"This Is Why Your Game Magazine Sucks"

[Jake]

Saw this article on Game Girl Advance (care of the Thumb Finger!), and thought it was interesting:

This is why your Game Magazine Sucks

1) Grow the fuck up. This point has been brought up already, multiple times. You can try to keep selling a magazine to people who don't realize that sites like GameSpot do exactly what you do and do it better or you can realize that you, your writers and your audience are growing older. Why didn't you write this article two years ago? It's a feeling any gamer is familiar with. Where are the articles on people using DDR for weight loss? On couples going on virtual dates in World of Warcraft? On the difficulties of gaming while parenting? On people who quit their jobs to game? A day in the life of a MMORPG GM? On the weirdos working on Sociolotron? On industry gossip? There's a million ideas out there like this.

2) You can't compete with the online gaming sites. You just can't. They release information sooner than you do, they publish more and better looking screenshots, they have an inherent advantage that you can't even begin to match. Even your "features" feel like old news.

3) You've lost the hardcore gamer. This is a good thing. Hardcore gamers get all the information and news they want online. Hardcore gamers are a small, but important, segment of the gaming population, but magazines cannot provide the information they want. Fine.

Etc. It's stuff that's been said many times (as the author admits), but it's put really nicely here. I haven't read a games magazine in any serious way for years (aside from ones picked up at airports when super desperate for something to read).

I did pick up some issues of Polygon Magazine last year, a potential "good" Stateside gaming magazine, but even it I couldn't bear. Its writing was lifeless, and still dated even for a print mag. Maybe it would have improved, but instead of getting the chance, they went under after a handful of issues.

I don't know if anyone else has thoughts on this but the whole thing sort of interests me. I'd love to work for a games magazine that was... not terrible.

[manny_c44]

Where are the articles on people using DDR for weight loss? On couples going on virtual dates in World of Warcraft? On the difficulties of gaming while parenting? On people who quit their jobs to game? A day in the life of a MMORPG GM?

Too bad these are all awful, childish ideas. There is no formula for interesting journalism, or success in general, and contrarian numbered lists do nothing but compound the idiocy of these vacuous fiends.

[OftenK]

I beg to differ with the point that a gaming magazine can't compete with an online gaming site. OXM is an excellent example. Like gaming sites, OXM is very rarely anything more than previews and reviews. But when it comes down to whether I want to watch a video of Splinter Cell 3 gameplay on a website, or play the actual game on an OXM disc, you can probably guess which one I'm going with. Where else are you going to get demos and downloads for your Xbox? Getting the OXM demo disc is one of the best parts of my month, and it has introduced me to some of my favorite games--Crimson Skies and Breakdown, to name a couple--and even introduced me to Ted Leo and the Pharmacists (quite possibly my favorite band of all time).

So eat it, Gamespot.

[Jake]

You don't think they'll just be offered, standard service, as streaming downloads on future consoles? Like the Tivo updates or HL2 preload that slowly trickle over the net onto your consoles until Bam, demo is there? Citing coverdiscs as the reason magazines are holding on is missing the point, both because that is a pretty flimsy leg to stand on, and because that list was about the editorial and the presentation, not the frills that come and go.

[OftenK]

Citing coverdiscs as the reason magazines are holding on is missing the point, both because that is a pretty flimsy leg to stand on, and because that list was about the editorial and the presentation, not the frills that come and go.

I'm not saying that coverdiscs specifically are a reason that magazines are holding on. I don't even feel that magazines will hold on. I can agree that, in the future, the magazines will fall behind and become obsolete, but for the time being, magazines can still hold their own. Using the OXM coverdisc as an example, I was only showing how a magazine could still have a competitive edge over a website. So it's not really "Why your game magazine sucks" but rather "Why you game magazine will suck."

Then again, I could still very well be missing the point. I've only read that quote so far.

Also, going off of this bit:

You don't think they'll just be offered, standard service, as streaming downloads on future consoles?

I would love to see some free downloadable demos available over Xbox Live. I know that's not exactly what you mean, but you'd think they would have at least tried it....

[Roderick]

I know the feeling. Now, without implying that it's impossible to top Gamespot and its ilk (in terms of what they write they're rather the same as the standard magazine), I do feel that it's especially necessary for magazines to get an 'angle', to provide something that others don't. If only entertainment in a unique way. Which isn't the childish poopypranks like just about every fucking Netherlandic magazine out here I'm looking at you, PC Zone Benelux, Power Unlimited, Gamepro, Gunk, whatever whatever why don't you just die? So, that's what I think. There are respectable magazines here though. Well, one.

[ysbreker]

Funny you should bring this topic up, I read something similar lately (via grumpy gamer)

The shallow, fanboy press is one of the chief reasons that gaming as an art form remains unaccepted, even within the industry itself. How can developers look at what they do and call it meaningful if their own community doesn't?

[Marek]

I tend to use sites like GameSpot like a giant database. When someone tells me about some game I look it up at GameSpot and ta-da, I have all the information I'll ever need. I don't exactly "read" GameSpot et al at all (har!). Except maybe the news section, but I don't think the majority of GameSpot readers follow their news from day to day, given that a lot of it is industry/business-oriented.

A magazine I can read wherever I want, and it's quicker and easier to browse, so I often see things I'd never have clicked on a website. Magazines have a chance to do things a lot more in-depth than websites. If magazines were to ditch their news sections entirely, and stop trying to have the "world exclusive review!", and re-focus on doing feature articles, background pieces, and mix up their reviews a lot, they would benefit in the long run. They could make a reputation for themselves. (By "mix up their reviews" I mean "make them interesting". In music or film mags they sometimes sit down with a certain expert to rate 3 things, or have a panel, or some interesting sidebar with factoids, a custom layout, or generally make their reviews more of an insightful story.)

Some magazines are really trying, such as Edge and alledgedly GamesTM (still haven't checked it out yet, because its layout is chaos and extremely deceiving).

[Savage Cabbage]

Exactly, Marek.

Magazines need to go more indepth. I would much prefer to read an indepth review from a respected panel in print form than online. An interview with Jamil Dawsari, or Tetsuya Nomura.

Magazines can completely compete with online. There was an excellent magazine in the late '90's called MAXIMUM. It was a stunning magazine - a cross between EDGE and GAMEStm. The articles were indepth and genuinely warranting of your attention. Today I am sicked by the lobotomy articles editors seem to think I want to read. If I wanted funny I'd go to the comedy club. I want intelligent sharp journalism. A real look into how ICO was put together and influences etc.

But what I hate and I mean HATE is the new mass increase in filling the rear pages of my mag with "phonetext slags" offering me a " fast cum in a minute" call for just £2.50!!! Is this a magazine for adults (confused and sad) or kids? KIDS? Do you really think I want my son looking at images like that? Who greenlights this stuff?

I must say, I do still read EDGE and I enjoy GAMEStm but pretty much everything else is made up of PlayStation generation idiots who wouldn't know an ATARI 2600 from a clothespeg. Idiots.

"How to get your girl to let you play games all night and cook dinner?"

WHAT?

I'd rather eat my legs than read this nonsense!

[Jizmonkey]

I agree. £2.50 is a total ripoff.

[Simon]

Games magazines have been disappointing me for years, if not with their uninteresting journalism, then with their sloppy approach to scoring. I think it's partly out of not wanting to admit when there's a quiet season in gaming, always looking for a 'Game Of The Month'. Late-90s PC Gamer seemed to be handing out 90-something scores left right and centre. It led to a couple of occasions of me purchasing something very lame indeed.

I've been getting GamesTM recently, but even that is irritating me slightly now. Their retro section is occasionally interesting but mostly feels pointless, and the previews don't seem to expand much beyond press-release info and screenshots. They do have a touch of industry depth in the news section, and some excellent interviews (Hideo Kojima a few months ago was a good one). But I think I will go back to just using the web to find out about games. It has all those advantages plus it's (mostly) free.

The last print mag I really liked was PC Player, which I was reading in about 1993, and I guess it died sometime in the mid-90s. It had no coverdisks. I was only young, so it might have been rubbish and I wouldn't remember, but I fondly remember it because it was where I first heard about a lot of old games that I love. I wish I still had my copies.

[Kolzig]

I've lost faith on every single games magazine except Pelit magazine. It's the only magazine I know that has superb columnists and game reviewers.

Here's one happy subscriber since summer of 1996

I once bought a lot of Pc Gamer USA magazines, but it took me about two years to see that that magazine was not my deal, and also it was fecking expensive to buy such an imported magazine that costed 50 finnish marks (about 7,5 euros) per issue back then.

[Salka]

I agree. £2.50 is a total ripoff.

Those magazines are 17.50 Euro over here. I think the cheapest ones are 12.99.

[BigJKO]

Those magazines are 17.50 Euro over here. I think the cheapest ones are 12.99.

He meant the "fastest cum" call.

[Salka]

Oh. I see.

Well, then. I see.

[RLacey]

As someone who has every issue of GamesTM, and is a subscriber to PCGamer and PCZone, I'll say that I use magazines as an alternate source of information, and as something to read whilst I'm lying dead in Counter-Strike or waiting for a game/level to load. Out of the three, GamesTM has by far the best journalism - it's for the most part mature, it has some nice articles, a (kind of) decent retro section and it manages to be clever without being smug in a Kieron Gillen-clever kind of way (and anyone who reads PCG will know exactly what i mean...