This thread is a spin-off from this one, inspired by a comment by fellow Gaffer and jewel in Kotakus crown Jason Schreier and my response to it. Jason said (bolded bit is mine):
I raised an eyebrow at that, and replied
That wasnt all that I wrote, of course, or it would rightly be dismissed as snark, but even so the conversation didnt go any further; perhaps because it was a fast moving thread, perhaps because it was a crap post that deserved no further analysis (I guess well know the truth when this thread sinks without trace). But Id like to expand on the rest of the comment here, and Id be interested to know whether Im in a minority. If so, itd be nice to know how small a minority that is, and from the people who do feel similarly what kind of videogame journalism would you pay for?
The situation as I see it is this I didnt leave videogame magazines, they left me.
Im in my 30s, from the UK, and bought videogame magazines from the late 80s onwards. I regularly bought: ST Format, Zero, Mean Machines, Game Zone, GamesMaster, Total, Super Play, N64 Magazine, Nintendo Magazine System (and the Official rebrand), and for the brief time it lasted, Arcade which I reckon is the last game magazine I would have cheerfully handed over money for. Edge has always been too up itself for my liking, overly worthy with a too-serious tone.
The magazines above have, to a greater or lesser extent, this in common an irreverent, piss-taking style of writing that probably resonates deeply with British readers raised on the likes of Monty Python (you can see the ghost of it at Eurogamer, the closest modern online equivalent), and, particularly the older magazines, a sense of community in the form of writers that were characters, running jokes, pointless but very funny features, letters pages (superior to modern comments sections by their very nature, filtered for decent content and sometimes with extensive replies from the writers). It was all very silly, and I loved it. I bought every copy of the best magazines I could get my hands on and am still prone to despair when I remember I threw many of them away in a mass clearout in my mid-20s. Hell, I even bought Amiga Power on occasion because it was so in tune with the kind of writing I liked, and I didnt even have an Amiga (the original Master Race, you bunch of superior bastards).
Heres an example from probably my favourite magazine - Zero. You had the writers as characters: Duncan MacDonald, dumb as a stump and dreaming of blu-tac. Jane wife of Jonathan Ross Goldman, the saucepot. David Macca McCandless, who I think was portrated as a violent psycho, the toff Lord Paul Lakin and so on. You had letters with running jokes like the somewhat strange reader Ludwig Ledbury, appearances by Gyles Brandreth and Norris McWhirter (who had a strange proclivity for death by hanging), an excellent and in depth regular feature on adventure games that nonetheless cheerfully portrayed the genre as the domain of bearded nerds and was all the better for it, and more. The reviews themselves were often set-pieces, written in character or with a particular scenario playing out and while the scoring was overly generous (they were pioneers of the fabled 7-10 scale) the text was often still comprehensive and informative.
Zero went to pot with an incredibly ill-advised rebranding as an XXXTREME magazine with more of a console focus, and only limped along for a few issues in its new format. Other magazines died as the machines they wrote about fell by the wayside, but there is surely no reason the same quality couldnt be achieved with new computers/consoles as the focus. GameZone which began with Dennis Publishing and was then taken over by Future continued in the same vein, with particularly spectacular reviews like the one for The Last Action Hero that played out as a script from The Last of the Summer Wine, guest starring the reviewer (in disguise) and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
And then they started going downhill. I resolved never to hand over money for the Official Nintendo Magazine the day I saw them referring to the Playstation and Saturn as the Greystation and Sadturd (honestly). The combination of irreverence and good content dried up, and the magazines either became industry cheerleaders or adopted a more Edge-like serious bizness approach this may or may not have something to do with industry involvement, but this comment by Stuart Campbell may be relevant:
By the end of the 90s, there was pretty much nothing left Id want to open my wallet for. But and heres the thing I didnt stop buying magazines because I could get this stuff for free off the internet. I stopped buying magazines because there was nothing left worth buying. I dont think I started regularly reading gaming websites until around 2008 when I discovered Eurogamer, so thats nearly a decade of just not consuming games journalism because the stuff I like simply wasnt there. Ive actively looked for gaming content that Id want to subscribe to, be it magazine, e-magazine or website. I miss the days of getting a new magazine and reading it front to back. I miss moving from section to section, the sense of community and character, the in-jokes and daft stuff thats in there for no reason except that its funny. I dont think its there though.
Eurogamer is capable of producing some good stuff, and much of Jasons work at Kotaku gets, and deserves, praise here on Neogaf. But its not what Im after as a consumer it feels (sorry, Jason) more disposable. Ill have a click and a read and its interesting and I enjoy it, but I dont love it like I loved those magazines. I dont reread it for the sheer pleasure of it and I dont look forward to the next article, I just click it when I see it. This isnt a criticism of the quality of the work; it simply isnt work I want to pay for but that doesnt mean I dont want to pay.
So many thanks for anyone who made it through that wall of text. What Id like to know is is this an atypical experience? Is it really that unlikely that theres money to be made by producing this kind of content again - these magazines at their height were very popular, it can't just have been through lack of alternatives and actual content be damned, surely? Is there a gap in the market that is genuinely too risky to attempt to fill, or are the content providers just not willing to try? Are even they capable? And if you feel similarly, what is it that you'd be willing to pay for?
One final thing Ive clearly left myself wide open to the nostalgia counterargument here. That these magazines werent nearly as good as I remember them, much like the games they covered. Thats fair, and entirely possible. All I can say in reply is that firstly, I clearly remember the relatively swift decline in quality and making the decision to stop buying them that happened in real-time, as it were, so any nostalgia filter was likely pretty small. Secondly, Ive played videogames recently that give me the same joy as I did when I was a kid. If they can do it, I dont see why videogame writing cant.
I raised an eyebrow at that, and replied
That wasnt all that I wrote, of course, or it would rightly be dismissed as snark, but even so the conversation didnt go any further; perhaps because it was a fast moving thread, perhaps because it was a crap post that deserved no further analysis (I guess well know the truth when this thread sinks without trace). But Id like to expand on the rest of the comment here, and Id be interested to know whether Im in a minority. If so, itd be nice to know how small a minority that is, and from the people who do feel similarly what kind of videogame journalism would you pay for?
The situation as I see it is this I didnt leave videogame magazines, they left me.
Im in my 30s, from the UK, and bought videogame magazines from the late 80s onwards. I regularly bought: ST Format, Zero, Mean Machines, Game Zone, GamesMaster, Total, Super Play, N64 Magazine, Nintendo Magazine System (and the Official rebrand), and for the brief time it lasted, Arcade which I reckon is the last game magazine I would have cheerfully handed over money for. Edge has always been too up itself for my liking, overly worthy with a too-serious tone.
The magazines above have, to a greater or lesser extent, this in common an irreverent, piss-taking style of writing that probably resonates deeply with British readers raised on the likes of Monty Python (you can see the ghost of it at Eurogamer, the closest modern online equivalent), and, particularly the older magazines, a sense of community in the form of writers that were characters, running jokes, pointless but very funny features, letters pages (superior to modern comments sections by their very nature, filtered for decent content and sometimes with extensive replies from the writers). It was all very silly, and I loved it. I bought every copy of the best magazines I could get my hands on and am still prone to despair when I remember I threw many of them away in a mass clearout in my mid-20s. Hell, I even bought Amiga Power on occasion because it was so in tune with the kind of writing I liked, and I didnt even have an Amiga (the original Master Race, you bunch of superior bastards).
Heres an example from probably my favourite magazine - Zero. You had the writers as characters: Duncan MacDonald, dumb as a stump and dreaming of blu-tac. Jane wife of Jonathan Ross Goldman, the saucepot. David Macca McCandless, who I think was portrated as a violent psycho, the toff Lord Paul Lakin and so on. You had letters with running jokes like the somewhat strange reader Ludwig Ledbury, appearances by Gyles Brandreth and Norris McWhirter (who had a strange proclivity for death by hanging), an excellent and in depth regular feature on adventure games that nonetheless cheerfully portrayed the genre as the domain of bearded nerds and was all the better for it, and more. The reviews themselves were often set-pieces, written in character or with a particular scenario playing out and while the scoring was overly generous (they were pioneers of the fabled 7-10 scale) the text was often still comprehensive and informative.
Zero went to pot with an incredibly ill-advised rebranding as an XXXTREME magazine with more of a console focus, and only limped along for a few issues in its new format. Other magazines died as the machines they wrote about fell by the wayside, but there is surely no reason the same quality couldnt be achieved with new computers/consoles as the focus. GameZone which began with Dennis Publishing and was then taken over by Future continued in the same vein, with particularly spectacular reviews like the one for The Last Action Hero that played out as a script from The Last of the Summer Wine, guest starring the reviewer (in disguise) and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
And then they started going downhill. I resolved never to hand over money for the Official Nintendo Magazine the day I saw them referring to the Playstation and Saturn as the Greystation and Sadturd (honestly). The combination of irreverence and good content dried up, and the magazines either became industry cheerleaders or adopted a more Edge-like serious bizness approach this may or may not have something to do with industry involvement, but this comment by Stuart Campbell may be relevant:
By the end of the 90s, there was pretty much nothing left Id want to open my wallet for. But and heres the thing I didnt stop buying magazines because I could get this stuff for free off the internet. I stopped buying magazines because there was nothing left worth buying. I dont think I started regularly reading gaming websites until around 2008 when I discovered Eurogamer, so thats nearly a decade of just not consuming games journalism because the stuff I like simply wasnt there. Ive actively looked for gaming content that Id want to subscribe to, be it magazine, e-magazine or website. I miss the days of getting a new magazine and reading it front to back. I miss moving from section to section, the sense of community and character, the in-jokes and daft stuff thats in there for no reason except that its funny. I dont think its there though.
Eurogamer is capable of producing some good stuff, and much of Jasons work at Kotaku gets, and deserves, praise here on Neogaf. But its not what Im after as a consumer it feels (sorry, Jason) more disposable. Ill have a click and a read and its interesting and I enjoy it, but I dont love it like I loved those magazines. I dont reread it for the sheer pleasure of it and I dont look forward to the next article, I just click it when I see it. This isnt a criticism of the quality of the work; it simply isnt work I want to pay for but that doesnt mean I dont want to pay.
So many thanks for anyone who made it through that wall of text. What Id like to know is is this an atypical experience? Is it really that unlikely that theres money to be made by producing this kind of content again - these magazines at their height were very popular, it can't just have been through lack of alternatives and actual content be damned, surely? Is there a gap in the market that is genuinely too risky to attempt to fill, or are the content providers just not willing to try? Are even they capable? And if you feel similarly, what is it that you'd be willing to pay for?
One final thing Ive clearly left myself wide open to the nostalgia counterargument here. That these magazines werent nearly as good as I remember them, much like the games they covered. Thats fair, and entirely possible. All I can say in reply is that firstly, I clearly remember the relatively swift decline in quality and making the decision to stop buying them that happened in real-time, as it were, so any nostalgia filter was likely pretty small. Secondly, Ive played videogames recently that give me the same joy as I did when I was a kid. If they can do it, I dont see why videogame writing cant.
