RIP CGW

Heartless Gamer writes "Ziff Davis Shuts Down CGW, Opens Games For Windows. The Ziff Davis Game Group, which produces consumer game site 1UP and Electronic Gaming Monthly and Official PlayStation Magazine in North America, has announced that it is shutting down its US print magazine Computer Gaming World and replacing it with an officially Microsoft-branded 'Games For Windows' magazine and website."

Comments

Sucks, but

[flanksteak]

Ziff Davis noted that the magazine will carry with it much of Computer Gaming World's editorial style and tone. Because of this, the organization confirmed that it has decided to no longer publish Computer Gaming World. The new magazine and web initiative will carry on the editorial, production and art staff of Computer Gaming World.

The official MS shilling aside, it sounds like it's going to be the same magazine. Even though it was "Computer" GW, it's not like there were other platforms that have enough games to warrant a monthly magazine. Games for MacOS and/or Games for Linux would just be a pamphlet with the same headline over and over: "Inside this issue! Halo, and this month's newest 75 variants of GPL'd Solitaire!"

Sayeth I, who no longer loses large amounts of time to big games now that I'm using Linux.

Re:Sucks, but

[secolactico]

"Inside this issue! Halo, and this month's newest 75 variants of GPL'd Solitaire!"

Don't forget Tux Racer. For some reason, whenever someone brings up the "games for linux" theme, Tux Racer is always mentioned. And Nethack.

Good Riddance

[Biovital]

Good, I wont miss this gaming rag at all. I have a free subscription for it, and its terrible. When I first read it 2 or 3 years ago, it seemed somewhat more mature than PCG had become, but like PCG it tries to be too funny and clever every chance it gets and it usually fails. The reviews (which were crap to begin with compared to other mags) became some silly editorial on the game rather than an actual review (for that you have to goto 1up.com). It just became too taken with itself and lost focus. So I wont miss the magazine at all.

Re:Good Riddance

[Cadallin]

Unfortunate that you only caught it so late. The time to be reading it was in the '80's and '90's. When the Editor in Chief was Russell Snipe (the founder) or Johnny Wilson. During those years, the writing was top notch, and the approach much more mature and sophistocated. Originally it was aimed at the over 25, educated game player. The point of view of the magazine was that it was covering an emerging Art Form. They didn't just whore out praise to the highest bidder. How did the game look? How did it sound? How did it play? How did it make the reviewer feel? How was the writing? How are emerging technologies going to affect the industry in the future? Both the review and the editorial content was superb. As long as they continued to focus on their near 30 demographic (who were always the magazine's primary readership) the magazine was good, and thrived. Ziff-Davis, on the other hand, wanted to grow the readership by targeting an increasingly younger audience, this resulted in reduced quality, and the readership plummeted.

Games for windows

[CrazyJim1]

Lets play,"How long will my server stay up before it crashes."
Lets play a game of chance,"Will you let me update my computer or is something wrong with WGA"
Lets play,"Give all my personal information to Microsoft Passport because I can trust Microsoft and that it won't get hacked again."
Lets download Vista and play with the voice recognition software.
Lets play upgrade to a new version of Windows only to find out that the software only works with a new computer(ahem empty harddrive)
Lets play hide and seek to find out where in the registry the IE overflow virus is hiding.
Lets play dungeons and drivers to find out where to locate the last usable driver was located at, luckily the internet helps.

I admit I use windows because I'm too lazy to learn a new OS, but not too lazy to complain on Slashdot.

Jumping the shark

[JoeCommodore]

Over the decades I've seen magazines get bought out and becomre narrow in ther scope only to eventually die off. I'm sure the new magazine will mainly play to the Microsoft partners and put blinders to the world that is not MS approved, then readers will look for something with more broad and callenging content instead of a glorified MS games catalog and it will die.

The writing was on the wall when ...

[unsigned integer]

They canned Scorpia. And then they started giving ratings to games
instead of making you read the review and actually make an informed
opinion. You can see the steady decline once they sold themselves(?)
to Ziff-Davis.

This was THE best gaming mag when I was growing up - and then they
fucked it up with tons of new changes under the new management, and
you can watch the gradual fleeing of the staff as month after month
you'd read a little intro of "someone new joining the team" and
someone else departing. I was a heavy reader once I got into gaming ..
I guess that was around '85 ... and then I read until the early 90s.

Re:The writing was on the wall when ...

[jesup]

Giving in to the "ratings" pressure was the first big step down the slippery slope, and the other was selling to ZD. I've subscribed (and/or bought off the newstand) since the mid-1980's; I stuck with it as it slowly declined over the last decade especially.

I remember when it was fat, covered DOS, (680x0) Mac, Amiga, and ST games, and there was NO console coverage. That was a LONG time ago. I miss it. I also miss the old "Hall of Fame".

I don't plan to renew my subscription to whatever this new magazine is (even if almost all the games I play nowadays are Windows (plus Nethack, Angband and a few others on Linux).