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Famitsu Boss Talks Future Of Game Magazines
Thanks to Video-Fenky for translating a Japanese editorial from Famitsu Magazine discussing the future of videogame magazines, as Enterbrain president Hirokazu Hamamura muses: "With the Internet as widespread as it is, many people don't think we need game magazines at all -- after all, you can get the latest information right on the Net." But he argues for the "...real charm of your basic [paper-based] magazine news feature: it takes plain old news and turns it into something you don't mind sitting down and reading for a long time." He also suggests that game reviewers have to contend with much more targeted genres, suggesting: "The marketing tactics behind narrowing down target audiences [for specific games] will become the first step in game creation, not the last... Once that happens, game reviews based on the likes and dislikes of the reviewer will become meaningless."
For those of you who don't know, Famitsu is one of the longest-running and most respected Japanese video game magazines. They have an uncanny ability to get information first, and get interviews with high-ranking people. Chances are, if you have ever seen a japanese video game magazine, this is it. If you have ever heard an American magazine cite a Japanese magazine, this is it.
The article's deconstruction of online game magazines is quite amusing. In essence, it says that online reviews are junk, online magazines are poorly written, and online writers don't know the first thing about the industry. It, of course, says so with the most delicate of Japanese touches. Score one for Famitsu.
He briefly mentions how Gaming (in Japan) is branching away from a purely console model, and as such the "total game sales" figures are inaccurate. Oddly enough, he doesn't mention that lowered console prices would also give the impression of lower console sales on a per-yen basis. Either way, this seems like an odd technicality wedged between two very broadly relevant opinion pieces.
Finally, he cites how with the subdivision of gaming will require reviewers to step back from what they would like, and review a game based upon what the target audience would like. This is a big challenge for the reviewing industry right now, as you might have two or three FPS gurus on your staff, but do you have a RTFPS guru? One who specifically likes slower FPS game in fantasy settings? How do you review a subgenre accurately if you don't have anyone on your staff who likes that subgenre? Will it receive anything other than an 80? He seems to thing that training will be enough to overcome reviewer bias (or lack thereof), but I would tend to doubt that. Certainly, assembling a wide enough team of connoisseurs will be essential to the success or failure of a review department. But that just dodges the question... How do you objectively review a subjective experience from someone else's viewpoint?
To this, sadly, he has no answer.
The ______ Agenda
IMHO, the greatest charm of the printed magazine is the ability to read it from front to back, back to front, or anywhere in between using the table of contents.
The problems with reading a magazine on the web (or even content sites) is latency and organization. It's still faster to flip a page than to load a page.
-- There is no spoon. Only fork.
I stopped buying game magazines years ago.
The cost of the magazines rose when the PSX hit the market. The demo disks glued to the front were great to begin with but they slowly turned into large adverts rather than showing off technology, graphics and game play.
I also got fed up reading articles I had already read online. I cannot prove plagiarism but the sense of deja vu grew month on month.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
The biggest problem with paper gaming magazines is their amount of time between an article being written and actually being published. If they want to keep their audience, then reviews need to appear before the game is actually released to the public. Being online is the only way that this can be viable. But who really wants to read through an entire magazine online? Not many, but I doubt that most people read gaming mags cover to cover anyways. Especially when the reviews have been online long before the magazine hit the newstand.