Ever wonder why they are dead?
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
I hope this means that windbag Jessie Burst is getting canned!
ZD owns some really good properties, and they're aren't as biased as some other publications, but I'm sure the problem is the high cost of print publishing and the move toward internet sales. Something like Price Watch must be killing Computer Shopper.
Still, I suspect people are going to want to read computer magazines for a while. Like most businesses right now, they might just need to merge their way out of this mess. Don't you just love the business cycle?
"All I ever wanted was to see Larry Wall give Bill Gates a Perl necklace."
http://www.eisenschmidt.org/jweisen
What the hell?! "We were all just a bunch of geeks that got so worked up we threw objectivity out the window"? Look, if ZD was never anything more than some no-name hardware review web site run by some teenager and his friends from IRC I might understand how this could happen, but ZD is a goddamn publishing empire and has been for a long time now!
Are you telling me that you cocksuckers couldn't muster up journalistic integrity because everything Microsoft and DELL sent you was just so shiny and had so many flashing lights you were constantly distracted from the fact that your JOB was to evaluate computer shit in the most objective manner possible??
Bullshit.
The problem is that breasts sell product, especially in the geek market.
Case in point: a few months ago Dragon had the gall to put a scantily clad male on their cover. The next month the fan mail apparently was replaced by hate mail from homophobes who claimed they couldn't even bring themselves to buy that issue because of the cover. In subsequent months they got plenty of mail in support of that cover, but the fact remains that the ltest issue is dutifully decorated by a pair of Dark Elf females dressed for a night out at the local S+M club.
My point is that they are selling to a particular market, and that market, right or wrong, as a deep-seated fascination with breasts. Gaming magazines focus on E3 booth babes for the same reason Sports Illustrated has a swimsuit issue; because it grabs the attention of their target audience and sell magazines.
Personally, I agree with you. I would love to see the maturity level of the PC gaming community raised a few notches, but the sad fact is that the industry will continue to put out what sells. For the record, I know a lot more women who are interested in Sports Illustrated than [random PC Gaming mag], and I only know one woman who reads Dragon.
I guess what it comes down to is you aren't their target market. You should let them know that by not buying their magazines.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
What you said. I started programming by typing in listings from BYTE.
The nicest part was that unlike the other magazines I read, there weren't many program listings - BYTE was really about new tech, or about new ways to solve problems (whether in software or in build-it-yourself hardware). And the listings that did show up weren't necessarily for my platform, so I had to think about whether or not it could be ported/implemented on my hardware, rather than just jump in and blindly start typing.
For most of the 10+ years I was a subscriber, BYTE rocked. It was a sad day whan I realized I wasn't gonna renew.
Mind posting the address? I'm interested, but can't figure out how to get there. Thanks.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
The missing filing is
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1055131/000 0950130-01-000889.txt
returns a "file not found". But that file was indexed in the daily index file for Feburary 14, 2001,
ftp://ftp.sec.gov/edgar/daily-index/2001/QTR1/comp any.20010214.idx
and thus should be present.
If you try to find this filing via the SEC's search engine, it doesn't show up there, either.
I don't like this. History has been erased. Unclear whether this a bug, or tampering.
www.swexpert.com
sPh
You have more tolerance for product faults when it's
AND
What's worse are consumer magazines that recommend tech products, often without testing them at all, just because they look cool.
That's the problem with most so-called 'reviews' you see in the technology press. They aren't real reviews at all. Using a gadget for a few hours over a couple of weeks doesn't tell you anything about the product's performance over an extended period of time. Neither does focusing on how pretty something looks.
Long-term testing is a critical part of our review philosophy at Geartest.com: Real gear. Real world. Real reviews. What does that mean? We don't write reviews about products in a pre-release stage or based on press releases. We use the products for an extended period in real conditions. Then we tell readers what we found, with updates as warranted. That results in a fair review. That means that good, bad or mediocre, products will get the reviews that they deserve.
We won't publish even a preliminary look at something until it's consistently been in use for at least 30 days.
As for ZD's staff skewing the 'cool' products, it's up to the reviewer to demonstrate some necessary professionalism and not skew a product evaluation based on its 'coolness' or just because they haven't paid for it. And it's up to the editor to enforce a policy that prevents reviewers from skewing their reviews.
When people evaluate and assess products for an enterprise, they often haven't paid for those products either but it seems that full and fair assessments are made without too much difficulty, even if those reviews are only for private consumption.
And that is the same idea that drives Geartest.com.
As opposed to constantly buying the newest version of Windows, and constantly upgrading your PC to accommodate the added bloat of the newest version, in the *hopes* that everything will *finally* work as promised? Feh! Windows from 3.0 to ME and NT4 was the same run-down outhouse, only with a fresh coat of paint.
:-) Lord knows that's the party line at ZD.
I'm still working on a six year-old Power Mac. It does everything I want it to do, and then some, but won't run OS X as quickly as I'd like. So it is soon to be replaced by a brand new G4, which will give me another 6 or 7 years of trouble-free operation, where I'll open it 3 or 4 times a year to blow out any accumulating dust. This while the Windows tinkerers are furiously swapping out video cards, mobos, processors, and cooling equipment, and don't even bother to put the case back together most of the time.
Yes, Macs cost more. But the higher initial cost buys you longer-lasting equipment that does not need as much support attention as a comparable Windows PC. Study after study has borne out that Macs win on TCO. But hey there, little soldier, you keep right on going with your eyes shut and your hands over your ears, chanting "Windows is always better, Windows is always better, Windows is always better..." if that's what makes you happy!
~Philly
In a word, Bravo!
:-), but depressing to see how pathetically the gaming industry still toadies to (and helps establish/reinforce) adolescent fantasies.
In a few more words...
Back in the 'good days' of gamesdomain.com, there was a column called, "The Pink Aisle," discussing women in computer games. It was very insightful (and occasionally inciteful
Personally, I don't have a lot of problems with women who want to take off their clothes for my entertainment, assuming they get paid and treated fairly for it. However, it doesn't belong in the computer gaming industry, it shouldn't be aimed at teenagers, and it certainly shouldn't be done as a projection of reality (which it currently is).
If I want to see scantily clad women, I'll pick up Playboy, etc. If I want to see game info, I'd like to be able to pick up a game magazine.
Game previews should be factual, rather than hypeful. Tell us what the game is going to be about and how it's going to work. Tell us about the tech behind it, if it's known. Don't waste breathless prose telling us about how it'll be the best game ever created!!! (again)
On a side note, does ZD have anything to do with the current incarnation of Gamesdomain? They certainly stink like a ZD site these days.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Speaking of ZD and gaming, I used to have this favorite gaming publication called "Gamefan". Two favorite gaming mags, actually; NextGen for in-depth coverage of the industry and Gamefan for the big picture. Life was good until ZD started doing something that would annoy most of us... Stopped paying the Gamefan Editors... They weren't fired or layed off. ZD just wasn't coming through with the money. About half the staff quit and formed Gamers Republic, which was short lived. The remaining staff was forced to shut down the site and the great mag eventially disappeared into oblivion. Given this and other incidents, you can see why I am oh so hopeful that ZD succeeds in their new gaming venture. Or not.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Thanks!
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
And it was the first thing that came to mind when the words "Ziff-Davis" and "Gaming" were once again mentioned like they just were. They screwed the staff. Hard. Best all around coverage of Consoles and PC games. It was the end of an era.
I agree with you on the sugar coated reviews. Like you said, sometimes it's painfully obvious what company pays the bills or who the magazine can't afford to piss off. And rich game fans out there who would like to produce an independent mag without whoring it out to a 3rd party income producer? THAT would be a mag to remember. "What? You gotta be kidding me?! This is Sony's worst effort to date!? It deserves to be sacrified on an alter dedicated to the gods of Shit and Flaming Anal Sores respectively!" Maybe not that rough, but you get the idea.
Booth Babes? Lara Croft? Horny teenage guys = $$$? What!? I want telephone book thick Japanese gaming mags... That's all I want here... Please?
You need a FREE iPod Nano
What games do you buy? I'd imagine the Sims since you mentioned it. What else? And while we're at it, what games would you like to see more of? Any other gamer-type females feel free to respond as well. Call it research.
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Ywhich had a distribution of over a million. So clearly, some people liked the product.
They sent me a years worth of copies, free, without any instigation on my part. So I was probably one of the million at one point, even though the damn thing went straight from the mailbox to the recycle bin.
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E_NOSIG
Sorry, bub, but Creative Computing was not the original very first computer magazine. Datamation pre-dated it by at least 10 years. There were others, too, like Mini/Micro Systems.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
I completely agree with you. I own both paying subscription to GS and IGN and the booth babes pics were just an embarrassment. It's bad nuff E3 even had them in the first place, but to pander the pictures on the front page for the rest of the horny male teens, well...but, wait, it's about the games right? Sure..it's about the games. And articles in PlayBoy are good too.
I've been playing games for 15 years now, and I have to say, the industry has become a lot more sexified (is that a word?). Before it was just a lot of side scrollers and a boy or a girl could be good at that finger-twitching. Now it's just "take your Sims and go to the corner, m'kay?" while the guys drool over polygonal boobs bouncing on the screen.
Oh but there're the excuses. Let's see,
"the industry is geared toward men"
"more men can afford to get games so they buy more"
"more men are programmers so they program what they want"
"women don't like games!"
"women don't understand games"
"women think it's a waste of time (maybe pouring $$ down an industry that consistently abases women is a waste)"
It's funny how some guys can recite them with religious fervor and believe in them like a zealot. That's the only way to believe the industry is right as it is now.
The company you refer to will end up with a lower market valuation eventually if your assumption that using consultants hurts them in the long run is correct. Their products won't be as good, they'll ship later and bring in lower revenues and they'll eventually run low on cash and customers and market share, regardless of accounting tricks.
;-)
If the market notices that companies that use a lot of consultants end up underperforming in the long run, then a company's stock will be penalized at the first rumor of an influx of consultants, and the hand of the market will push companies into using full time employees instead.
On the other hand, if you are wrong about the economics of using consultants, the market will continue to reward such behavior. Perhaps you understand the economics of business success better than the market, but that's not how I'd bet my own money.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
You really shouldn't pick on the geek market, unless Pepsi is only being marketed to geeks. I don't think it is.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
TechTV was formerly ZDTV, which to me implies it is still owned by Ziff Davis.
Does anybody know if this possible bankruptsy would have an impact on the TechTV channel?
and they'd like it in multi colored PIE charts with one or 2 word labels. It is easy to see how some very stupid corporate decisions get made. Boil the info down soo much that it becomes mere data not someone or somthing, but a total abstract.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Enh David Ahl, founder, claimed it was the first microcomputer magazine. Take it up with him.
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
Sorry, you said "computer" magazine, not "microcomputer" magazine.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Ziff-Davis sold ZDTV a couple of years ago (hence the dropping of ZD from the name) to Vulcan Ventures, which is basically Paul Allen.
The current ZD has gotten a bad reputation for just masquerading paid advertisers PR as pseduo-journalism, making readership fall drastically.
n dex_episo des.html
More gaming magazines are one approach I guess, but ZD's current fare is pretty much the same content as would find almost everywhere else among its many competitors on the bookstore shelf.
There was a time though, when ZD had great innovative original work that tech people did come to read. These innovative times were typified by "Computer Stew": very cheap to make and distribute, original content that wouldn't find elsewhere, great content, wide readership, and outstanding reader loyalty.
If for some reason you missed out on Computer Stew, the episodes are archvied on a back corner insid the zdnet.com domain:
http://www.zdnet.com/computerstew/html/i
I recommend "Times Square" episode to start, then you can venture off into others.
ZDNet doesn't need to go off the air, as long as they get back a few brilliant writers whose innovate content makes people want to read.
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Cast a Cold Eye
On Life, on Death
Horseman, pass by
--W.B. Yeats' gravestone
I hope Mac Publishing, LLC is next.
Didn't mean to imply that they financed NextGen, but realitively sure they did GameFan. If not, then who?
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The funny thing about PC Rags reviews is that the data and graphics often are accurate but the text and titles are not.
Yeah, but at least you could get real facts if you looked for them. I knew they were way off base around 1990 -- and I was 12 at the time. I mean - I was leagally stupid/gullible back then, and I could see the lies as plain as day. But at least I could find something useful in the tables & graphs shown (and at least more factual).
I tried PC magazine about 3 years ago. I was expecting software comparisons, hardware reviews... things like I was used to seeing.
What I got was 'We compare this shareware html editor to Microsoft FrontPage'. There was nothing to do with PC's -- it was more like "Web Page magazine" Not at all what I was expecting. And even the comparisons were far from fair (a cheap $30 shareware utility to a $500 Microsoft utility?) The funny thing was how well the $30 shareware did against Microsoft's behemoths.
But the problem was still there: It wasn't so much that they weren't objective; I knew that a decade before. But they also gave up on being a technical magazine. They didn't even provide comparisons for anything useful. All 4 'major' office suites had a release (Corel WordPerfect, Lotus SmartSuite, Microsoft Office, and StarOffice) -- but Microsoft office was the only 'review'. Absolutely nothing -- not even a mention of any kind -- of the other office packages.
Nothing comparing the speeds of AMD vs. Intel. Nothing with speed or reliability of Drives, motherboards, video cards. Nothing but web hosting and web authoring tools & services.
So, I gave up on ZD, and pretty much tossed the whole tech magazine journalism altogether; at least in the broad sense. Linux Journal and DDJ are still good (although, at least in the case of LJ, it's targeted to Linux peoples, rather than a more general magazine) here's hoping they keep their technical content.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
Wanna know what ziff davis comprises of ?
Go to http://www.com.com
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !