Slashdot Mirror
EGM Magazine Shutting Down
Gamasutra reports that Ziff Davis Media has sold a number of gaming websites, including 1Up.com, and will be shutting down their popular magazine, Electronic Gaming Monthly. Some of 1Up's staff was laid off as well, though the new owners want to keep the rest of it intact. The sale was motivated by an unprofitable business model made worse by the recent downturn in the economy. 1Up's James Mielke has made a post about the final hours of EGM, and a glimpse at the final issue, saying, "...the final, secret, unpublished issue of EGM will show up here on 1UP shortly in the near future. You will be able to read every hi-res page, ads and all (last time I checked at least) on 1UP, to see the beautiful job that crew did, even with the guillotine hanging over our heads every minute of the day."
Not only is print media in general doing worse as the internet takes over, but you also have to consider the audience. Gamers, as an audience, typically learn about games, both current and upcoming, through online channels.
Similarly PC Magazine and others have shut their printing operations for similar reasons. Technical users get their news off the internet.
I'm really surprised EGM lasted as long as it did, especially since the gaming magazine market in general was really quite terrible. I haven't picked up an issue of EGM in ages, though, so I can't attest to its quality.
I feel obliged to post a link to one of the memorable reads: EGM's crapstravaganza.
http://www.seanbaby.com/nes/egm.htm
Finally, the last goatse mirror has been shut down.
This is Terrible!!! I Still thought EGM was of pretty good quality, not to mention It terminates my hope at collecting a full decades worth of a magazine (my archives go back to July 2000).
Lame. I still enjoy magazines, because I can take them with me and read in my spare time.
It's not shutting down, it is GONE.
And it wasn't just some of 1up.com being laid off... it was THIRTY of them. They pretty much gutted the place, hardly anything of the talent that made the site is there anymore.
This is a sad day.
- AJK
Most of those gamer magazines have 90% advertising ads in them and takes like 5 minutes to read anything worth while. Most of the time when I pull some of them out of the mail box and start reading/walking back to the house, I am done by the time I hit the door and it's in the the recycling bin.
They still have thousands of subscribers, and many have left because of the internet. Why not convert EGM to an online only magazine?
I know it's sad.
But it's also happy because this talent now can embrace NEW PROJECTS. Think of the cool stuff that is to come! These employees just need to dust themselves off and start something bold.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
The question now is... what can printed magazines offer that the web cannot? This is what magazines need to ask themselves to stay competitive.
But EGM...it had the same problems that plague game magazines, but sometimes very good stuff slipped through the usual crapfest. I also have fond memories of reading EGM when I was growing up, it was my main source of game news and reviews. I can't say the same about Gamepro or other game magazines, which contained writing that even an average kid could tell was poor.
What saddens me most, though, is the demise of the 1up podcasts. By which I mean the demise of 1up Yours, which was very, very fun and much more informative than anything print EGM or 1up itself published. Garnett Lee has hinted on Neogaf that the podcast will somehow survive, but I question how wise UGO's decision was to pull the plug on this show. It's quality content, which they desperately need. And it has a fanbase, which they also need, especially during this transition period.
With EGM gone, the only print game publication worth reading remaining is Edge...in truth, a much superior magazine than EGM ever was, even though it suffers from the same problems that exist in any industry controlled press.
Good riddance. EGM alienated girl gamers long ago with articles like "How to get your girlfriend to play games" (solution: get Barbie games) and "How to get time away from your wife so you can play games" (solution: give her money to go shopping with her girly friends). Feh.
Sure, the internet is faster, more interactive, and in almost every respect better, what the hell am I going to read on the crapper?
I'm being serious; print media may not be as attractive, but it really isn't the same.
I also find this particularly sad. When EGM was a fairly new mag, my allowance almost always went towards purchasing a copy. It really was a great magazine, and compared to the competition (Gamepro sucked!) nothing could touch it. Instead of killing it, they should have created some sort of hybrid Fileplanet / Hi-def video service / magazine subscription.
I'm not ripping on Game Informer; I happen to think its a great magazine, but it's hard to imagine Gamestop and its peddling of its discount card / GI subscription not having an impact on EGM sales.
Survival of the fittest I suppose, but this makes me very sad in pants.
EGM was almost certainly the worst of the gaming mags. I'm suprised they stayed in business as long as they did.
Too bad that NextGeneration in its first incarnation didn't manage to stay alive in print form. Still around as Edge Online.
I've been a long time reader of EGM, and many other gaming magazines. My parents recently dumped off all of them and I've been going through and sorting them, planning some stuff for my site. There's really nothing like reading a magazine if you ask me.
I think I had an interesting gaming news cycle. When I was younger, all my news would come from magazines, Nintendo Power, Game Players, etc. Then I actually saw an add for N64.com in a magazine back in 1996, which lead me to getting all my news from them, while still receiving magazines for perusal. A few years into college, I pretty much stopped going to gaming sites and once I graduated, I was too busy even consider it. Magazines became one of my only sources of gaming news again. The info was old, but I didn't care.
Now that EGM is gone, that pretty much leaves Game Informer as the only popular multi platform magazine, which is really sad.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
I give this article a 7/10.
Man I wasted a lot of money on that mag back in the day. I still have EGM's 1990 Video Game Buyer's Guide that I bought from Electronic Boutique.
I'm not so sure that this is a bad thing. Sure, some of the writers there were good at what they did, but an equal number of them just wrote tripe that was painful to read. Seriously, the caliber of their writing was about what you'd see in a high school journalism class. This, of course, leads every jackass with an Internet connection who got a C or better in his/her creative writing class to start up a video game site (searching Google for 'Video Game Blog' returns over 22 million results).
So now we have this enormous glut of information, and mediocrity has somehow risen to the top. I have very rarely found anything worth reading on 1up.com and don't really understand why some of its staff got put on such high pedestals. Hsu is a arrogant jackass who thrives on 'shaking things up' just to generate controversy, Mielke has a bizarre condescending attitude about him, Sharkey doesn't own a spellchecker and has trouble writing coherent prose, and so on.
It's not like 1up had a chance anyway, they were going up against sites that value quantity over quality. They were going head-to-head with sites who mostly aggregate news with some snarky commentary and could update every twenty minutes of nearly every hour, every day. Anyone trying to compete with that is just deluding themselves into thinking that their brand of original content is going to survive the day.
Most video game players want their information in quick bursts that they read, process, and giggle at the snark, then come back for a few more tidbits later to repeat the process. They just look at the final score for your lengthy, painstakingly-crafted game reviews. They mostly check out previews for the pretty pictures. They do not care about the lengthy article discussing the evolution of the crate from NES to XBox360, and they mostly do not care what you have to say about anything if it takes more than 30 seconds to read.
So, yes, it's sad to see anyone lose their livelihood, but they've been crushed and overtaken by the inexorable progress of the Coalition of Mediocrity that's pervading the Internet and making it nigh impossible for anyone else's voice to be heard over the crapstorm.
Gaming magazines are probably going to die out completely at some point, at least those that offer little more than previous and reviews. Gaming is a visual medium, who want's to see a printing of a screenshot when I can go online and see it exactly as it will appear in the game. Not only that, I can get videos online and news is much more timely.
Really, for a magazine to survive in this medium it needs to offer something more. Those might be exclusives, developer diaries, compelling content that others don't have access too. One interesting thing might be a magazine devoted mostly to strategy guides and cheats; it's a lot easier to play a game with a printed guide sitting in your lap, as opposed to trying to browse the web while gaming. Of course, this also means catering to a more niche market.
EGM was THE video game magazine that you got when you were a kid (besides Nintendo Power that is). They brought us the first huge otaku celebrity, the made-up Sushi-X. They invented Quartermann, who brought us often reliable industry rumors. And they brought some great personality and spirit to video games. The whole crew at EGM and 1up were totally dedicated to what they did, and are incredibly passionate about video games. I really hope they are able to keep 1up going exactly as it was, and their amazing video and audio podcasts as well.
The 1up Show - Video podcast - Humorous and intimate discussions about games with interviews and game footage
1up Yours - Audio - Experienced editors gather to discuss news of the week, and other hot topics
1up FM - Audio - Interns and newcomers to 1up discuss their views on gaming news, with a "backlog" segment where they play through older games together that have been overlooked while they were busy playing other games
Retronauts - Audio - Expansive coverage of specific titles or eras in retro gaming
And a lot more.
These guys are really awesome. Download all of their podcasts and listen to old episodes, they are all worth listening to. If the 1up crew gets broken up, I'm definitely going to try to keep up with what they're up to to see if they are putting out gaming coverage through other outlets. Hopefully they sell off DVDs of scanned EGM issues and DVD dumps of their web site's editorials if they decide to go down, it would really be a shame if all that stuff got taken down.
Twinstiq, game news
ferrets can be litterbox trained, and don't really need cages once trained. though, in my experience it helps to give them multiple litterbox options, since they have a natural tendency to poop in corners.
------- Oh damn.... the Sigfile escaped... -Great OM
Ok, I'm not sure about the later years of the mag itself, since I've mostly switched over to the 1up Network, buying occasional issues of EGM off newsstands. The web site and its crew were awesome. Dan Chu was a really dedicated editor-in-chief. The crew doing the reviews and editorials on there can drop knowledge bombs with the best of them. They were dedicated to pushing their own pieces on things they really enjoyed, and letting readers in on what their memories and thoughts on video games were, instead of just building up hype and rehashing PR. It's really inspiring to see that many talented and passionate people writing about stuff they really like, and really caring about what the audience gets to experience out of their web site and podcast.
Twinstiq, game news
Loved EGM in the early 90's. Then after the web picked up, they started trolling gaming sites, their forums, and even IRC chat stealing information to put in their publication without giving due credit to the authors of the original material. They stole work mainly from authors of fighting game FAQs. From MK2, DOA, to Tekken even. I'm sure there were more. Even found an old article on here talking about it. http://games.slashdot.org/games/06/01/23/1244234.shtml They had a very good mag I thought, but I stopped subscribing after they became FAQ Stealers Monthly. :)
Oh, thank god you left the ads in. What ever would I have done if I wasn't forced to wade through them one last time, to find the sentence of useful content in the magazine.
I for one will miss the magazine. I have subscribed to it for years. The only thing that made me mad was when they stopped doing the Hsu and Chan comic in the back.
I remember sending a fan art envelopes to those bastards when I was nine, (I can legally drink your beer now) and they do this to us? Well actually we did it to ourselves by celebrating this vast place we dubbed the 'web' so... damnit my shitty fan art isn't getting dibs on thousands of paper prints I almost made it onto. I say redemption. Your shitty fan art will never be printed again either. damnit.
Ah, I remember those halycon days of reading EGM on the bus on the way to school in the morning. It was the best way to figure out how to do those horribly convoluted moves in Mortal Kombat II. Then you could unleash them at the arcade and people would be impressed! Of course, arcades are pretty much dead too. Sad.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)