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World's First Dedicated Gaming Magazine Is Facing Closure
mrspoonsi (2955715) writes "BBC Reports: 'Computer and Video Games, which in 1981 was the world's first magazine dedicated to gaming, is facing closure. The title, which has been online-only since 2004, may stop publishing at the end of a 45-day consultation period that began on 14 May, sources said. However, its publishers, Future, are also believed to be looking into selling off the brand. The magazine is behind the gaming industry's Golden Joystick Awards, a yearly event held since 1983. Early issues of the magazine were seen as being instrumental in helping small-time games developers to get their titles out there, said Mr Henderson — a trend that he thought was beginning to re-emerge as apps and mobile gaming have taken off.'"
If this strikes a chord with you I would recommend listening to the first episode of A Life Well Wasted, chronicling the (initial) death of Electronic Gaming Monthly. http://alifewellwasted.com/200...
News at 5:15, 5:45, 6:10, 6:40, 7:15, 7:45, 8:30, 9:10, 9:45, 10:20, 11:30 (I watch too much CNN)
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
It is re-emerging. it's just doing it via a medium that isn't measured in dead trees per lunar orbit.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I'm not sure what a gamer would need a magazine for
How young are you?
...the world's first magazine dedicated to gaming...
Okay, I'm being pedantic here, but this is one of my pet peeves. "Computer Gaming" is not Gaming. It is a lesser thing--a subset of the greater whole.
This was not the first gaming magazine-- Games magazine came out in 1977 and The Dragon was in 1976. Both of these magazines were dedicated to gaming (with Games being the more general use of that term).
Don't even get me started on calling computer games RPGs.
To shutter a business implies the facilities are abandoned and the windows are shuttered or boarded up.
A business can close every night and reopen in the morning. You may not like the term, but when a business is shuttered, it implies that it is permanently closed.
my business is currently shuttered but we are still open.
fucking sunshine
Duh, he's Mrs. Henderson's husband.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
A frustrating but inescapable fact about the English language is that it is a true democracy.
The meanings of words, in common use, are defined by the vote of the masses. There is no regulatory authority that says what meanings a word can and cannot have...there are only teams of lexicographers who document the meaning-decisions that the masses have already made.
If "RPG" refers to a type of computer game these days, then that's what it means now. Maybe it didn't use to, but it does now.
Incidentally, "irony" can now mean "coincidental," "unisex" means "omnisex", "begs the question" can mean "raises the question," and "irregardless" is a real word that means "regardless."
And so on. These are facts. Accepting them will make your life a lot easier.
I started getting C&VG from the first issue. Back then they were mainly a magazine full of BASIC listings for the Atari 800, BBC, Apple, TRS80, MZ80K, ZX81 etc. They also had ongoing tutorials on adventure game writing and the like. More bizarrely, they also had a play by mail space game, which I never played (had to pay as I remember) which featured every issue. You posted your next moves and got a computer print out of the results a few weeks later. You thought waiting for cassettes to load was slow gameplay? Pah! For me though, it was key. I first learned programming by typing in the Atari 800 listings (which never worked first time) by checking the typos then working out 'ah, that must be what changes the colour of the border' etc. Between the monthly listings and a BASIC primer, I was away. Later on I moved onto 6502 assembler and later C once I had an Atari ST. Somehow that chain of events resulted in me writing systems generating millions in revenue for banks. Thanks C&VG! I did stop getting the magazine after a few years but decided to submit a game I had in mind. I pulled out all the stops, wanting it to be the best Atari game they'd published. It had (ignore if you're not an Atari 8bit type) multiple DLIs, redefined character sets, sprites, assembler subroutines and all sorts of twiddly things. I then went and bought an issue to get the address to send my masterpiece to. Arse, they'd stopped doing listings several issues earlier. :-(
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Ted Nelson wanted to do that (bill content reader and pay content creator) w/ Xanadu --- well worth reading up on.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
It's an add thing, I found the lack of magazines in the US really weird when I was over there and that was 15+ years ago. They only seemed to be in bookshops. Over in the UK, they're everywhere and hundreds of different ones. Newsagents, super markets, petrol stations, music shops, pretty much everywhere except book shops.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
At 57, I don't recall that particular magazine. I certainly had several different books and magazines for entering in codes on my Sinclair, Color Computer, and IBM. But I really didn't subscribe to any outside of physical gaming ones (The Dragon, White Dwarf, Space Gamer/Fantasy Gamer, Autoduel Quarterly). While I did play games on my systems, generally it was the shareware stuff up to Commander Keen, Castle Wolfenstein, and Doom, which I picked up, news wise, from usenet and ftp download sites before purchasing the actual games. Then Quake, Duke Nukem, and Hexen :) In the mid-90's it was recommendations from my Lan party friends. Command and Conquer, Red Alert, Starcraft, and Brood War were the ones I most remember. We did play some Carmageddon and Splat Pack from time to time :) There were plenty of other games I picked up after that like Diablo and Diablo II or Dungeon Keeper or, what was that name, Black and White? I think I still have the CDs. Now I play Rocksmith on my PC, run RPG's (Deadlands now), and play board games. Too many quick twitch kids out there for me to have fun on line.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
It's an explainable thing. The UK magazines market was largely driven by W H Smith. Not only because of their shops, but they were a wholesaler too, so a lot of the other newsagents were selling merchandise sourced from W H Smith.
And W H Smith started out as a chain of railway station concessions. People bought books and magazines to read on the train.
With a lesser railway system, and more people travelling by horse and then car in the USA, the train station bookstall/newsagent phenomenon didn't take off in the same way.
Or at least that's my theory.