Tag: games magazines

2008: The Wheels Are in Motion

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Had some exciting conversations today, and I think it’s probably all right if I tease a few details of what I’ve been up to… and what I’m going to be up to.

After my post the other day regarding game criticism, the modern games press and ways that we might all do things a bit better, I got to talking with a few people, one of whom was Mr Matt Sainsbury over at Digitally Downloaded. Matt and I have been trying to find an opportunity to work together for quite some time, but the whole thing of there really not being much money in the enthusiast press scene made me hesitant. I didn’t want to get myself into a situation where I was working my ass off and creating work I was really pleased with and not being able to be appropriately compensated for it, in other words. (This isn’t anything against Matt or Digitally Downloaded, I might add; rare indeed is the enthusiast gaming site that actually pulls in enough money to pay its staff, which is one of the big problems with the ad-based revenue model I talked about.)

Anyway, long story short: our conversations about magazines attracted a decent amount of interest, and so we decided to discuss things further. And then we decided to act on these discussions by attempting to put together an honest-to-goodness magazine about games, providing the sort of coverage that we want to read, and covering the sorts of games that could really do with a bit more love from the press in general.

Our approach is going to be to take a different “topic” or “genre” (the latter inspired by literary criticism rather than game mechanics) for each issue, and then focus the whole issue around it. We’re nailing down the specifics of the complete format, but this will allow us the flexibility to write some long-form essays about topics that interest us, as well as shorter reviews for games that fit in with the topic. Crucially, going with a topic-based approach rather than keeping things tied to whatever has come out recently means that each issue can effectively be “timeless” and collectible, remaining constantly relevant rather than only being relevant for the month of release. The traditional periodical model of games magazines is of no use whatsoever in the age of instant information on the Internet, so it’s much better to use the print medium for things it’s particularly suited for — in this case, long-form writing presented in a visually attractive manner. (Hopefully, anyway; it’ll be my first time flexing my DTP muscles for quite some time!)

Here’s a couple of cover mockups I and another Digitally Downloaded staffer put together earlier; that should give you a nice little teaser!

Issue 1 draft cover

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If you think all this sounds quite similar to what we were doing with the Squadron of Shame SquadCast during the period where we experimented with topic-based shows, you’d be absolutely right — though the nature of print means that the approach is somewhat different. Regrettably, we’ve really struggled to get people together and/or fired up for recording further podcasts, so that’s been on the back-burner for a while. In the meantime, then, there is this project, and I’m really excited about it.

I’ve written a lot of things over the past few years — not just on this blog, but professionally, and in other personal places, too — but there’s something that will always be magical and wonderful about print media to me. The prospect of being involved in print media always makes me far more excited than the possibility of getting my words on a website — and always has done. I think it’s to do with the potential for having a tangible, physical object in your hands at the end of it all as the fruits of your labours rather than “just” words on a website. I mean, in both cases the important thing is still the words that you’ve written, but there’s something I just love about being able to hold something I’ve written, pick it up, show it to people, read it on the toilet and whatever.

So yes. That’s what I’m going to be up to alongside the other work I’m doing at the moment. We’re aiming for our first issue to release around the end of next month (probably just digitally initially, we’ll look at genuine physical print options later), so please watch out for it and consider grabbing a copy! Also, if you’re interested in participating and contributing, let me know, privately if need be!

1941: What Happened to the Games Press?

I find myself thinking this a lot recently, particularly as sites like Polygon do increasingly stupid things on a seemingly daily basis (just recently, they managed to piss off the entire community of people who enjoy modern niche Japanese RPGs with a spectacularly ill-informed piece that I posted a lengthy rebuttal to over on MoeGamer, and subsequently baffled everyone by complaining that The Witcher 3 didn’t appear to have any black people in it, and that in a setting where, canonically, women are treated like shit, the women were treated like shit) and I find myself increasingly turning to smaller sites on the few occasions I do actually want to read someone else’s thoughts about games — and to Twitter on the more frequent occasions when I want to talk about games with people who share my interests.

The games press used to be the very definition of “enthusiast”, in that it was, well, enthusiastic. Upcoming new games were anticipated with excitement, unexpectedly brilliant games were celebrated, legendarily awful games became famous in their own right. In most cases, coverage was handled in a light-hearted, humorous and often irreverent manner, not afraid to crack politically incorrect jokes and generally seem like the people responsible for it were actually having a good time.

These days, I go to a site like Polygon and often come away feeling like its writers actively hate the medium they claim to specialise in. It seems like every other week there’s a new big controversy of some description, and these sites seem to take it upon themselves to take a Firm Moral Standpoint on such issues, usually with the strong implications that If You Don’t Agree With This, You Are An Awful Shit and Should Probably Be Killed.

Sometimes these controversies become justifiably big deals — although, to be honest, it’s getting harder and harder to think of genuine examples, simply because of the amount of noise spouted on a daily basis. It’s the “Boy Who Cried Wolf” syndrome; the more you shout and scream and rave about How Awful Everything Is, Oh My! *faints* the less likely people are to take you seriously. Particularly when it’s just so incongruous; I can’t quite work out if the abrupt gear-change into “by the way, this is misogynist and probably racist too” in Polygon’s otherwise very positive review of The Witcher 3 is hilarious or tragic, but either way, I can’t take it seriously any more, because it’s just parroting the same points I’ve seen over and over again, without any real consideration of context.

I think back to the days when I used to read games magazines before the Internet came along and ruined that industry. I think back with fond memories on the specific magazines I used to read — mostly the ones my brother worked on, for obvious reasons — and can actually remember a lot about them: the articles therein, the games covered, the reasons I liked taking them into the toilet to read while I was having a shit even if I’d already read them from cover to cover multiple times. Advanced Computer Entertainment (aka ACE); Zero; Mega Drive Advanced Gaming; Control (later Super Control); ST Action; Atari User; Page 6; The Official Nintendo Magazine; N64 Magazine; PSM; GamesTM; PC Player; PC Zone; EGM; OPM; and doubtless some others I’ve forgotten — I don’t remember any of these magazines ever taking a Firm Moral Standpoint on controversial issues, and I certainly don’t ever remember them directly attacking either portions of or their whole audience. (Well, except for Charlie Brooker’s “Sick Notes” section in latter-day PC Zone, in which people wrote in to him specifically to get insulted.)

Meanwhile, today, we have a far more fast-moving games press in which articles are generally disposable, forgettable, designed to get quick, immediate clicks right now and, for the most part, not remain “evergreen” and stand the test of time. That means a rise in tabloid-style controversy and moral panics, and a decline in writers having the opportunity to express their own specific, creative voices or specialisms. And that’s really sad.

One positive thing that is coming of the growing sense of dissatisfaction a lot of people like myself feel with the big gaming sites is the fact that smaller sites are on the rise, and doing a good job from a content perspective of catering to niches that are typically underserved by the mainstream publications. The situation isn’t ideal as yet — most of these outlets aren’t able to pay their staff, since making money from writing words on the Internet is harder than it’s ever been, given people’s reluctance to pay for things online, and even greater reluctance to allow themselves to be advertised at — but it is undergoing a change.

I’m glad to see that, in some respects, but sad in others; as time goes on, we move further and further away from what I now recognise, with the rose-tinted spectacles of +1 nostalgia, as the Golden Age of Games Magazines. Fashions come and go, of course, but with the way the media has been advancing over the course of the last ten or twenty years, I don’t see us returning to anything like it any time soon.