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The State Of U.S. Videogame Magazines
simoniker writes "Wonder how video game magazines are still alive and kicking, in the age of the Interweb? Here's 'a quick tour of all the game magazines you can find in U.S. bookshelves right now', with plenty of commentary and cover scans, from Nintendo Power to EGM: 'The output isn't quite what it was ten or even five years ago, but there's still a remarkable amount of print getting churned out each month -- and what's more, nearly all of it these days is written for 'core' gamers like you and me.'" I enjoy most of Ziff's magazines (EGM, CGW). I also happily pay through the nose for the British Mag Edge, which is the finest gaming magazine in the world.
Print is dead.
The magazines now are more than 50% advertising.. It's like reading a bloody infomercial...
"But this one goes to 11!"
The reason I don't bother with any of them is because they mostly look like game publisher advertising. Just like I wouldn't bother reading an opinion piece about Microsoft in a Microsoft-published magazine, I don't want to read about the PS3 in a magazine that appears to be published by a Sony subsidiary. Almost always, if I flip through one of these gaming magazines, they rate every game 3, 4, or 5 out of 5. As if no games suck. These rags appear to be flooded more with commercial interests, not real gamer interests.
Developers: We can use your help.
I can't believe people still buys these? I'll take a look at few when I'm browsing Borders or B & N But I would never waste 5 to 10 bucks on them. The news is alwasy one month out dated. I know some of them come with a demo disc but seriously MS/Nintendo/Sony should be giving those out for free without the magezines.
-Dipster
I remember back in the day... There were two major Atari ST magazines that got progressively thinner and less shiny. One disappeared, and the other (ST Format if I recall) went on for a few more months. I remember the very last issue stated in no uncertain terms that there was no chance of them closing down, and that they'd be going strong for a long time yet. I still wonder whether the staff knew how bad it was or whether they were as surprised as their two readers.
Argh.
I used to get PC Gamer (US), from about 1996 through 2002. I remember one issue, somewhere around '99, was 444 pages! Even taking into account that gaming mags are half advertising, that's still a lot of content. PC Gamer these days is barely a pamphlet compared to its heyday. Also, the magazine's quality has gone downhill each time the management/ownership has changed, and IMHO, isn't worth reading anymore.
Even though many of the people on here obviously get their news and especially video game news off the web, for many people print is easier to pick up and just read. Nothing beats having a tangible magazine to pick up and read in your living room while watching TV even if the information is diluted with more ads than actual writing in it.
I found it unfortunate that they didn't dwell into the fact that PC Gamer US has a british counterpart.
To be honest, I used to be a great fan of PC Gamer US: a great thick volume of gaming information released each month. But in and about 2001, they drastically cut down their page count (from 200+ to sometimes 50-ish.) That didn't matter all that much. What did bother me, however, is when the editorial staff started producing reviews that reflected more personal taste for advanced graphics and action than the game content. Oh - and they stuck with releasing CDs each issue (why even bother? they can barely hold one demo these days.)
PC Gamer UK I discovered was far superior. The pages were not dedicated each issue to yet-another WW2 shooter; and the reviews were what I considered more balanced and in-depth. It also came with a bonafide DVD, though that wasn't the main selling point for me (reviewer integrity is way more important). Unfortunately though, the cost of obtaining this UK mag is twice that of PCG USA.
Andy Mahood's reviews and finding out the latest on TheVede's misfortunes are the only reasons I still sometimes check out the US version.
And it's not even for consoles: PC Gamer. I signed up for a free subscription to GamePro a little while ago, and apparently that subscription is still kicking, but I don't read GamePro as much as I skim through it and see if anything looks good or at least interesting. PC Gamer I read almost cover to cover, AND PC Gamer is openly campaigning against Gold Farmers and their ilk, and even though I don't play MMOGs, the fact that they turned down all that advertisment money based on their principles gives me a warm fuzzy.
I used to subscribe to Nintendo Power, but I wasn't into Pokemon and so the issues offered very little for me when my subscription came up for renewal (I also didn't own a gamecube or GBA and I had just gotten a car that I started sinking my money into).
Why is it that the British magazines are so superior to the American ones?
This goes for just about any type of magazine, be it Maxim, Linux Format, or Edge. The British magazines are of such a higher calibre, it's scary.
There must be a simple answer out there.
Does anyone remember GMR magazine from a year or two ago? Ziff-Davis put it out of business when they decided it was competing with EGM, despite the fact that it was so many miles ahead of anything else out there. Actual reviews (not disguised advertisements), and way fewer advertisements than anything else. Plus, the layout was much nicer to read as well, and the section Retro/Active was really fun to read.
The Braying and Neighing of Barnyard Animals Follows.
I think the main problem with the printed game magazines is the magazines are usually very behind, with whatever content is available online. People tend to want games soon after they come out, and that's when they can read reviews and articles about them online. With magazines, on the other hand, you often have to wait 1-2 months before a review comes out. For this reason, I stopped bothering with printed game mags a long time ago.
Besides that, there's the multimediablitiy (if that's a word) of online content - you simply cannot post tons of high-res screenshots and videos in a printed magazine. What you can do, on the other hand, is get exclusives - reviews, previews, etc. - which seems to be the major thing that print mags do to attract readers these days.
This is a sig. It is appended to the end of comments I post.
"There was an era when GamePro was the perennial second-runner behind Nintendo Power in circulation. There was a time when other mags couldn't even touch it." (FTFA)
I remember being a huge fan of GamePro. I had a subscription and everything. Then one day they did the review that made me stop reading them forever. They reviewed "Street Fighter II: Special Championship Edition" for the Sega Genesis. Every other mag on earth claimed that it fell flat on its face when compared to the SNES version (Street Fighter II: Turbo). GamePro on the other hand goes on and on about how it's better than the SNES version. Even though I owned the SNES version, I bought a six button Genesis pad and rented SFII:SCE. What a waste of $15 ($10 for the controller and $5 for the game). The game wasn't exactly terrible but the graphics and sound were seriously subpar. That isn't too big a deal for me but GamePro specifically claimed the graphics and sound were better. They also touted how much better the control was but it really wasn't very different from the SNES control. And they also claimed the Genesis version had a better framerate but apparently I never noticed this.
I just felt that GamePro knowingly lied to us and I still to this day believe that they had some sort of underhanded deal with Capcom and/or Sega to get this game reviewed so highly. I just haven't had the desire to ever read that magazine again.
Game magazines died with PC Accelerator...
With the content coming out of 1up and The Escapist and the shear number of reviews coming out of all the other gaming sites, it's a wonder that any of the print magazines still exist. I can understand if the gamer has no computer to read the online resources though; that's got to be the bulk of all the information they recieve of games. Of course, who could possibly resist buying something shiny?!
Vat is theez "magazine" you zpeak of? Paper with printed picturez? And you muzt pay for theez inconvienent and unzearchable zing? Bah...you muzt zhow me theez "magazine" before I comment - I cannot believe zuch a thing exiztz!
I wonder if the different percieved quality of US vs UK mags has anything to do with the different subscription methods used? As I understand it, US mags can be subscribed to with huge discounts, 80% or so, gaining the publisher larger circulation. Compared to UK mags, which give a discount of around 10-20%. If that is the case, theres perhaps little wonder that there are less ads in UK mags, even with the different number of subscribers.
The last gaming magazine I read, I got free from EB when I signed up for there get a discount on used games card. I can't even remember what it was called, but damn, it had a nice picture of KOS-MOS on the front.
The itself magazine was utter crap. Like every other gaming magazine has become, it was pretty much advertisements with little clips of articles inserted randomly between marketing strategies. Plus, pretty much every game they reviewed was highly rated. How's that work, with so many crappy games out there today?
Gaming magazines are dead. How can they not be? They're filled with advertisements, chock full of fanboyism ("We can't say Halo 2 isn't as good as Halo 1, and heaven forfend we call Squaresoft on releasing a truly lackluster game. Nope, Halo 2 is the best game ever! Squaresoft is brilliant, despite rehashing the same damned plot over and over again!")
Hell, when I put myself through the pain of reading gaming magazine articles, it quickly becomes apparent that most reviewers don't even play the bloody games they're reviewing. I can't count the number of times I've seen absolutely wrong information about a game in a review.
I was surprised the first time the "newer" PC Gamer came out at about 25% the previous size. I don't agree with you that hte quality has gone down, however. I still enjoy reading the reviews (I enjoy them more than IGN or Gamespot) and they tend to scoop some games better than what's online. The columnists are touch and go, with Desslock being one of the better ones, and I think their mod coverage is pretty comprehensive too. The new organization of the magazine is a bit confusing, however. I can never tell whether I'm reading a review or a preview of some games.
For those that don't read it, they recently moved to placing games into sections according to genre. Previously, they had the columnists, previews, and reviews all separate regardless of genre. Now you get the review, preview, and columnist for RPG all next to each other, and so forth.
I go online to get reviews in a timely fashion, but prefer to read mags like Game Informer and Edge 'offline' while on the exerbike. The articles tend to be more in-depth and better written than the online stuff (not always, certainly) and the screenshots are often better quality. And of course it's a better use of time than sitting in front of the computer and paging through horribly designed websites (Gamespot and IGN, I'm looking at you).
The price is nothing to be concerned about unless you're paying store price. You can get subscriptions to just about any gaming magazine for a dollar an issue - they're happy to do this to get more advertising out there.
I find it amusing that this guy still thinks EGM is better than Game Informer when EGM for me is completely symptomatic of the 'short sound bites for illiterate ADHD teens' target audience (though PSM is the absolute worst for that). But since he's had some good history with EGM that kind of nostalgia is understandable.
These days I only read Gamer's Quarter and The Escapist for well-written in-depth nostalgia, and a bunch of gaming message boards for the news.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Computer Gaming World is still my favorite, but I'm a big fan of Computer Games Magazine as well, which the reviewer couldn't even find a copy of. I admit that I don't read PC Gamer as often, but they were nice enough to do an interview article with me, so I suppose I owe them some dap!
Bruce
For the newstand/bookstore: they rip off the covers and send them back to the publisher for credit. They throw away the rest of the magazine, which may or may not make it to a recycle facility; depends on the owner I'd suppose.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Additionally it's very interesting that you should talk about Scientific American. I was a long time subscriber to SA. However, around 2000 or so I noticed a very disturbing trend. The content was noticibly dumbed down (equations were almost totally removed from the magazine) and many long running columns vanished utterly. I suspect this was part of a move to "broaden their base" and "encourage newstand sales," but in my case it made me drop my subscription in disgust.
As someone who studies videogames, I feel like I have to read the gaming mags to stay current and there occasionally are some interesting articels in them. However, if it weren't for magazine subscriptions on ebay, I wouldn't dream of subscribing to them. When you can get a year of EGM for less than $10, why not?
For any magazine subscriptions ebay is definitly one of the first places to look.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
I love Edge magazine, but as someone in the USA, the subscription price is just too much. Is there any cheaper way of getting Edge magazine here in the states?
That said, when I was in college, I worked for a bookstore that allowed us 20 stripped books and 13 stripped magazines per month. (Paperbacks only, no mass market or hardcover)
Great perk, almost made up having to straighten up (haha) the gay magazine section. We had tons of mags, and those were the only ones worse for maintaining order than video games. VG mags got wacky because of sheer disorder, gay men's magazines got wacky because of the double-stima of shame (nudie magazine + homosexuality) encouraged people interested in them to disguise said interest. So they'd end up all over the store, nestled in other magazines, etc.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Next Generation magazine was the first publication to make me see our dinky little hobby as a legitimate medium for expression. Until that point, magazines were the same as they are now, focusing on pimping the latest and greatest and also giving hints and cheat codes.
Then Next Generation hit the scene, not just talking about games, but about the ideas behind games. And the people who had those ideas.
The Shigeru Miyamoto of Nintendo Power was a cartoon character who's name happened to get associated with Zelda and Mario. The Shigeru Miyamoto of Next Generation was a brilliant gamesmith, a master of the art and craft of games. Richard Garriot wasn't just some nerd making D&D clones, he was a philosopher exploring ethics in this wonderful new and interactive medium.
The topic of graphics in other magazines had some base instinctive appeal (OMGz polyg0nz!). Graphics in Next Generation were high art at the bleeding edge of technology.
In short, Next Generation magazine made me the gamer I am today. Or rather, it didn't make me a gamer, it helped me understand *why* I'm a gamer. And it did so with top-notch production values and a high quality presentation.
I'll never forgive IGN for watering it down and then turning it into NextGen->DailyRadar->kaput.
I read Retro Gamer. It's from England so it's kind of spendy, but I did see an ad for Video Game Collector. It's an American mag of the same ilk, so it ought to be cheaper.
Retro Gamer gets all the interviews of the old-timey developers from UK and the rest of Europe. I'm an old time ST user, so most of the games I used to play originate from that part of the world.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
I guess I can't really comment on this because in my country most of these magazines are so expensive that you could by a whole book for the cost of one, and one of those over priced computer manuals for the cost of a couple. So I haven't really read one in a while unless you count browsing in the news-agent's or downloading one from the internet but...
Can't you just form your own opinion about something. I mean seriously it seems pretty trivial to play through the demo of a game or to just rent a game and then make your own purchasing decisions based on your own personal tastes. I mean you can't be so insecure that you care what other people think because if you are playing video games it pretty much means you've become a resident of dorksville already. As we all are. And previews are not worth the paper they are written on because we've all seen what happened to Daikatana, DNF and Teamfortress 2 - There is a reason that they call it vaporware. It being much better to be ignorant and then surprised, then to buy into the hype only to be let down.
It seems to me that these things just serve the same purpose that all magazine have always done, be it The New Yorker or The Economist: To act as a form of propaganda. They are not really out to make you buy something but rather to make you feel good about your decision having brought the thing. You are basically buying someone's opinion and patting yourself on the back because it tends to agree with yours: giving yourself a bit of an ego boost between the four pages of ads trying to get you to actually buy the thing. This is known in marketing as product reinforcement and in the playground as peer pressure - although to be fair a crap game is still a crap game. I know this because I do this myself - since I can admit to being a loser.
And to add insult to injury they act like there subjective views offer some objective insight so you can exactly measure graphics at 84% and sound at 70%. As well as a cult like following of the new so that anything that just comes out always seems to get a better review *cough* Perfect Dark Zero *cough* just because it is new.
But what becomes even worse is when these wankers start to promote themselves as being a direct reflection of some great hardcore gaming scene, when in reality they are just a reflection of the sad insecure audience they are preaching to. And a disaster when they find that because of their profile they are actually listened to by companies to the extent that the whole thing becomes a vicious circle of products being made for a smaller and smaller audience who think sitting behind a computer is some how sport. This being evidenced by $1000 graphics cards sold to play only a handfull of games. Rather then the silent majority who what fun and inventive games and not just the same crap with better shaders. Pretty much why gameing at the moment seems to have dug itself into a hole.
Yes I'm sure there are exceptions to the rule; there are exceptions to every rule.
But I've been gaming for something like twenty years and I've always seen these publications, on-line and off, as being part of the problem - to actually pay money for this crap just seems to be rubbing salt into your own wounds. Big IMHO.
AC
Review bias doesn't come from advertising so much, as you explain above. The primary influence is from publishers refusing to give magazine early access to the games unless they gave a good review to the publisher's previous game.
The only real way to end the corruption of the review system is to get a set of trusted critics. The movie critics have Roger Ebert and a few others (David Ansen?). Once a critic is trusted enough by the movie-watching public, the critic is able to tell off the studios. If a studio doesn't let Ebert watch a movie because of the bad review they think he'll give, he won't hesitate to present that fact to his audience. This is usually worse press than allowing the bad review.
(Whether you agree with Ebert's movie taste is irrelevant; I'm talking about his influence.)
To set something like this up would take a while and would be risky. The magazine would need to be prepared to give bad reviews even if it meant not getting next month's beta games. They would need the courage to not worry so much that their competitors got it. They can fight back against the publisher by publicizing that they were denied access to beta games due to the publisher's bullying like Ebert does. Finally, they need the integrity to write honest reviews, and not be in awe just because they got to see a new unfinished game. And they need to be willing to give good reviews where deserved even if the publisher shafted them.
When and if something like this happens, maybe game reviews will actually mean something again.
Melissa
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
magazine become catalogues when their ad content passes 50%, and many have 80% or higher. if you think influence is not exerted on writers by companies, then you are so far down the food chain that you never see bribes, ans nobody cares what you think.
the most successful mags sell product. shitloads of product. any sort of grassroots knowlegde/ interest, reader / user orientation is spin and gloss. those special interests have all moved to the web ages ago. this is because your distribution problems/ printing costs vanish. so do oprint cycles / deadlines. this means things have been on the web long before they see print.
magazins that do not sell product cover up by playing with their readership numbers. you are right that a mag makes the majority of $ from ad revenue. this is why some mags keep sending you fre copies after yous sub expires. in fact they could give these catalogues away, and pay the newsstand to carry them and still make money.
sears, ikea, big stores have free magazines. and they give em away wherever possible. why? they sell stuff. ikea is arguably just as much of a magazine as many of the pc mags out there. why? because they are showing decorating ideas, lifestyle, selling the sizzle before teh steak, which is what any ad based pub needs to do well if it wants to be successful.
prediction:
once wireless networks become commonplace, (ie free wifi everywhere) and every student has a notebook (not jsut university, but grade school) print will shift very quickly to this new medium. it is already happening, with many magazines sporting an online version
Off-topic: I don't like MK much at all, but the SNES versions looked and played far better than the Genesis versions as well. The censored bits in the first game on SNES were trivial in comparison to the superior gameplay of that version.
Wow. Really, wow. The fact that the SNES version was very stiff, small movements didn't even register, special moves had to be very precisely done, the animation was actually worse than the Genesis version (even though the SNES version *looked* better, it looked like the SNES version was missing a few animation frames -- not that there were that many to begin with) -- all that and the graphics made you believe that the SNES version was better?
No wonder so many people like so many crappy games with overdone graphics these days. I'm telling you, there is some kind of mind-altering effect in games with better graphics that alter people's perspective of the games. You know what, this is kind of trollish. I'd better hit Anonymous.