Indie Gaming Gets A Mag

bear pimp writes "Indie gaming mecca Game Tunnel has announced 'Game Tunnel Magazine', a quarterly journey into the world of indie games. Game Tunnel Magazine has everything you'd expect from a print gaming publication but with an indie-centric focus. In particular, the well-researched previews section of upcoming indie games is something that to my knowledge no other site has ever done. Issue 1 of GTMag is available for free as a downloadable ezine in PDF format"

Comments

Bravo!

[uberphear]

This is exactly what independent developers have been wishing for, and as the editor says, it has been a long time coming. Personally, I've almost totally abandoned games by major developers, and gone with indie games instead. They tend to have more replayability, cost less and are all in all more enjoyable. I can't remember the last time I looked through the reviews section of a magazine and wanted to try or buy EVERY game listed in it. That's what this magazine did; it almost makes me want to re-read the Scratchware Manifesto again. No more scouring Google for new and exciting indie games. Hooray for Game Tunnel!
Direct link to the publication for the lazier among us.

Good Idea??

[DaWeaves98]

While I'm sure that it will get their games out to other sources, is it really going to expand their business all that much? Most independent games that turn out to be well made and moderately successful get coverage in the mainstream gaming media. Those games that are poorly made and don't have much buzz behind them might not get noticed, but it's quite possible that they don't warrent getting noticed. Look at games like Alien Hominid, it was a small flash game that caught on with people, it started to get coverage in main stream gaming press and eventually it was picked up and made into a console game. Additionally, what about the games from the big guys that get great acclaim and are amazing games, but get overlooked by the gaming public? There are lots of great games that aren't epic like Halo or Madden, so they get little or no press, but the small amount of press they do get is largely positive. Independent games just like independent movies have their niche in the grand scheme of gaming, but I don't think that this magazine is going to be seen by those unless they are seeking it out, and chances are those are already the people playing the games.

Re:Good Idea??

[soniCron88]

While I agree with your general sentiment, your argument is flawed. Alien Hominid, for example, was a financial failure, regardless of the Flash game's popularity. Additionally, being heavily involved in the independent game community, I've seen case after case of truly excellent indie games overlooked by the mainstream media, despite their quality and financial successes. It's a shame, but the mainstream media don't recognize the truly wide scope of indie gaming and only occasionally adopt a rare few as though they were the darlings of the indie community. Fortunate for the lucky few, yes, but only representative of the truly stellar titles coming out every month and below the radar.

Well

[Sv-Manowar]

I'm all for more gaming magazines, not mainly because I will read them, but because I support competition for the mainstream magazines of today that have their content dominated by their advertisers. Although I have to say, they had an advantage with low costs from running a website and the growing prominance of websites across the world, why are they taking a step backwards into a declining market? It seems like a better idea to put funding into improving and marketing for their web side of things.

Re:So What?

[Half-pint HAL]

Who reads the whole of any website?

If I buy a magazine, I tend to do a three or four pass approach:

1. Pick out the articles that interest me from the contents page and read
2. flick through the mag and read any articles that catch my eye
3. go through the mag, start to finish, reading any articles that I haven't read.
4. In that way, I read the whole mag, and quite often it's the articles that I didn't think were interesting that present something truly new.

   However, websites are big, and structured to help you find what you're looking for. Your average browser is looking for something when he goes onto the website -- he only does pass one, using the site index. He never gets to those bits he didn't think would be interesting and as such discovers nothing new.

   Putting a magazine together, even if not a paper one, means editorial decisions and space considerations that websites just don't apply otherwise. (Although they could.)

   HAL.

Platform?

[joeljkp]

I wish they'd clearly state which platforms each game supports. It seems to me that the indie gaming scene would be a bit more friendly toward Linux and Mac, so I was hoping to get a couple good Linux game tips in there.

Re:So What?

[Half-pint HAL]

What you describe can be accomplished by simply organizing a list of links to the relevant articles.

No, not at all. You don't "flick through" a list of links. If they put an order to the articles and had "next" and "previous" links then you could almost do it, but my point was not what people could -- it's what people would do. And they won't read an entire web issue. Humans don't think (or act) logically, they think psychologically.

This avoids the whole silly PDF on the Web thing...

You haven't read the editorial, have you. They have a website, but they want to make a magazine. They are running this PDF thing as a print-out-at-home magazine while they pilot the concept. I believe they hope one day to have a real magazine sold on real paper to real people. There are a number of notable flaws in the first issue that would have killed a print magazine stone-dead. This way they'll get feedback from people like me and they'll be able to iron out the creases before heading to the print-shop. HAL.

innovations?

[uncle lag]

i am really sorry, but didn't you all miss something?

for a long time there's "the gamer's quarter" zine in both pdf and hard-copy formats. recently they even launched a podcast. the tgq mag is really good, i just love it. and it's more about free-indie-games, not the pseudo-indie-pop-underselling-games. for the gtmag i'd rather be happy if tigsource had launched a zine..