Slashdot Mirror
Computer Games Magazine To Shut Down
Gamasutra is carrying the sad news that the second-oldest PC gaming magazine is to shut down. TheGlobe.com, owner of Computer Games Magazine and its sister, MMOG-specific magazine Massive, has apparently opted to shutter the outlets as a result of financial troubles. They were saddled with a judgement by a California court in connection to a series of spam messages that went out across the MySpace social site. An SEC filing stated that the company stood to lose at least $40 Million; these shutdowns appear to be the direct result. "Calls to TheGlobe.com's Florida-based publisher Jayson Dubin, also the publisher of CGM and Massive Magazine, were not returned as of press time, with more recent calls to his direct line getting an automated recording indicating that the number had been disconnected. Besides Computer Games Magazine, TheGlobe.com also operates two other wholly-owned subsidiaries: voice over IP solution prover Voiceglo, and online game retail outlet Chips & Bits."
Can someone fill us in on the nature of this Myspace spamming? I don't remember hearing about this.
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
This isn't the first gaming magazine I've seen go (or announce going) away. I guess it just isn't cost-effective enough to operate a gaming magazine nowadays. Sites like Gamespot, IGN, etc. are probably proving to be just too much competition. Perhaps eventually gaming magazines altogether will go the way of the dinosaur.
That's ok with me, personally. I like magazines for their exclusive screenshots and such, but otherwise they really are redundant with respect to the internet. Nowadays the only mags I find worth looking at anymore are automotive or graphics design mags. The former I subscribe to because they're cheap and have decent writing about pretty cars (and better photos than I see online). The latter are just a good resource for learning how to use graphics software, even though they are way overpriced (especialy the British mags). Plus, girls dig the graphics mags lying around. Not so much the Gamepros.
I like basketball!!1!
You are correct in what you are saying; however, it goes even deeper. Magazines, as well as other "old-school media" such as radio, are quickly scrambling to find relavence in the age of new media. I used to work for Clear Channel Radio as a webmaster for KFBK-AM, a radio station with a significant history in Sacramento. The fact is that people go to the Internet for their information more than they go to TV and Radio -- and if you're not even going to watch TV, what are the odds you'll pick up a magazine?
I'm more than a little saddened to see historical entities like newspapers (anyone keeping up with Knight-Ridder?) and AM stations going down the tubes. But such is the cost of evolution.
Sony ha
"Perhaps eventually gaming magazines altogether will go the way of the dinosaur."
And so will their cover discs. Good thing everyone has broadband.
$40 million is quiet harsh, but shit, I hate spammers so much, that I'll just have to ignore the fact that they got pwned by the legal system.
20th century Marxism is not progress...
This just in, many horse whip manufacturers are out of business due to the success of the automobile. Industry analysts predict that only niche markets such as horse racing and S&M remain.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
"I'm more than a little saddened to see historical entities like newspapers (anyone keeping up with Knight-Ridder?) and AM stations going down the tubes. But such is the cost of evolution."
Um, I know it is the current fad to predict the death of something (like it's gospel or something). But I suggect you read this before proclaiming something dead.
BTW here's my contribution to the "3D Mars" story, since Taco has a retarded posting limit. Map the Mars photos to a globe and put a skybox around it. Then with the gravity feature one can walk around Mars. Megatexture should really help here.
I just renewed my subscription today, not 3 hours before seeing this post. I hope I can get my money back.
Now I'm going to have to read articles by one of their myriad direct competitors instead.
I find this news very unfortunate. It was a good read and hadn't degenerated to inane banter and crude statements. The key example I hold up is EGM. That POS is so bad that readers write in complaining about it's degenerative trend and the editors publish these letters and then bash the opinions of their subscribers in direct reply.
I get the feeling that EGM has a larger subscription base (by far), is suffering sales problems too, and is ultimately resorting to the aforementioned behavior. It seems quality has lost out in the bid for quantity.
"If you spam, you could lose your business".
Seems pretty reasonable to me, provided they were in fact responsible for the My Space spam.
Hopefully that becomes the rule instead of the exception.
--
$tar -xvf
It's progress. I still read some gaming and computer magazines, mostly because I like the writing and they are easier to take to the can. The whole notebook on the can thing is awkward and uncomfortable, so it the stare I get from my wife when she sees me heading to the can with a computer... or PDA... or cellphone. She's really quite old-fashioned I now realize.
When I was in college we had this great discussion about the relevance of print media in the 21 century. This was in 1999 so we had to guess. My professor thought the best the traditional outlets could end up doing was being relevant in newspapers. Magazines would inevitably loose out because of delays going to print (which the web is immune to) and cost.
He also made two other good points. Newspapers don't need batteries, neither do books and magazines. A good point, to a point -- no doubt technology will soon provide a solution. Also the "old guard" has the money to hire the good, known writers who can try for higher quality. This approach would suffer over time, new talents would emerge, old talents fade; ultimately this is a bandage solution.
Savvy outlets have built their online outlets up in the hopes of being ahead of the curve. Ultimately we don't really loose anything, we get the same thing from somewhere else. Like trading up from dial-up to cable, same service, better package.
But all that probably tells us is that CVG was an early warning, going first because it was most prone. The more adult-oriented mainstream publications such as "Computer Gaming" falling seems to indicate a trend (or perhaps it really was just down to the parent company's financial problems?)
But regarding CVG, what intrigues me is whether it's still possible to sell a computer games magazine aimed at a similar under-16s market. What form would it take? It can't compete with the net directly, or be as up-to-date, but perhaps they could focus on maps and large multi-page playing guides that might be hard to put online effectively (or print out). I don't think that alone is enough to sustain a magazine, though.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Sick of idiotic crap on TV != doesn't read.
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
For the record, this wasn't an intent to flame you, or really directed personally at YOU at all. Your comment kind of sparked my brain on that subject. That is all.
Sony ha
This is the magazine that got me started reading video game magazines when I was a kid. I first received a complimentary issue as part of an order from Chips & Bits, since my brother and I had to order our PC games from there being that our small town had no computer store. It's consistently been the highest quality magazine over the past 10 years that I've had a subscription, with the best articles, the reviews I trusted most, and some of the most interesting columns I've read. While I've picked up and dropped subs to other magazines, mine to CGM has been constant. Now, I'm very sad. :(
I hope to see the mag's staff pop up elsewhere.
*shrug*. Everyone I've met who complains that TV is inane impresses me as sanctimonious. How is it that the Discovery Channel is for idiots with square eyes, and discovery.com is for the enlightened? With insane amounts of programming, the only reason to be exposed to "idiotic crap" on TV is to choose to watch it. There's plenty of idiotic crap on the Internet, too, isn't there, but the same people who smugly proclaim their lack of TV dick around on the Internet. Right.
No comparison imho. I can consume internet content at a much faster rate than I can watch or listen to the radio. Watching something like mythbusters for example; I find it unwatchable -- they take a bloody real-time hour (including commercials) to deliver content that can be summarized completely in half a dozen text paragraphs. Sure I "miss out" on the explosion, the chick who says "Wow" everytime something happens, the guy covered in yellow goo, the incessant 'coming up in the next scene' scenes before commercials, and of course the commercials themselves. But I don't need or want any of that.
The worst part is that even in video format there's only maybe 10 minutes out of the 45 that are worth watching. (60 counting commercials)
All the informational content can be summarized on a single page, and absorbed in ~1 minute by a decent reader of reasonable intelligence.
Even on the 'real world' internet which is choked full of ads and that one page worth of information isn't concisely presented, and you have to link-surf, scroll around ads, etc to find anything - you can still get all the information in a couple minutes.
(This is why I HATE 'audio' and 'video news' clips on the net. I don't want to listen to, or even worse WATCH some low res video segment for 5 minutes (often prefaced with a commercial). I want to read a transcript, which takes maybe me 10-15 seconds to skim.)
The only time I want to watch or listen to content delivered in real time is for entertainment purposes. Or when I need to see something. (e.g. I'd be interested in watching footage of a storm hitting a town, for example if I'm interested in the storm or town for some reason.)
But in general audio/video in realtime, padded with useless filler, then padded with teaser scenes, then padded with commercials is an excruciatingly painful way to absorb information.
my 0.02
Gamasutra: I quit.
MMORPG Player Dude: Can I have your stuff?
Computer Games Magazine was originally known as Strategy Plus, and then changed its name to Computer Games Strategy Plus, before reinventing itself as the new Computer Games fairly recently. Next to Computer Gaming World, it's certainly been my favorite computer games magazine and it will be missed. I'm also disappointed that yet another MMOG-focused magazine, Massive, will be ceasing publication as well.
You managed to sum up most of the reply I was about to give. As for the GP's rant? Rather than being "sanctimonious" concerning TV, I'm just bored with it instead. Nothing personal.
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
I found the editorial content and voice of Computer Games magazine to be significantly more mature than either of the two remaining major computer game publications (Games for Windows and PC Gamer). They offered some excellent articles discussing the nature of games as well as a very good reader submitted column.
I wondered how they managed to pay their bills seeing as they had few advertisers. I guess younger readers prefer magazines with less insight and more fart jokes.
I will be very sad to see them go and boy what a colossal fuckup with the spam.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
OF the three PC-centric videogame mags in the USA computer Games has been thinner than PCWorld or CGW aka Games for Windows Magazine. For a few years now they've been trying to broaden the audience with crap like "Now Playing" which was an attempt to cover music and movies, which they tried to spin off into a magazine, and most recently with "Massive" which also spun off of CGM. Their reviews have often been a month behind the other mags too.
That being said, they were more thoughtful and had better coverage of things like videogame legislation and mainstream media's scare mongering around videogames (such as the Hot Coffee incident and such). They didn't get the fancy cover stories that the other mags did, but they had a lot to offer. I'll miss it.
Gaming mags may always be out of date compared to web sites, but like an old fashioned card catalog the nature of the format was that you might find something you wouldn't have ordinarily found if you weren't flipping through it. And I'm still reluctant to take my laptop into the bathroom with me or to lie in bed with it before I go to sleep.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
Been a subscriber to CGM for many, many years. Very sad to see it go, as it was the best of the remaining computer gaming magazines out there. One which was written intelligently and with adults in mind, something of a rarity for gaming magazines. It will be greatly missed. I guess all that's left for me is Edge, a magazine I only recently discovered, but will now likely subscribe to. Here's to hoping it doesn't go under as well.
I also enjoyed the whole two issues of MASSIVE magazine. RIP to the both of them, and best of luck to those who wrote for them.
I didn't RTFA all the way through, but if Myspace gets 62 million, does any of the end users who actually received the spam and may/may not have been influenced get compensation? Or does it all go back into Myspace pockets?
Oh, now you're just flogging a dead horse.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
How sad. Just a little spam. But I guess if you got money and spam, someone is going to come after you.
Podcasts are the worst. One hour of audio that contains roughly the amount of information that would fit on one A4 page. But instead of downloading a few kBs of text and reading it in five minutes you get a file of several megabytes that takes a looong time to listen to. Never mind that in the age of multimedia you can put images or even videos to illustrate something in your text instead of talking for five minutes to explain what you mean. You can't easily skip uninteresting bits in a podcast like you can in a text since there are no visible paragraphs. Also the usual complaints about radio still apply to podcasts.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.