We’ve been chatting in the fantastic Ready-Up forums of late about gaming magazines and with a wide spread of views. Such forum topics are commonplace with the prevailing view that despite there being great print magazines available they are dying a slow death manufactured by the lust for instant media combined with inherent funding problems. Such a view is unfortunately gaining legitimacy given the recent sad news coming from across the pond concerning one of the elders of gaming print, Electronic Gaming Monthly.
EGM, one of the most respected games magazines ever to have been published was closed recently as a result of the 1up Networks purchase by UGO. The magazine ran for twenty years and hosted some of the finest writers in the industry. Getting the balance between intelligent insight and basic readability is not easy but EGM achieved it with ease and was always worth a read.
What infuriates me about this fine magazine going under is that it had managed to modernise and show that gaming magazines could adapt to the challenges presented by the internet. The 1up Network under which EGM was published blurred the lines between website, community and print in a way I’ve not seen anyone else manage successfully in the gaming press. Articles and writers appeared on website and magazine both backed up by lively debate on the forums.
“The 1up Show” was a quirky video podcast which gave a semi-scripted look into the writing of the magazine along with chat about gaming, but nothing caught the public’s imagination quite like the podcasts. Five days a week there were themed podcasts each with a different cast chatting about their chosen fields. Everything from sports, MMOs, PC gaming to the console flagship of 1up Yours and being published on weekdays meant that the hosts’ personalities (that also wrote for the site/magazine) went with you through the working week. They kept you company on the commute, in boring lectures and when you were skiving from work whilst keeping you well informed with in depth, intelligent and witty chat.
Yet, despite doing so much right the cold hard realities of the industry remained. Magazines are funded on advertising and subscriptions. With advertising drying up and magazines waning in popularity the new bosses cut a swathe through the 1up Network. Along with EGM going down the pan, upwards of 40 people lost their jobs and most of the personalities which made 1up an internet phenomenon found themselves on that list.
The problem is that 1up did everything right and EGM was at the forefront of showing what a gaming magazine could be now that the internet is here and it still died. What hope have we, the consumer, if the people who get it right still lose? 2008 saw the death of Games for Windows magazine, another old girl of the industry who dared to innovate and paid the price. I fear sad days are ahead for the gaming press and for the consumer. The only hope is that people aren’t put off by EGM’s demise and continue to find a place for magazines alongside gaming websites instead of cutting their losses and cutting the magazines from circulation.
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