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The recent death of Electronic Gaming Monthly has dispirited me somewhat. Taken as a sign of the economy, it seems a harbinger of further gaming publications dying in the future as a result of the problems afflicting all printed media. Perhaps watching Gamepro die will not be a cause for much sadness, but as gaming publications die off it cannot be interpreted as a sign of a healthy industry. For me at least, information is different in its paper format compared to computerized means.
I believe the long-defunct Sega Visions was my first experience with a gaming magazine, but its lack of newsstand support and my inability to gather enough cash as a child to pay for a subscription kept it from having many copies left in the attic. Gamepro has a lot of faults, and became uninteresting to me as I got older, but in 1993 a newsstand issue with the second half of a Sonic the Hedgehog 2 guide attracted $5 plus sales tax from me. In retrospect my fascination with Gamepro that lasted for over a year was pretty darn stupid because of the magazine's quality, but at the time I was astounded to see all this information regarding games I'd either never heard or knew nothing more than the name of. It is thanks to Gamepro that I remembered such titles as Cyborg Justice, Zombies Ate My Neighbors, and Batman: Revenge of the Joker years later when I was able to purchase them. That the games were of a highly varied quality is inconsequential (though that Batman game is pretty bad) considering that I was aware of these solely thanks to Gamepro and its often-inflated review scores. I started to think a little more about this once I rented Bubsy, to which Gamepro had in its infinite wisdom granted a 5 in Fun Factor, and discovered a game that most definitely did not rank as a 5 for my Fun Factor.
Electronic Gaming Monthly began this editorial, and it is fitting for me to discuss it a bit. Still being a Sega fan, the first issue of it I picked up had Sonic on the cover and was focusing on Sonic Adventure. I subsequently bought a lot of issues in person and via eBay, to the point where I now have every issue from 73 onwards. EGM's system of multiple reviewers and its oft-stated refusal to be beholden to corporate interests interested me quite a bit. I disagreed with their reviews from time to time, but always appreciated the multiple perspectives a four- and then three-person review spectrum allowed. The drop of multiple reviewers in recent months save for more well-known games, and the shift from the simple 0-10 scale to a letter grade, seemed to me unnecessary alterations to a system that worked just fine but apparently wasn't pulling in enough revenue. The outspoken refusal of the magazine to allow publishers' money to influence its coverage may have been a factor in its demise, and that should not be taken lightly by any reader. Oddball and downright baffling reviews it possessed in abundance, but EGM stuck to its guns.
Online methods do not offer a complete replacement for gaming media in print, just as they cannot offer a complete replacement for any form of print. Certainly I enjoy almost everything on RPGamer (surprise!) but the site cannot replicate what it would be if sold at a news stand. Being able to click only on the items that interest me and ignore everything else fundamentally alters the experience of reading from a computer screen versus in print. Even if I take one glance and flip past it, I still peripherally notice things in print that would not have crossed my path thanks to my more narrow-minded online approach. Items in a magazine frequently caught my eye that never would have done so online, such as advertising or reviews for games that normally would not interest me. Remembering a game like Tyrants on the Genesis soley from its advertisement (I was 12 and my critical thinking abilities had not yet evolved to pick advertisements apart) is unlikely to occur when I would skip over the online version without granting it any attention. Such is my developed reaction to online advertising, and I know many others respond to it in a similar way. Review in a magazine work in a similar fashion: while I care nothing for Madden, flipping over a review for it and quickly noting the points in its (dis)favor provides information I would not get online because I would never click on a review dedicated to the game.
Electronic Gaming Monthly was not perfect by any means, but its death should be a cause for unhappiness. With its end the sources of information on the game industry that are not pitched in an excessively juvenile manner are limited to Edge, and this magazine can be difficult to obtain absent a subscription. Nintendo Power is not what anyone would refer to as having balanced coverage, but until Nintendo decides it is losing too much money this one will keep going. Playstation: the Official Magazine and Official Xbox Magazine are not supported formally by Sony and Microsoft, thus they too may suffer the fate of EGM. Gaming news will obviously continue with the termination of these publications, but in more specialized forms that frequently lack the breadth if not the depth of a printed publication. Goodbye, sources of game information available offline: you will be missed.
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