I read all your points and was thinking "well ive already read up on that.. and that...and that..." , then i realised i do way more research into video games than most people and the knowladge i take for granted is mostly non existant on other peoples radar.


I would also like to add to that list more editorial peice from people who know and care about game theory. Like how do you as a game maker use games to their full potential to tell a story in a new way rather than making it a movie with game play in between? How can you keep the element of freedom for the player while still showing the player what you want to show them? These are the kind of thingsI assume are discussed ar the GDC but i think are really interesting to the average gamer also.


Or everyone could do what i did and lie to game developer magazine to get a free subscription.

Let's get an interview in sometime. I bet I could think up some good questions.

...Eh probably not.

You must be god or something.
"Exactly" my opinions about gaming press... I'm only buying 3 a year with nice games on the coverdisc

couldnt agree more...

Well, I could agree more, but I won't.

Hear, hear!

The state of Game Magazines is pretty sorry. Where I live, they're horribly expensive, and all offer exactly the same content that can be found online months before ... for free. Nothing interesting or in depth either... just a few pages of walkthroughs, previews and cheats, and then the other half of the magazine dedicated to adverts for Ring Tones, Chat-Up lines and Prank Call services.

The only reason I can see to buy a game magazine is to avail of the demos. And as for this:


Totally agreed.

But I don't think this problem is only a gaming press problem... look newspapers...  I'm only reading the local sites, the rest does my Feedreader.

You must bring other content then simple reviews andnews reporting in the internet age... they will learn when they begin to die, and they will begin to die... hopefully.

Awesome, very good points. Personally, I am offended by their slavish adherence to the canard "This game coming out is the best game ever." Twice this year with Doom III and HL2. What a pile of crap.

Obviously the gaming industry is going to be ruined and collapse one day... until someone comes and finally shows them how stupid they've been... hopefully to save it on time.

This is exactly why this blog is in my bookmark toolbar.  I wish PC Gamer or Computer Gaming World had it in theirs, too.

I think the ultimate expression of gaming press fanboyism was reading a dozen reviews that spent multiple pages talking about how crappy Doom III was, and then giving it a 9.8.

Only a 9.8? That game must suck

A British computer magazine once rat an article complaining about a major British PC store chain (expensive prices etc. etc.). Unfortunately, the chain was also a major advertiser, and a grovelling apology was printed in the next issue. The moral? Advertisers are more important to keep happy than readers.

As a regular reader of your newly linked blog, The Video Game Ombudsman, I've often wondered a lot about game journalism as well.  Much of the current journalism tends to fall on the "TV Guide" side of journalism.  "Here's stuff that we think looks particularly good, now for our consumption guide!"  I guess I mean it seems more like infotainment than information.  Of course one could worry that too much information and not entertainment is a bad thing, but I think we've got a while to go before we have to worry about that.

Granted the canned email questions get old, but I assumed (wrongly?) that such things were more like 'pre-interview info gathering.'  How about "Do you feel your game offers anything completely new to Games?"  "Does this game fall more toward either the art or entertainment side of gaming in your eyes?  If either, why?"  "Why did you choose to have the story follow 'xxx'?"  But the most important thing is obviously what you point out; "You need stop accepting bullshit PR answers from people."

As a question to you and all of the other readers here, what kind of questions do we want developers to answer?

Personally along with CEOs and presidents, I'd like to see occassionally artistic and technical minded questions.  We already ask devs about design choices.  Ask the artists (2d and 3d) of Blizzard about their choice of artistic style in WoW.  Interview the audio lead of Bungie about the choice to have bands in the soundtrack.  Ask the programmers of Treyarch how in the hell they managed to get webswinging right.  Just a few easy examples.

The more this article is spread, the more the conscience is spread that the magazines as they are now are pretty bland/worthless.

It really does seem like these magazines are all the same.  I enjoy some more than others - Play just looks nicer for example.  I can do without the Anime section in the back, but that's just me.  But there is one (I can't remember the name - we get so many at work) that really chaps my hide - the one with the inane captions on every screen shot.  Do people think these little captions are funny?  Or the kewl bizarro columns?  Or the verbatim banter between two games writers as they play a head to head game?

Some of these magazines seem like they are written for the writers and their friends, jam packed with inside jokes that fall flat on their face and strip any sense of legitimacy of the content.  Or maybe I'm just 20 years too old to understand the humor.

We need a good high-quality adult option - more "The Economist" than "Seventeen", more "Newsweek" than "Weekly World News"

"I would also love to see the gaming press take EA to task for things like the NFL license, and all the shit they produce. "

EA produces about as much shit as the rest of the industry. Which we point out each time they release said shit.

As for taking them to ask for the NFL license, the beef is with the NFL, not EA.

"Why do publishers waste so much money and why can't developers manage projects better".

That's really for Game Developer. Are people screaming for, "Why did Catwoman cost $80 million!"

"1) Expose the distribution system."

It's a great topic, for a trade magazine maybe. Do consumers care? Why would Entertainment Weekly talk about how DVD are distributed?

"2) Who is really playing games? "

Great idea. Give me a few thousand bucks to do the research and hire a writer and we have a story.

"3) What is the real scoop on video game violence.  Do some research.  Take the designer of GTA to task.  Hit them with hard questions.  Talk to the lawyers, the politicians, the players, parents and developers. "

Did that article. Twice. The response: Readers are sick of the violence issue.

"4) Do better interviews. "

Developers need to be more interesting. You are, Will Wright is, Warren Spector is; most aren't.

"5) What's up with the Indie gaming scene?"

Added an indie gaming column last month. We'll see if anyone cares. They probably won't.

We get almost no feedback-positive or negative-and are generally just told how shitty we are on forums and in blogs.

"6) Why did LucasArts cancel Sam and Max?  Yeah, we all read the press release, no need to reprint it.  Get the real scope.  It's probably juicy.

If I had the contacts to do this, I'd do it. Since no one has ever contacted about doing such a story, like someone on the team, I'd somehow have to go through LucasArts to find out who I could secretly talk to.

"7) Why do publishers keep licensing crappy movies. "

Is this interesting to consumers? We may all say, "Why yes, of course it is!" but we're not really the people buying game magazines. Remember, people online don't read the game press anymore because it sucks.

"8) Gamers (and developers) are complaining about the lack of creativity in the business.  What does the CEO of Activision think of that?  What does he think of this industry and it's future?  Is it just a business to him, or does he love games.  Get an interview.  Ask hard questions. "

Most readers could care less what the CEO of Activision thinks of anything versus what, say, Ron Gilbert thinks of something.

Or to put it another way, do you want to read an interview with Martin Scorcese about film, or one with Michael Eisner?

And a few years ago, people criticized the game press for not focusing on developers. And now we're supposed to focus on CEOs?

---

All of these are great ideas, honestly. I've tried to do most of these articles, or ones similar to them, and you know what? No one noticed, and no on realy cares. People say they want them, but like indie games, they don't actually support them with their money.

It's cool to say, "I love indie games! Support indie games!" but when it comes time to spend $30, they go with the one they find in the store.

And when it comes to the press, when you get more sales and read interest from "WORLD EXCLUSIVE SCOOP! GUY WITH GUN!" than "Big Gordon Speaks!," well... we're a business too, just trying to survive issue-to-issue.

And who would write these exposes and more interesting stories? Videogame writers? I can't pay anyone enough money to do a serious piece, and most videogame writers either aren't good enough or are unwilling to put in the time. They can grind out 20 previews in the time it would take to do one feature.

Bah, I think I win in the "grumpy" category.

that jazz bit on your CGMagazine site (NOT SIGHT, FOR FUCK'S SAKE. IF I CAN EXPRESS THIS TO ONE FUCKING PERSON WHO USES THE WORD SIGHT WHEN THEY MEAN SITE I'LL BE HAPPY) is great. it could be longer, though.

Just wanted to say that you gave some good responses, just though I'd add a bit myself.

It's been widely reported that EA has long lobbied the NFL to auction off exclusive rights.  There's more than enough blame to go around for everyone.


Well, that's kinda the point though.  We stopped reading because we think it largely sucks.  So if it didn't suck anymore, we'd likely pick it up again.


I realize that page count is limited, but not so limited that there must be a singular focus in the magazine.  I think the complaint 'from a few years ago' is better summarized as "Tell us about the people who made the game, not just the people who sold it to us."  But "not just," doesn't mean exclude everyone except developers.  Well, unless your magazine was explicitely about the making of those games.  Even then different viewpoints doesn't necessarily hurt.

Though I've not checked out your site just yet.  Lemme go do that now.

"It's been widely reported that EA has long lobbied the NFL to auction off exclusive rights.  There's more than enough blame to go around for everyone."

Only one person owned the rights, the NFL, so only one entity is to blame. Unless we find that EA used extortion tactics to steal the license, it was a voluntary sale. So to criticize EA for acquiring something offered to them for sale-regardless of their own pressure-is dubious.

(And where is the outrage that Lucas only does Star Wars, or that the WWE is only with THQ, etc. Most IP has a single licensee; why would sports be any different, aside from the obvious, "It's not always been this way?")

It sucks for consumers, sure. So don't buy the next Madden and keep playing ESPN 2K5. Football won't change that much, and all the people that bitch about "bah, same game as the last one... this is barely worth the $50 I pay every year!" can stop bitching.

"Well, that's kinda the point though.  We stopped reading because we think it largely sucks.  So if it didn't suck anymore, we'd likely pick it up again."

How would you tell if it still sucked or not?

Almost every "this is what print should do" article drives me a little batty because it's generally what we've been trying to do-with varying levels of success-for the last 4-5 years. Yet we get no credit and almost zero reader interest in those types of pieces. We're not perfect, some of our stuff doesn't work, but we've tried.

Yet the complaints about what we're not doing-yet have been trying to do for years-get more frequent and the push to dumb us down gets stronger, because... well, dumb works. Because you don't "pick it up again."

"I realize that page count is limited, but not so limited that there must be a singular focus in the magazine. "

Sure, but we also have budgets. If I'm going to spend $1000-$2000 for a feature story, or spend weeks tying to get a CEO on the phone, it had better be worth the time and effort.

But here's the kicker: the CEO of a major company won't say anything interesting in a consumer magazine.

"Though I've not checked out your site just yet."

There's nothing really on our website. We're a print magazine.

The old "Next Generation" magazine was absolutely awesome as a serious gaming magazine. It's the only gaming mag I ever had a subscription to. Their covers looked more adult than other magazines, they had interesting interviews (I still remember an interview with Bill Gates they did) -- heck they even had a regular Chris Crawford column on game design.

They started their decline when they started focusing more on reviews and cheat codes, when they cheapened the whole feel of the magazine to make it closer to other ones (and lost the only reason why I picked that magazine rather than anoter). I don't know if they made these changes because they were in financial troubles and wanted to become more mainstream if it's these changes that got them in troubles.

"I don't know if they made these changes because they were in financial troubles and wanted to become more mainstream if it's these changes that got them in troubles."

As far as I know, it was an expensive magazine to produce, and the circulation wasn't there to support it.

By the way, its covers didn't look any more "adult" than anyone else's. It just used better paper stock with a matte finish. They looked fab (and again, were expensive), but used the same game characters, guys with guns, etc. that everyone else did.

NextGen did some really great features, but everyone forgets the hype-y previews that almost always ended with some variant of, "If this pulls together, it'll be really special." Or how they grapsed on to certain people-particularly Dave Perry-like they were the second coming. You might remember the Bill Gates interview, but what about them dubbing Messiah the messiah?

They did a lot of industry interviews, and at times resembled a trade magazine more than a consumer one. And therein lies the problem; consumers, in general, don't really care about anything but the games.

And where is the great movie magazine that covers these kinds of topics? How about for the music industry? Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, Premiere, Spin, etc., mostly focus on celebrities and musicians, and rarely cover the "biz" itself.

"6) Why did LucasArts cancel Sam and Max?"

most sites that i've looked at about this have the same god damn crap than the last, even the scumm bar has crap like it.

it wasn't just sam and max they canceled, there was a little game called full throttle 2 as well, no one seems to remember this.

The only games lucasarts will be willing to license are star wars games, or anything that they can strap the star wars logo onto, and maybe even get a profit.

I saw and played Full Throttle 2, and am thankful it was canceled. It looked pretty bad.

Maybe that's why it and S&M were canceled.  Maybe they both stinked.

Nah, Steve Purcell himself said it was turning out very well.

Quote: "2) Who is really playing games?  Do some research.  We keep hearing games aren't just for kids, adults play them too.  I have no adult friends that aren't in the game industry that play games.  None.  So is this a myth?  Expose it.  Talk to adults that do play games.  Who are they?  Talk to adults that don't play games.  Why not? "

Ron, I think your pool of friends is not a good indicator of who really is playing videogames today. And the press is not the best place to look for statistical research, either.

The Entertainment Software Association is an industry body run with our industry's money and conducts this type of research every year. The results are public and the latest can be downloaded from the website.

FYI: the average videogames player in 2004 was 29 years old.


http://www.theesa.com/pressroom.html

Yeah, I've seen all the stats, and I just don't buy it.  Remember, GWB got more votes that any other elected president in history, but that really fails to tell the whole story (Kerry also got more votes than any other past elected president).

I'm willing to believe that the vast majority of game players are in their early or late twenties, but there are a hell of a lot of people in their 30's, 40's and above (we won't even get into men vs. women, which is a whole different set of juggling stats).  Movies have no age range, everyone goes to movies and movies are made for all sorts of demographics (some more profitable then others, granted).  Games are made for only a few.

I just think there is an interesting story here...

The story...
Well I'm 30 and still a gamer, and that's the story - being it still. Like the mags, most games seem to be targeted at adolescents.
The industry may "mature" in terms of production cycles and money involved - but not in term of content.
Male heroes are the cliché of (male) teenage power fantasies - be it the tough guy with a gun that just grunts taking bullets or the warrior with Eternium armor plus 10 purging giblin societies living peacefully in their dungeon. Female heroes or "maids in distress" are clothed in sexual-fantasized nothings counting as "armor" - pre-adult images of ecchi dreams.
Playing an evil character in games that allow this is utterly silly - I'm killing the good guys instead of the bad ones or demanding money for saving the lost children - that's not evil, just bad behavior. Being evil is about creativity - "Good Omens" anyone? (where the demon Crowley disabled the cellphone network of London for a couple of hour and the "classic demons" wouldn't understand that this lead to more suffering, frustration, anger and "evil" than seducung one catholic priest into sex).
And the repetition... I can see why younger people would like HL2 - for unexperienced gamers it might be stunning. For me it's a nicely painted tunnel of boredom with a few gimmicks. Most of my friends (in my age or a few years less) are slowly quitting gaming except for the occasional Q3A match, not for timing reasons (although family, jobs etc. are certainly an issue) but for boredom.
Yearly updates of the same old games with new graphics are great for the teenage crowd: "Look, it's like my favourite game, but it looks sooo muuuch better!". When you've gone through the cycle a couple of times you start to lose interest. I'm talking about getting tired saving the world - with the same means, the same enemies, the same traitor, the same setting, the same weapons, the same control scheme, the same ... anything but tech stuff that was only dreamed of a year ago.
And finally - where is adult content? Where is the love story not reduced to a few lines of dialog between leveling (NWN), where is the truly broken hero that decides not to save the world - because it couldn't get worse, alien invasion or not. Where is the Metropolis, the Apocalypse Now!, the Blade Runner - where are games that ask questions, that are truly art, not just artwork. There are a few - Grim Fandango, Planescape: Torment, Beyond Good and Evil maybe (haven't tried that one yet).

It's the themes, the content, the repetition that limit the market of games. Making games for adults would surely pose a risk at first - teenage targeted mags would devour it and serious paper (feutillon) would at first ignore it - but finally it would pay out for everyone - the industry not losing their customers at their end-twenties, the press with possibilites for gaming mags targeted at "older gamers" and us oldies with games that are less - shallow and immature.

Er, attitudes like this are the reason no one bothers targeting adults. You're so jaded and elitist that you've already made up your mind about everything. You're missing out on some pretty good entertainment out there by erecting your wall of hate.

Nice dig that only kids would think Half-Life 2 is good, though. This is one adult who can still appreciate the amount of skill Valve shows versus every other maker of 3D shooters.

Stastically, the people most likely to play games the most are people up to about 30. Beyond that, family and work intrudes. People over 30 might play games in enough quantity to skew the stats, but they have less time and less interest in searching for quality. There are plenty they could play, but younger gamers are obsessive. They want everything.

People into music are like this too. We'd like to think music sucks today... if we're over 30. But our 20 year old self would probably be finding plenty of stuff to listen to.

(And before someone of Generation Jaded steps in and say, "I'm 20 and I think everything sucks," I said the same thing when I was 20. Everything did suck; everything always sucks. Or at least 95% of everything. Whether or not you want to seek out that 5% changes as you get older.)

er, i don`t think this person was being as "elitist" as you make them out to be.  the 'story', which often goes untold, explains a reason they've become it.  he had some good points.  admittedly the story doesn't always have to seem so "jaded", but still.
makes me wonder if you're not a republican, steve.  : )

do you want the entire table to yourself?
haha

Well, there is a Blade Runner game...

"Movies have no age range, everyone goes to movies and movies are made for all sorts of demographics (some more profitable then others, granted)."

I don't think this is true anymore. The big box office movies of the 70s were Chinatown and The Godfather. Today it's Shrek 2 and Spider-Man 2.

After Star Wars (or some would say, Jaws), movies started being targeted more at 13-21 year olds, because they go to more movies. And they go see movies more than once. Content is cut out of most movies to get a PG-13 for a reason.

Serious "adult" movies are getting more and more infrequent, and are harder to find at theaters, because adults don't go see them. "I'll wait for the DVD" they say. Or they can't get a sitter. Or they find something else to do.

True, but that is not all that gets made.  If you look at the top box-office for this week, you see Million Dollar Baby, The Aviator and Sideways.  


Very very true, I am one of those people, but what might be more accurate is that going to the movies is a younger activity, and watching at home is getting older, but I still maintain that movies (no matter where they are watched) have a much more diverse age range then games.

"True, but that is not all that gets made.  If you look at the top box-office for this week, you see Million Dollar Baby, The Aviator and Sideways."

True, but these are unique cases, with issues of timing (winter versus spring/summer) and award buzz. Hotel Rwanda isn't getting big box office, to use another example. And my favorite movie of 2004, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, barely topped $30 million at the box office.

Also, The Aviator has the "Leo" factor; Titanic wouldn't have been considered a teen movie. (And it's rated PG-13, so teens can see it.)

Movies do have a diverse age rage, absolutely. But adults are risking the movie biz completely ignoring them if they don't get their asses into the theater from time-to-time to see what they like. Imagine being a serious movie buff living in a town that doesn't have an art theater?

Another reason to hate George Lucas.

It's also worth point out there is big difference between the "average video game player is 29" and "average 29 year is a video game player".  The two figures could be vastly different.

Why did LucasArts cancel Sam and Max?  Yeah, we all read the press release, no need to reprint it.  Get the real scoop.  It's probably juicy.


There seems to be some story left untold, isn't there? ;-P I'm from Germany and I can't really tell what's going on overseas, but I think the gaming press here is overall consisting of the same, dull content. It is all just the mirror of an industry that went downhill when the men in suits stepped in to demand their share of profits.

Speaking about all that independent stuff: We have it in every aspect of media. Music, movies, etc. But there are labels and distributors that support the small things. From time to time tiny movies like "Lost in translation" get big at the Oscars. It's nice to see that happen. But this never happened to gaming once. Why? It's all about the big publishers seaking out for their next lackluster blockbuster. Independent isn't really distributed in terms of video games. That is.. if independent does even exist on the same level in gaming as it does compared to in music or movies at all.. which it doesn't. Definitely doesn't. I'm not talking about quantity here.

There might be millions of games in the making that no one will ever hear of.  I'm talking about the budget and distributor/publisher issue. There's yet no market established. Looking at the state of the industry, with publishers getting fewer and fewer and rising production costs there probably won't ever be. Gaming as an art form? Never. Ever. :(

Ron, it's nice to know that there are developers that keep their enthusiasm and idealism in times where it's all about the fast and the furious thingy. Big, loud, fast and unbelievably dull at times.  At least from time to time we're still presented with a gleam of hope. Every once in a while there is a game that is actually worthwile. Yes, there is. Keep the spirit of gaming alive. :-)

It's a shame that valid general criticism of the sorry state of game journalism is buried beneath an avalanche of righteous advice by Annoyed of GrumpyG.com. Your list sounds like a roadmap for a personal vendetta, with games journalists as hitmen in the name of Ron on the heels of Everything That Is Wrong in the biz.

Games journalism as it prevails today is all about games and little about journalism, true and lamentable, but there's little salvation in muckracking for editors that can't (or won't) even rake through game publishers' daily PR fallout. According to your audience analysis, it would be pearls before swine anyway, wouldn't it?

Magazines and their writers need to maintain (or in many cases: establish) a fundamental critical distance to their subject. That's key to a grown-up approach to the subject, key to serious journalism and inquisitive research, and certainly more beneficial than smelling a rat in every corner.

BTW, out of professional pride, I strongly contradict the guy in the last post who wrote that German games magazines are dull. They're not. In fact, they are great. :)

OFF TOPIC WARNING Sorry, guys.

Hey, Grumpy, I'm glad that you're not the ugliest tomato ever made anymore... I like the new banner on the top of the page, but where is the side background that said "Grumpy Gamer"?  That one was cool, too!

back to movies

nowadays we have good movies being made and with decent profit, davids (cronenberg and lynch), ms. coppola, cohen bros., and some guy from korea (sangsoo). anyway, they are cheaper movies so it's easier to make them payoff. it makes one think about roger corman making cheap movies and ALWAYS profiting and helping coppola (senior) and jack nicholson start in the bussiness.

i wonder if that may be the future, allied with INDEPENDENT (intelligent) PRESS that help these B-Games get known and online distribution. well, daydreaming about a better outcome to the industry.

now it looks like a vicious circle of press glorifying BIG releases that are stupid and these titles making profit and big companies investing their money on what profits. i just hope they end up starving players in a way they will worship anything new, no matter how small or crazy. quoting jeff goldblum: "nature is creative; it will find a way".

"i wonder if that may be the future, allied with INDEPENDENT (intelligent) PRESS that help these B-Games get known and online distribution. well, daydreaming about a better outcome to the industry."

This would work great if there truly was a sizable audience for INDEPENDENT (intelligent) GAMES.

How many times does this need to be said: Games are totally different from movies. An independent movie can have amazing writing, characters, etc. The only thing that separates those indies from Hollywood films is the budget (unless you want effects, as you don't see many indie Matrix-style extravaganzas). So indies focus on what they can do: writing, characters, plot, edgier topics, etc., none of which cost money.

Unless gamers are willing to forgo their favorite genres, you won't see many indie MMOs that compete with World of WarCraft, or RTS games that compete with Age of Empires, or 3D shooters that compete with Half-Life 2.

Fine, you may say, those genres are tired, the games suck, whatever. But despite what people may say, about wanting all of these wildly original indie games, they rarely put their money where their fingers are. (Ewww.) Indie games aren't more successful because gamers haven't shown much interest in low production values, or "out of the box" games.

And it's good to see more elitism. People that like regular games and magazines=dumb. My particularly dumb magazine has been showcasing indie games for years, and even has a regular column on them that starts with our next issue. Thanks for not noticing, heh.

Ah, see, here is the problem.  It's not about gamers forgoing their favorite genres, it's about getting new gamers.  Hardcore gamers are interested in certain aspect of games, mainly graphics.  If the games don't deliver that, then the game "sucks".  I think there are a hell of a lot more people in the world that would be playing games (that don't care about graphics) if games were being made for them, but they aren't.  Games are hard, violent, time-consuming and inaccessible to players that are not well versed in the hard-core culture.  The more that games like HL2, Doom3, Halo2, GTA, etc are successful, the more publishers and developers feed the death spiral, and the less accessible games become.  

I am not interested in hardcore gamers playing my game, I'm interested in everyone else playing my game.

But in the end, maybe there is nothing but the hardcore gamer, maybe that really is the whole market, all it will ever be and can be.  If that is the case, we will always be a nitch market that people transition through on their way from being a kid to becoming an adult.

"But in the end, maybe there is nothing but the hardcore gamer, maybe that really is the whole market, all it will ever be and can be.  If that is the case, we will always be a nitch market that people transition through on their way from being a kid to becoming an adult."

It's not a niche when people are spending billions of dollars a year. It just may remain that size, and vary only when the population of said age group varies.

Anyway, I suspect this is really the case. Maybe Popcap reaches this non-gamer audience better than anyone, but are those people always looking for other Popcap-like games, or are they perfectly content with Bejeweled?

A few months ago, there was a really interesting point in Ken Levine's column in my magazine. It was actually Ken channeling another employee's visit to Korea. He said that Koreans, in general, weren't gamers at all. They were Starcraft players. Or Lineage players. They had no interest in any other game whatsoever.

Might the non-hardcore fall into that category as well? They might want a few games that remind them of boardgames they loved, or let them trade stocks, but that's all they're really interested in. Trying to get them to try, much less buy, something else might require some cultural zeitgeist that's out of any developer's control. In other words, you just have to get lucky.

Steve,

You're dead right with this one. I noticed a definite trend starting in '98-'99 where the game audience was starting to grow fantastically, but many of the players were only interested in specific games. This made no sense to me, since my gaming was like a woman with a shoe shopping addiction: I wanted it all.

I think one of the first games that really showcased this phenomenon for me, first hand, was Tribes. I knew MANY people who only played Tribes and had no desire to move on to any other games. However, the best example that I can think of is definitely Counter-Strike. There was a long period of time, and it's still very prominent, where many gamers who considered themselves hardcore ONLY played C-Strike. Many games were marketed towards this audience in an attempt to lure them away but most were greatly unsuccessful. Just looking at GameSpy server stats at any given time of the day pretty much proves that... I think there's a lesson to be learned in this, but I don't know exactly what it is.

I think it might have something to do fact that the game industry is WAY behind the rest of the software development industry, in terms of marketing and also integrating marketing into the development process. Many development studios still rely on external marketing teams from publishers to do the marketing work, and a shoddy and thin line of communication connecting the two teams... (The producer from the game studio talks to the producer at the publisher, who then talks to the marketing team.) Hardly and effective way to communicate the product properly to the people who actually have the power to create some real, hopefully mainstream, buzz. I think that failing to embrace new and effective development methodologies is one of the largest problems in this industry.

(This next segment gets a bit rambly... sorry)

I must disagree that there's no sizable market for indie games. I think you have valid points, but you're overall tone seems a bit too cynical. Indie Games can sometimes have the largest audiences in the world: Counter-Strike. It's possible for a game made independently to survive, but it actually has to be a good game. I also believe that adventure games can definitely sell well and survive, but it has to be a good game. Also, the current retail business model spells nothing but certain death for independent developers, so it should always be avoided.

There's many reasons for this: the first few weeks of sales often determines whether or not a game is/will be successful, for retail. For independent games that don't have millions of dollars for marketing, the first few weeks will never garner successful sales. Instead, success is measured in sales over a longer period of time, long enough to generate word of mouth. If Counter-Strike was sold in stores in its first release, it would have been a failure and we wouldn't be playing it right now. Instead, it slowly trickled until it reached a tipping point and exploded. This is the essence of distribution and marketing for indie games. (A good book: The Tipping Point

I think there are plenty of examples that prove that indie games don't necessarily need the best graphics to become wildly popular. It helps, but it isn't necessarily fundamental to success. Rather, I think that if an independent game is good enough, then it can be a success. I also think that as time goes by, game creation toolsets/software/etc will become easier to use and more readily available, so that independent games are more viable within an online driven market.

I must admit, I'm just being optimistic. If I acquiesce to the possibility of EA absorbing everything in the gaming world and everything sucking for the rest of eternity, then I might as well give up now. But I'm stubborn.

PS: I finally got a subscriptiong to your mag. I really do enjoy it, but mainly for the three finger salute editorials.

Counter-strike is a fascinating example, but its success is entirely bootstrapped on the success of a huge-budget commercial game. With no Half-Life, there'd be no Counter-strike.

Indie game development and mod making can't really be compared, since you're talking about "pay" versus "free." Any free game or mod should, in theory, be way more popular a commercial product. (Hence websites can get millions in traffic versus magazines getting thousands of readers.) Of course the value of an audience should be taken into account; a person that plays mods isn't someone who may be down for that whole "buying" games thing, at least beyond their initial purchase.

Mod making and indie games are two really different beasts and I suppose that Counter-Strike was perhaps a poor example.

However, the main thing that Half-Life provided for Counter-Strike was an engine to use. A lot of work still had to go into the development of the game. I personally wonder where Valve is going to go with their Steam system and what they plan on doing with mod making. I also wonder how much of an impact it all may make on the indie game development scene. If an indie developer uses a pre-existing engine (such as Source) to make a game and then distributes their game online through a streaming distribution network, would that take mod-making to the level of indie game development?

What about the mod Gunman Chronicles? Originally it was a Quake 2 mod and  then eventually became a commercial game based on the Half-Life versiong of the Quake 2 engine. I consider Gunman Chronicles an indie game, personally... (Of course, it may not be the best example, since Rewolf doesn't exist anymore...)

I think there are enough passionate people out there who want to make great games for a living, independently. The two biggest problems are finding a cheap way to make them and then finding a channel through which to distribute them and make money. Valve is in an ideal position to solve both those problems... And make a boatload of money in the process, of course.

Basically, I'm just giving a prediction that what we call mod making now may very well become the indie game development of the future. We've seen the success that can come from harnessing and modifying the technology of successful games. We've yet to see what this can do as a real business venture... All it would take is a company being open to sharing their technology with indie developers. (Of course, that opens a whole new can of worms... Creating new publishing beasts all over again.)

But, without that kind of assistance and access to technology, I'd have to agree with your original assertion: independent game development is pretty much screwed. Indie devs can make games like Bejewled, sure, but making truly impressive games with more than just puzzle style gameplay - and then making money off of them -  is simply not going to emerge from low budget indie teams, very often.

I don't know if I think that mod players aren't down for the whole "buying" thing. I think a lot of mod players are simply looking for new and unique forms of gameplay, which you often can't find from commercial game developers.

All the points made in the original blog post are interesting. Partly because I used to work for a UK videogame magazine. Most of the points are consistent with the sort of things that we used to try to do, and a couple are specifically identical to features that we either tried to run or did run. However, if you think this sort of thing is a panacea, unfortunately you're misguided.
For a start these sorts of features used to upset readers because they didn't like finding out anything nasty about videogames and the way they're made/distributed etc.. But more importantly, these sorts of features just provoke the ire of advertisers, and consequently make the production of every issue a big fight with your publishers, who'd rather you were producing an advertising rag-sheet with a high cover price to offset dwindling sales (heck, stick a cheaply put together demo disc on the cover and people will still buy the thing).

So indies focus on what they can do: writing, characters, plot, edgier topics, etc., none of which cost money.

That's pretty much all of the points which are almost totally missing in almost every single game. Because most concepts get mutila.. erm cut by publishers to fit the broadest audience possible right from the start. What's the result of trying too damn hard to reach the broadest audience possible? The color grey.  An endless amount of grey coloured boredom. The last game from a big studio I remember being really rich in terms of writing and all that stuff was Interplay's / Black Isle's "Planescape:Torment". Unfortunately it didn't sell all that well. And even that got cut during development as Interplay said: "No, you can't do that. It won't sell that way." It didn't matter. It still was a breath of fresh air that got barely noticed.  "Thief"? "System Shock"? "Grim Fandango?" Whenever a bigger gaming company truly tried to help the childish gaming market to finally grow up, they got a seriously smash in their face. Sad. Terribly sad. But what do I know... I've never been in developer's hell myself. Or even close. For that matter. :)


Unfortunately rather slow, story driven or complex games like RPGs and adventures are moving farther and farther away from the market. Studios get shut down, publishers refuse to give promising projects a try. Even your typical strategy game is all about the action. Seems to be that gamers like me are belonging to a dying breed. Oh well it's fine. It's fall about entertainment and fun. Go for the BANG. Lose the content. Fuck "Alien!". We want "Independence Day!" Who cares? For example: I'm still wondering who bought all those millions of "Baldur's Gate" copies the first time around. Where are all those people now? It's only like six years in between from back then to now. What the heck...?!

I agree with everything in the original piost, but it should also count for the games websites like, gamespy. I mean they had for weeks only WoW this, WoW that on their main page, the game began to sicken me even before I ever played it, I mean so much other intrsting things happend, why only about WoW and why on the main page.

Furthermore, they should warn people about bugs and other stuff, if not in the review then later, they just have to go to the websites of the game and see the topics, I mean here in holland almost all the BG&E game copies distributed by UBISOFT were faulty and could not be installed, and they never warned anyone, and even worse the chain stores knew of this and they still keep selling it, while at the same time they have a no return policy, the same thing with XIII, and POP:SOT and POP:WW, they didn't have faulthy CD's but certainly many bugs that made the game in certain cases unplayable.  And then vampire: bloodlines.

I mean I have sent so much letters to mags and sites, but they never ever warned the gamers of this, instead every time I see some stupid mail from a 12year old that can't even spel, the gamemags should warns us and punish those stores and developers/publishers that constantly do this.

Ooh and then the hypcracy, they constantly bitch about system requirments for the new graphics, yet only give good graphics scores to games that have techincally good graphics, art in a game is way more important then the ability to show shiny surfaces.

Very interesting conversation, here.

First, hi Steve! Thanks again for printing my Retro Lament in your mag.

Now, on to the topic:

I'm an antediluvian gamer (going back to the Atari VCS and Apple ][+) who's had a ringside seat for the whole thing. Having witnessed  the gaming scene emerge, form and evolve, I can say without fear of contradiction that it is getting dumber.

Awhile back on GEnie (remember that?), Scorpia (remember her?) hosted a head-knocking over what was happening with gamers and how things had changed from the early years.

The case made by myself, Dale Roethlisberger and others was that computer gaming arose from the artistic, intellectual and entertainment interests of three identifiable groups:

(1) Grognards - traditional wargamers who saw computers as a newer (and possibly better) way to enact military simulations. This category also includes actual military people with a professional interest in computers.

(2) Roleplayers - the D&D version of the above group. Again, they looked to computers as a better way to do what they were already doing. Avid readers of fantasy and sci/fi fall into this group as well.

(3) Hackers - unlike the first two, these were people inherently interested in computers, not for the assistance computers might give them in other activities. For them, the computer WAS the game.

There are subgroups, of course; I admit I'm painting with broad strokes. But this is certainly how I remember it... and I was there. :)

Note that all three pursuits were somewhat socially marginalized - as opposed to hobbies like cars, popular movies, rock music, etc. This made them largely immune to the lowest-common-denominator enstupidation of mass culture.

Also, to put it bluntly, these were (and are) "smart" hobbies. I'm not saying your average D&D group or computer club of the late '70s / early '80s was a meeting of Nobel laureates; only that people who are voracious readers, keen programmers, vivid conceptualizers and good abstract thinkers do need a certain amount of mental bandwidth to carry out those tasks. Generally speaking, morons and vulgarians cannot play Squad Leader, learn C++ or close their eyes and vividly imagine a fantasy otherworld. It's just beyond them.

The relevance of this to gaming mags is that the gaming press arose, at first, from the ranks of gamers themselves. Since nobody else was doing it, gamers did it, and the early mags (not just for games, but general-interest computing mags) were populated by people solidly on the right side of the IQ bell curve. On the whole, they were also quite literate, being avid readers of mythology, military history and technology.

(Many were also quite... odd, as anyone who frequented a gaming or software store in the early days could tell you. The "geek" stereotype was more true than not. :) )

Over time, as gaming moved in from the periphery towards the center stage of pop culture, the enstupidation took hold. It wasn't some nefarious plot; this is just how things work.

It's the old "shallow and wide" vs "deep and narrow" phenomenon we see in pretty much everything. (Look at comedy: For every one person who enjoys a dry witticism, there are dozens who guffaw when Howard Stern belches on the radio.)

In a distant past issue of CGW, there was a story told about Dani Bunten's interest in remaking M.U.L.E. for a newer generation of gamers.

Sure, she was told by publishers, but only if we add combat. It won't sell these days without guns and stuff.

It's an economics game, not a combat game, she replied. The publishers insisted, and she walked away from it.

The thing is, the publishers were probably right.

That's why gaming mags are the way they are. They've changed because gamers have. Whereas once you could write smart copy and not rely on the cringe-inducing spectacle of editors in their mid-20s talking like 12 yr olds to seem "cool" to their readership, now such - pardon the term - maturity requires a conscious, almost defiant effort.

I applaud those gaming sites and mags - like CGM - that try to hold the line against the "k00l d00dz" moron-hivemind that has been gaining ground since (at least) the early '90s.

Still, I can't help but feel like a soldier of Byzantium watching the Turkish cannon roll forwards, wondering how long the walls can possibly last.

They were right if they are only willing to publish games that cost millions and will sell millions, which gets to the core of my argument with publishers these days.  They are only interested in home-run hits, nothing else.

M.U.L.E. I.I. could have been a great game that didn't cost millions to make, but sold well and made a good profit.

This is the line of thinking I don't get. If you can make a series of games that make modest profits, it will fund more blockbusters. And it'll be safe.

And what if one of those modestly-budgeted games breaks out, a la RollerCoaster Tycoon? That's a whole lotta profit.

I wish there could be more commercial games that only need to move 50,000-100,000 copies to be successful. If that was the case, we'd see more variety.

Through the bottom line numbers, I think publishers may be inclined to think that big budget games are the best aproach...

And, honestly, can we blame them?

I agree, it might be a bad line of thinking, but I wonder if we may have painted ourselves in a corner in this regard...  50-100k are really small sales numbers for almost any product, when you talk about retail distribution and also keep in mind personell costs...  50k being REALLY small.

When looking at the numbers, I might think that making a low budget game and planning for only 50k-100k worth of sales is perhaps just as risky, in the end, as making a big budget game. In a way, it may be perceived as more risky. If you fall short of your numbers by just a little bit, you've just nailed the red line. Bigger numbers give more wiggle room... Plus, the public have been conditioned to look for and buy big budget titles. Or maybe it's the other way around: the public wants the titles and has conditioned the publishers.

I hate being the devil's advocate in this one. Please prove this conjecture wrong... (I'm like a kid sitting in a classroom. You should really charge money for your wisdom, guys.)

I wholeheartedly agree (from personal experience) that publishers are only interested in games that cost millions to sell millions. But I wonder if that's partly to do with scale. Maybe it's the case that a lot of publishers now are either huge, in which case it costs them proportionately more to publish small-scale titles simply because a it's difficult to vary a lot of the internal processes according to the size of the game; or they're small, in which case a poorly performing small-scale game is just as likely to cripple them as a poorly performing larger-scale game, so they opt for the greater potential rewards of larger-scale titles.

There is some real truth to this.  Large companies are not equipped to deal with smaller games.   The normal human competitive nature of large companies ensure that things like this won't survive.  Which is why I think they should take a page from Hollywood on this.  

If I was the king-god-ruler of EA, I would create a separate publishing studio and it's sole charter would be to find smaller, lower budget games and bring them to market.  They would be housed in a different building (if not city) and have their own budget, and most important, their own marketing staff.  

As long as they remained profitable, they would be a great seeding arm for the larger company, looking out for new developer talent and ideas.

Well, maybe there's a vicious cycle at work:

Gogsoft takes a chance and commits huge resources to a game that succeeds wildly. This scares their closest rival, Magog Games, into thinking "We've got to knock it out of the park with our next title, or else Gogsoft will eat our lunch."

So MG approves some humungous project and loudly crows about it. The other companies get nervous and follow suit. They might have missed the gold ring this time, but no way are they going to miss the next one.

Of course, with so much money and corporate ego on the line (not to mention the jobs of key decision-makers), how likely is it that ANYONE is going to take real creative chances? No one wants to hear about an unconventional game with "respectable" profits - even if it might open up a whole new genre - when they're trying for a world-beater.

HA!  FUNNY!

I wasn't aware that Middle Earth had game companies.

Gog and Magog are from The Bible, not The Lord of the Rings. Elementary mythology is a must for any RPG fan!

Gaming should be introduced into media-studies courses, and treated the same way as other 'pop' culture artifacts, and an academic, critical view be taken of them, both in terms of form and content, and in other, less polarised ways.

Once this happens, people with real interest in games can actually develop a critical language to discuss them properly, in their own terms, and perhaps also bring a wider cultural understanding to both their development and critique.

Scott McCloud has been ploughing a similar furrow in the feild of comics, another marginalised medium.

They were right if they are only willing to publish games that cost millions and will sell millions, which gets to the core of my argument with publishers these days.  They are only interested in home-run hits, nothing else.


That could be probably even worse in the US than it is over here in Germany. e.g. We have a publisher (dtp) that picks up interesting  foreign adventure projects (yeah, there are still quite many of them in Europe these days) then doing German voice over castings of very high quality for the foreign ones. It didn't get them THE big home-run hit except maybe for "Runaway", but their titles actually sell very well.

As far as I know the publisher for Autumn Moon Entertainment's upcoming  "A vampyre story" - I have a strange feeling you already heard about that one ;) - is also located in Germany. When the big players don't have the interest to do these kind of things, there is at least a good chance for small companies to fill the gap. Unfortunately there aren't too many of them.

Poor Sam & Max 2. And all the dialogue voice recordings had already been finished! Bill Farmer did Sam again, but I can't remember if Nick Jameson did Max or not. I know I'd kill for those tapes, though.

Yes, Jameson reprised his role as well.

Hello.

Just stopped by and wanted to say that I've made similar (not in all points, but in many) experiences like described in the initial article.

My own articles on that are in German, though, and since nobody understands that language it doesn't make much sense posting them here, although they might be of interest here.

Basically it's about a sort of "decadence" in  gaming mags. They have the best hardware, have seen the best (and worst) games in years, I think that leaves its traces. Gaming mags here in Germany have quite a high influence (too much for my own taste). An good example is the way Sacred evolved : Ascaron bought the remains of the classic C-RPG "Armalion" (based on the German RPG system "The Dark Eye") (Ikarion, the dveloper, went bancrupt because no publisher wanted to support it) and continued making a full-blown C-RPG out of it.
I am a long time member of the communities around Armalion & Sacred there, so my view is unique : I have actually seen a shift in developing that game from the day the first gming mags began comparing it to BLizzard's action-RPGs. I share this few with the few who remained from the early Armalion days, but we are only five or so, so no-one could tell anymore. From that day on, Ascaron decided to make an Action-RPG out of it. This sounds quite weird, but this is how it's happened. They actually changed the development of an full-blown RPG into an Action-RPG, because all of the German gaming mags began comparing it with Blizzard's games. "Hey !" , they must've thought, "this is a great idea ! An Action-RPG needs less time and dvelopment and provides more money !" The rest is history.

I've clearly seen a shift towards "massmarkets" and "Action" as general themes, supported by the markting of the publishers ("Well, Blizzard could make it, why couldn't you make it") who tend to think rather of their income, not of the pleasureof the gamer. Economy rules.

Likesomeone posted in a discussion : „Innovation is rather being punished by the editors.“ The Editors cannot see an innovative game or if they see it, they don’t support it good enough. They have to test so many games that they might prefer - so I think - games which are easy to access and are not deep, becauuse that needs time and money. Innovation is not always „easily accessible“ and therefore only a hindrance.

But this whole thing goes even deeper :


We have a shift in the age of customers. Younger customers are there, spending lots of money, wanting games which don't need deep thinking. Action. I fear that the whole gaming industry is currently developing only for these younger customers, but I'm not sure at all, because I'm no scientist. I don't have the ultimate truth or answer.

But that goes in line with a general degradation of culture. Look at the PISA study. Cheap TV programs, superflous magazines, all this adds to a general theme of ... suprficial culture. Big Brother, sit-coms, Superstar, these TV programmes are everywhere. What you won't find are deep cultural things like Philosophy, Archaeology, History, such things, because they need thinking and are thought-provoking. They are only shown late at night, when only a minority looks at the TV.

To sum it up, I see all this "action" and "mass market" phenomenom rather as an general expression of our current culture.

Adventures and deep RPGs are no longer wanted, because they

- need deep thinking (riddles)
- therefore cannot reach the "mass market"
- need longer development time
- need more money for development  (Blizzard showed it how to develop a game that generates a big income with dated graphics, so Publishers might expect that from future games, too)
- and other points.

That’s more or less my point of view, and a rather pessimistic one.

Alrik.

P.S. : If there are some a’s and e’s missing : I have a keyboard that is currently quite stubbborn towards these two letters ...

This thing is basically true with the wargaming community.  The wargaming community is filled with old 'grognards' who love picking out every last detail in the sytem and want every game to fall into the same real hexes, CRTs, turn-based deal..

I just thought I'd chime in and say that I tried, damn hard, to get the scoop on Sam & Max 2, but every employee and ex-employee who knows anything is scared to death of speaking out against Lucas. It's terrifying and weird.

in britain (lovely country), the gaming press is actually quite good, our PC gamer is full of important issues, we have a Devil's advocate, which talks about big issues like violence and sex in the gaming world, and it also reports of what is going on in the gaming industry, like if developers are pratically exhausting themselves out and if game testers are unhealthy.
the alos reported on the recent issues people have with steam and half life and challenged Valve to their say, they alos have a chapter called extra life, that reviews and previews mods and comments on other stuff like the stuff tht happens in MMO's and machinima They belive in preserving games and they do that very well.
I mentioned devil's advocate before, well if doesn't just apply to usual stuff like violence, it also advises on maing games, it did an interesting feature on AI, asking whether making AI perfect would mean that there is no people left, it said people make mistakes and get worried, and if developers were to incorparte that in their games then it would be a great achivment.
It is also very much into making games into the mainstream, and suggests reasons for doing so, it suggested going as far as scrapping film games becos that suggests that games are in the film industrys shadow, wanting to be popular, but failing.
PC gamer Uk also takes very god care of it's readers, some of the letters on the letter's page is truly well thought out, and raises some good points, it is also met with good response from the PC gamer team.
Overall PC gamer in britain is a great magazine, it is funny, intelligent, the reviews are great and the demo disk is packed with tools you can use.
I dunno if the USA mag is like this, but if it is, i dunno what you are complaining about.

Drunky,

Night and day, mate, night and day.

The US "PC Gamer" is fishwrap. It is perhaps THE most ethically and professionally compromised of all the computer game mags. It's snowjob reviews are legendary - except for designated "whipping boy" titles which are trashed to give the appearance of even-handedness. It has been caught red-handed on multiple occasions reviewing betaware in order to "scoop" other mags.

It is one of the worst offenders in the Preview Hype category so well described by Brett Todd in his 3-part GDReview piece "Drunks, Conspiracies and the Gaming Media."

It carries the distinction of having published perhaps the worst feature story in the history of the gaming press - the infamous "New Game Gods"   (Nov 2000) piece that deified none other than Stevie "Boobzilla" Case.

As for PC Gamer's reviews, here are my top (bottom?) three:

Winner: Trent Ward's review of OUTPOST.
Upon release, OUTPOST was so horrid as to become, almost overnight, the poster child for Brokenware. The unholy name of it evokes winces from computer gamers to this day. Yet Mr Ward awarded it a 93%, claiming the only problem was the insufficient manual! It was also a PC Gamer Editor's Choice. The mind reels.

Runner-Up: William Trotter's review of ASCENDANCY.
Fresh from authoring a strategy guide for the very same game (!), Trotter rated it much higher than any other reviewer. He gave it... wait for it... 93% and an Editor's Choice award. (Does that mean it's as good as Outpost?) To his credit, Trotter came clean and apologized after Martin Cirulis at CGW publicly called him out over the conflict of interest.
Still, it is amazing that nobody at PC Gamer intercepted this.

Dishonorable Mention
PC Gamer's long history of reviewing betaware makes it hard to choose, but I'm going with Todd "BetaLord" Vaughn's back-to-back successive reviews of RENEGADE 2 and WARHAMMER: DARK CRUSADERS, neither of which were ever released for retail sale. Wow.

Speaking of Trotter, there was also last year's Holiday Issue wherein he recommended a subscription to the game/military history magazine Command as a good gift for any wargamer.

Command was a fine mag -  I subscribed and have all 50 or so issues. The trouble is, the magazine and its publisher XTR have been gone for FIVE YEARS. How on Earth did Trotter miss this?

There are many more examples... but I think my point is made.

and what did you mean by night and day, I'm confused...

oh, i feel sorry for you's, having to have a gaming press like that, all the mags in britain are alright

You wrote:

I dunno if the USA mag is like this, but if it is, i dunno what you are complaining about.

I replied:

Night and day, mate, night and day.

...meaning the difference between the UK and US "PC Gamer" mags.

oh right, thanks lol.
the pc gamer mags sound sucky, they did a feature about other mags in Official Playstation 2 mag, all the different offical mags, and the american mag copied immensly off the UK, gfoing as far as having the same 'pop idol' take on singstar, the fact is the US could lern a lot from britain on the press front.

DM,

Actually, I forgot one of PC Gamer's more recent, ah, achievements in my earlier post...

A few issues back in CGW, Jeff Green declared that they had passed on one of those "World Exclusive" review opportunities because they insisted on playing (and rating) the game under real-world conditions and the publisher wouldn't go for it.

Good for them both -  Jeff and CGW.

PC Gamer clearly had no such qualms concerning their review of Half-Life 2, which leads makes something in their annual awards issue - published several months later -  very interesting.

The awards feature singles out Valve's "Steam" activation and authentication service for harsh criticism. As well it should, for "Steam" is exactly what it did to many gamers who couldn't play legitimately-purchased copies of HL2 until Valve got its act together.

However, if you go back and read PC Gamer's actual review of HL2, you will find not one mention of such problems or indeed that any kind of special online authentication existed. A gamer using that review as the basis for a purchasing decision would have no idea that Steam awaited him.

The reason is that PC Gamer was quite willing, indeed proud, to accept a red carpet invite to play and evaluate HL2 at Valve's digs - with the game preinstalled and ready to go (no doubt on computers fine-tuned within an inch of their silicon lives to show HL2 at its best).

Now, months later when everyone and his cat knows what a hassle Steam was, PC Gamer finally mentions it.  I guess the coast was finally clear, with the HL2 hype cycle winding down and all the advert pages having been sold.

the best thing I like about our PC gamer is how well written it is. It isn't dumbed down, and the writing is fluent, funny and interesting.
Of course, they do exclusives, but they don't give them high marks.
The recent Star Wars game got 88%, but a lot of criticism, the same happened with medal of honour, they don't hype them , neither of them scored over 90%.
PC gamer isn't just about reviews, it's about preserving games. It frequently praises monkey island, day of the tentacle, and all these all DOS games, and advertises utilties such as SCUMM bar.
It's also very much on the mod side of things, it promotes indie games and small mod groups.
it did a big thing about steam and the problems of it, and have challened valve to have their say, but with PC gamer, they are less about exclusives and more about writing a good all round magazine.
what mags have to understand that it isn't exclusives, or what's on the front that makes people buy it, it's how good the magazine is. i wudn't buy another PC mag, becos I'm so used to the writers, I've got fave writers, the editor's letter is a treat, the layout is as comforting as your bedroom, every new issue you search for the games, look in the contents, check out the DVD and read the reviews.
PC gamer is an interactive mag, it lets the readers vote for the most wanted, and then they do a chart at the front of the mag with production updates, it's very much for producer free games, independant games, they think that the producers of games are the ones holding back the originality, it comments on what gamers want, and not what the big wigs want.
And that's what really counts. The gamers.

Sounds like mag heaven to me. I don't remmber such high standards" like what you've described here. Wait, back in the mid-90s, maybe.
The worst magazine in Germany is the PC Action. If you would buy it, you would come to believe that it was written by stoned, cynical, anti-female writers. I still cannot believe that a German publisher allows such a bad magazine. I'm not reading it for a year or so now. The last time I bought it I was so shocked by its writing style that I instantly had to take and read a book about the Classic Greeks as a kind of "counter-poison". It's sister-magazine, howver, the PC Games, is fairly good, apart from the fact that it has the same problems of nearly all German mags : lack of depth.

in that feature I mentioned, with the other mags from around the world being compared to Britain's, there was one hilarios example, they copied one of our comics for being online, it starred one of the writers for playstation2 mag and her boyfriend, it was written word for translated word, at the end, you could see a speech bubble from the woman saying YAY! In the foreign mag (I think it was belgian) it said SLUT!. Hilarious.

I realize this isn't really revolutionary, but it seemed to be brought out by LEC's e3 booth RE: Sam & Max and conversations with people there.  That is, they not only didn't see the game  as economically viable, but more generally that they're no longer interested in producing games for an adult market.  They're more interested in producing action games which heavily rely on their licenses.

you have all said interesting things. check this out:


http://www.associatedcontent.com/content.cfm?content_type=article&content_type_id=4930
i just came across this article while doing research on whats up in the game world today.