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Gaming Mags Worth Their Ink
eToyChest takes a look back at five gaming magazines worth subscribing to. Tellingly, four out of five are no longer published. From the article: "What can be said about Next Generation Magazine that would truly do it justice? In its seven-year run starting in 1995, Next Generation virtually defined what good game journalism should be in the U.S. Interviews with prominent industry figures, even those unrelated to game-making such as Henry Jenkins of M.I.T. and Senator Joseph Lieberman were erudite and informative. Imagine what fun they would have had with Jack Thompson." As I've said before, Futurenet's Edge is my personal favorite print magazine. What is yours?
Maximum PC is a pretty good mag, if you're into PC hardware. Profesionally, Windows IT Pro is worth every penny of the hefty subscription price (compared to many other mags). A few well-written articles in there have helped me implement something at work in hours that would have taken me days of fiddling on my own.
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
I still have all of my copies of Next-Gen (minus one that I lent out and was never returned). All my other magazines get recycled or thrown out. Next-Gen was unique in that it really made me think about games rather than just inform me about them. It was still grounded in the games though, it never got too pretentious. Any high level concept they discussed, they would continually link back to how it would work in a game. Contrast this with The Escapist, which often seems to use video games as a jumping off point for any random intellectual curiosity.
Most articles in Next-Gen got me excited about games. They were often focused on the future, on the possibilites of gaming, not with what was wrong with the current state of gaming. I'd usually want to play some games after reading a few articles. I've read little in other magazines that elicit such feelings. At the same time, Next-Gen was a magazine you could hand off to an adult without worrying about looking juvenile. Compare this with most game magazines today that seem to be aimed squarely at the Bevis and Butthead demographic.
The Edge seems to be a decent Next-Gen replacement but its cost is prohibitive in the US, I'd rather buy games with my money.
As above
I loved the hell out of this mag. Besides a few issues after the opening December 1988 edition, I used to have every issue that VG&CE produced from beginning to end. Even after they changed their name to "VideoGames" and did a complete overhaul of the book, I managed to start liking it again after about a year's shakedown period. Unfortunately I don't know where most of my copies went; I was thinking about scanning my entire collection at one point. Along with the pre-N64 era of Nintendo Power, this is the magazine I miss the most.
Rob
I don't think I paid for either of them. PCG is still my favorite. I miss the Dreamcast Magazine, I still think that was a good one. The PC Accelerator was fun. I have to admit, some of the more porn side of it, annoyed me at times, but I liked the magazine. The early ones were poor, but it seemed to just be catching its stride, when it ended. :-(
:-) Maximum PC is ok, but it doesn't have that super-amazing-hardware thing going for it, like Boot did.
Another magazine I miss, is Boot. That magazine was really for the hard-core gamer out there, and the hardware porn that he could never afford.
Hex? Man you guys got it easy. I've got books that list some games in binary. ASCII encoded binary. That's fun to type in. "Is that a three pixel bar or a four pixel one?"
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
I used to subscribe to PC Gamer around 7-10 years or so ago. I want to say I dropped it in 98 or so. It was decent... and then I wrote them a letter to point out an error in a photo caption, a polite letter that included resources that showed why I was correct (saving them some research time before publishing the errata) and the correct information.
They responded by making fun of me and jeering at me. I felt like I was being mistreated because I had actually caught them at an error and therefore they were less than perfect, or something like that. I dropped my subscription right away and haven't ever picked it up again, not even in a bookstore, and I haven't read their web site. I can get my news online for free and more up-to-date than a print magazine.
If you cannot take criticism from your readers, especially the ones that take the time to try to help you out and who also follow every step you're supposed to follow for writing a polite critique letter, then you do not have a place as a magazine editor. Find another job, or find your readers going away.
I have also written correction letters to TIME and the New York Times, among other publications, and was treated professionally and politely. As a result, I still read the NYTimes online and I still recommend both publications if I'm asked about magazines or newspapers of those particular genres, and I speak well of their staff. PC Gamer on the other hand gets described as rude and unworthy of the money.
No one I've ever talked magazines to has ever subscribed to them after that.
I won't be sad to see them die.
i am a soviet space shuttle
The only for sale magazine I read wrt games is Game Developer Magazine. Most of the other magazines bore me as they tend to have old news and clueless writers. Besides almost all of them have audio shows / podcasts anyways so I can just listen to them. Generally the inaccuracies in them are enough to quench my interest in picking them up in paper form.
Eg one of the shows (I think it was Hot Spot, produced by GameSpot / EGM IIRC.) didn't know what languages most games are coded in (C/C++). IMHO that's a bit like a sports commentator not knowing on what kind of surface hockey is played on.
Anyways, GDM has clue-ful people making interesting comments. They tend to have a couple of articles which focus on deconstructing game design (eg the "Post mortems", these are sometimes linked from Slashdot on the GDM sister-site Gamasutra) and a few on the state of game production. They also have reoccuring articles on the details of game making, such as the column on audio production and in depth algorithms.
Basically, GDM is the only game oriented magazine which I can put down feeling I have actually learned something. The other magazines I mostly feel like I've lost knowledge (or been filled with disinformation).
The only other game mag I read is the Scandinavian GameReactor. It's a free magazine and it has slightly less ads than most other magazines. I wouldn't trust the reviews blindly, but they seem to be pretty on the money compared to stuff I read online. And the price is right.