Adios, EGM...
Not exactly surprising, particularly given the failure of Games For Windows magazine (formerly Computer Gaming World). Ziff-Davis declared bankruptcy nine months ago, and has sold 1UP (which has been apparently hemorrhaging money) to UGO, and is nuking long-standing magazine EGM. Details and updates at GamaSutra.

Jeff Green, former EIC of Computer Gaming World / GFW, left 1Up a few months ago to work on The Sims team. He has some nice things to say about his former coworkers, and some not-so-nice things to say about his former employers, which you can read here. His contention is that while 1UP may continue, it's definitely not going to be its old self ever again.

Hmmm.... kinda like when CGW transformed into GFW?

Okay - so... what does this mean?

Well, first of all, the economy sucks, and that hurts everybody in some way. It gets harder and harder to compete for dollars. This happens. A lot.

Secondly - while it will never go away completely, the era of the print magazine are definitely over. Especially when you are dealing with timely material as news and reviews. Print distribution could never keep up with the speed of news, but with the exception of television (which had its own limitations and was too expensive for niche topics) there was simply no competition. The web changed that.

But, as 1UP's sale and layoffs indicate, the web is no easy route to fortunes in advertising dollars, either. Anybody who's made a serious effort to monetize their website can tell you that much. Most of us just hope to make enough to pay our hosting bill.

So now I'm gonna wax a little nostalgic about gaming magazines. The early-to-mid 90's were completely awesome for gaming mags, which happened to coincide with the time I entered the games biz for the first time. They were everywhere. EGM was one of the big ones for consoles. I have a scrapbook at home which my wife got me to help collect all the articles about our first two games (Warhawk and Twisted Metal). I still have it. There are a ton of articles in there - partly because there was, quite frankly, a glut of gaming magazines. It was the dawn of gaming as a "big business," and everybody and their cousin was looking to get their foot in the door.

It was a grand time to be a gamer (or a game developer). Games had finally hit the "big time," and it was amazing to me that there were dozens of magazines catering to gamers. It was such a far cry from the early 80's (but I did love my monthly issues of Compute! and Compute! Gazette).

The coolest deal of all was when Twisted Metal 2 made the cover of EGM. I still have that one. That was something of a career high for me. Not that I was directly involved in the sequel, but it was the success of the original that convinced them to put the sequel on the cover.

Many of the magazines of that era didn't last more than two or three years. It was a short ride, but a fun one.

Ah, well. One era ends. Another one begins.

Labels: Biz

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:43 PM (Permalink)