Re: Goodbye Game Informer

On Mon, 5 Aug 2024 09:15:43 +0100, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:

On 04/08/2024 16:54, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

 
Probably most people won't care, but "GameInformer" -the long running
computer game magazine- shuttered its business the other day.
 
Which probably shouldn't be a surprise; after all, who reads (print)
magazines anymore? (although, like most publishers, they relied more
on digital subscriptions these days). More tellingly, "Game Informer"
was a division of the "GameStop" retail chain, which in recent years
has been better known for its stock antics than its retail
performance. The chain has been struggling, and that "Game Informer"
has survived this long is, frankly, sort of amazing.
 
What was surprising was how /good/ "Game Informer" was. While it
didn't do any hard-hitting journalism, it still had well-written
articles and reviews that weren't just puff-pieces designed to get you
to buy the next game (which is what you'd expect from a magazine
funded by a video-game store). Amongst the surviving 'old-school'
video-game magazine publishers, they were probably the best.
 
And while the likes of online publishing -Kotaku, GamesIndustry,
PCGamesN and the rest- have taken up the slack, there was a lot to be
said about a publisher who actually still put out printed material. It
implied a reliability and soundness that you often don't get from the
more fly-by-night online offerings. They were a standard baseline
against which you could measure the competitors.
 
So it's sort of sad to see them go. Even if I was part of the problem
that led to their demise (I let my subscription lapse years ago...
although that was mostly because the only way to renew the
subscription was by physically going to a Gamestop store).
 
Fare thee well, "Game Informer". You weren't great, but you were good
enough, and your passing is just another sign of the passing of the
golden age of computer gaming.
 

>
I do kinda miss actual magazines and still have fond memories of popping
into the newsagents during my paper round to see if the latest issue of
Crash* was in yet. When I finally got a PC I did buy a magazine now and
again but certainly not consistently. Now you can get so much of the
information online, why pay for it.
>
*For those that don't know it was an iconic magazine for the Specky 48k
which ditched the whole pretence that home computers were for
educational purposes and not for playing games.

Please! Home computers weren't _just_ for home education! If the
advertising was to be believed, they were _also_ for managing your
finances! And Mom could use it to collect and print-out recipes too!
Oh, sure, maybe Junior might every now and then use it for a game, but
that was the EXCEPTION to the rule. Like you said, the benefit of the
computer to the kids was in its educational value.

At least, that's how I remember how almost all marketing tried to sell
home PCs in the 80s and 90s: Dad does the home-finances, Mom uses it
for cooking, and the kid for schoolwork.

     [even in the 2000s it was largely the same, with the
      addition of 'check email', 'check stocks' (for Dad), and
      'surf the web', with the implication that this would be
      used to benefit Junior's schoolwork. It wasn't until the
      2010s that PC manufacturers dropped the lie. Sure, the
      kids were going to use it for games, but they'd need a
      PC anyway just for ordinary life stuff, so just bit the
      bullet and get a new Dell already, Mom and Dad! ;-]

With the reality being Dad used it for finances maybe three times
before giving it up, Mom never touched the thing, and Junior used it
almost exclusively for playing games except when they wanted to really
impress teacher and print out a book report or something.

But it was marketing lie was cheerfully supported by every kid and
teenager on Earth who wanted to get their hands on a powerful computer
to play all the latest games. "Sure, it'll help me with my
schoolwork!"  ;-)


But, I digress...


I miss magazines just because the writing was better. Limited by line
counts, reporters had to be a lot more economical with their style.
Web-based reviews tend to be more rambly.

      [And, yes, I am 100% aware of the irony of /MY/ complaining
       about poorly edited, long winded prose. :-]

But the information content in printed magazines always seemed a lot
higher than anything I'd ever read on the web.

Even if that information wasn't particularly trustworthy. Man, a /lot/
of those rags were such _obvious_ shills for the video-game publishing
industry. But well written shills.