Videogame Print is Dead - Finally

[DeathQuaker]

There are merits to both print and online media. There's an immediacy to published media, but there's something viscerally satisfying about opening a printed material and reading a well-prepared article. And I am not sure why, but I tend to take reviews I read in printed magazines far more seriously than I do than online reviews.

I think print media is also often more carefully revised, proofread, and copy edited before it is published. Deadlines are often a little longer, so writers are more careful about constructing their prose.

There's also a focus to printed articles... for example, while I'm typing this, there's some blinky, obnoxious animated ad from GameX at the bottom of the screen that keeps drawing my eye away from both typing this and reading other people's responses, and even the "latest content" and "most popular" links are a distraction from just thinking about this article. Online magazines are absolutely spammed with ads and extraneous images that are a distraction (NOTE: I understand WHY the ads and the spam exist; it doesn't make it any less dizzying). Printed magazines have ads, but you tend to turn a page, see an ad, turn a page, see a single article and be able to focus on that. (For people who aren't adults with ADD they may feel differently about this.)

Of course, my typing this shows the advantage to online publication: you have immediate feedback and invite discourse. The quality of said discourse may of course vary.... but it's still a nice thing.

All in all, both are useful, and I don't think print media is dead. GI and PCGamer and various other magazines I see selling well at my local stores. I'm not sure why Tom Endo declared it dead just because of EGM (if it was indeed just because of EGM). Was EGM all that important? I never saw it cited for much, but that could just be the particular circles I run in.

And if the apocalypse comes, and we lose all power, I still may be able to dig out my issues of GameInformer from the rubble and wistfully recall the days when I had those things called video games. The (pop) cultural record established by the Escapist, however, will be entirely lost. (Yes, an extreme view, and spoken of largely in humor... but it's still true. Unless someone prints out the articles and stores them.)

 

[nipsen]

Maybe Assassin's Creed wouldn't have been as memorable if it had lacked the countless trailers, Jade Raymond's smiling face and webcomic controversy. It's a magnificent mess, the lead up...

Maybe, if the journalists had longer memory and weren't so infatuated with every ball of yarn rolled out in front of them, hype wouldn't be so effective at dominating everything you read on every single frontpage on all the internet magazines.

Unbelievable, perhaps, but true. Now, for our next attraction, I shall demonstrate how water runs downhill.

 

[AntiAntagonist]

Heh the one gaming magazine personality that I remember was Bill Donahue of Ultra GamePlayers and his mailbag.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

I don't see it happening the same way the kindle hasn't replaced books.

Sure, you can read online, but for a lot of people, its just not comfortable to read from a screen for hours on end, which is why book piracy isn't nearly the problem that music and other forms of piracy are, when it comes down to it, part of the pleasure of reading is in the book itself.

I'm no luddite, all my music is stored in mp3 format, I'm usually watching my TV streaming from the BBC or Channel 4 websites, but I just can't take pleasure in reading online as much as I do sat back with a book.

Maybe it'd be a little more enjoyable with a laptop, but I don't think paper is on the way out for a long time yet.

 

[Silva]

Whenever I see a piece that claims the "death" of a medium or even a genre, I always view the claim with deep suspicion.

The reason is that this never actually comes to pass. The same was said for radio fourty to fifty years ago when television was released. Is radio dead? It is less popular according to ratings than television, but plays what sociologists call a critical cultural role, and talkback still has great power in politics in America, Australia, and the Western world as a whole.

Is fantasy writing dead? Yes, that was called dead, in the 1950's, when sci-fi began to perpetuate with greater mass appeal. But almost sixty years later, the books of JK Rowling have proven that not only is that genre alive, it is currently the most popular of all time, with Harry Potter books beating the Bible for sales. Of course, the claim that fantasy would die when the newer alternative arrived in force seems stupid now.

The same can be said for this situation, in which the Internet provides an alternative to traditional magazines for game writing. The Web provides yet another option for those who prefer to consume it. It does not replace the older option of magazine coverage, which still has devoted fans and economic support, even if the Internet is more efficient on some levels.

Games magazines are still hugely popular. There are still many who prefer to gain their news weekly or monthly, rather than frequenting websites and newsgroups for tidbits found through Google. Indeed, since the Wii's great expansion of casual gaming, the people who enjoy constant coverage (the hardcore) are actually in a much steeper minority.

Monthly coverage gives a chance for writers to divulge a fuller amount of information at a time for each game, rather than being disparate, bite-sized and useless for understanding what is actually going to be purchased. This type of coverage still has great appeal. In fact, as Western world workloads get larger and the majority of the gaming population is now adult, magazines are a very practical medium to follow.

Considering this information, it is more likely that this article jumped the gun and assumed far too much, at the expense of the truth. Like most industries impacted by the recession, the games magazine industry will come out of the downturn smaller, but still playing a critical role in gaming coverage. There may be a bounce back in magazine popularity in the future, so death - if it ever comes - is a long way away.

 

[Kif]

I'm confused, I disagree with your title that suggests that with regards to games the print media is dead. Yet, I agree with your article that reads game news on all mediums has grown and become more adult.

Print media for games is a thriving business, this is proven simply by looking at the number of publications available. There's no sense in a business model that does not produce profit.

As for the content of magazines, I personally would say that magazines have matured, more so than Internet mediums. Where the Internet brings you blogs, twitters, rumours and childish forum arguments, magazines bring facts, exclusives information via interviews and alike, and (in unbias magazines) valid unbias views. As an example during the Fallout 3 production the first scraps of information made their way on to the Internet (including the official forums) via scans of an Australian magazine that had an exclusive article.

You only have to read two of the largest competing UK publications (Edge & Games TM) to see how much more sensible and well formed they are compared to anything available on the Internet and as for the content it is mature and has sections larger than the hyp of actual games themselves devoted to industry news, court cases, conferences, regular editorials from Japan and America and other such topics you would otherwise have to hunt pretty hard to find.

In my eyes the Internet as a medium is messy, cluttered, unmoderated and has a while to go before it can claim to kill text publications.

 

[Midniqht]

i still get GameInformer mag every month and ive started looking at it less and less. i only really open it up for reviews of games or some previews. everything else is just advertising these days

 

[neispace]

I'm not sure how you can claim it to be dead, there are:

Nintendo Power
Official XBOX magazine
Official PS magazine
Game Informer
Game Pro
Edge Magazine
Retrogamer
Play magazine (I think)

and probably more than that. If you mean they are no longer preeminent, that's one thing, but print magazines still are kicking. The net is fine, but they still fill a need, for portable information you can read at leisure.

 

[seitori]

The volume and availability of videogame news is such that a game is no longer just a game, it is the sum total of all its rumors, layoffs, and outlandish PR quotes.

That's one of the smartest things I've read recently about the changing face of the video game press. If it gets any worse we might end up seeing a gaming news channel with a 24/7 news cycle that just shovels out all the PR crap we're seeing these days.

As for print, it will probably last another generation (and I don't mean console) like the rest of the media. Game Informer will be leading the charge as long as their support from GameStop continues. It's really a shame though that they threaten the poor kids at the stores with their jobs if they don't bend over backwards to support a whole other, unrelated division of the corporation they are working for.