If you haven't read about it just yet, UGO entertainment has just recently acquired 1UP and all of its sites and has already begun making changes under their new control. Basically long-time running magazine, EGM was cancelled and there were many layoffs of employees previously associated with the 1UP site.
CapKraig over at the Capcom Blog made a real good post about this yesterday dealing with his time at EGM. Previous Editor-in-Chief James "Milkman" Mielke recently posted up on his blog what will be the final issue cover of EGM and this issue will be released on the 1UP site within time.
I can't say much about the 1UP site since I never have used it much, but EGM was always my favorite pic of the magazines that are out on the newstands at the moment. I enjoyed the editor personality quite a bit but one of my favorite features was the way that EGM handled reviews - usually each big game has three reviewers that would give their opinions and overall score. To me, it's very beneficial to the reader to get an opinion from multiple reviewers for some games since the opinion of one individual doesn't always leave me in a state of satisfaction, but to hear from multiple reviewers, you get more of a sense of content in the overall thought of the gaming magazine.
I've been reading them ever since they first started about 20 years ago and even enjoyed the side magazine associated with them, EGM2 which later became Gamenow. I still have tons of old copies of these magazines lying around my room right now. It's hard to see a such a famous magazine suddenly get cancelled like this without even the ability to have a final printed issue dedicated to saying "goodbye".
So long EGM, you will be missed, and I'm sure your absence will hit me even more when I clean my room even more closely later in this year (as I said earlier, I have a lot of old EGM issues around here).
thanks to Mirax for the first two links
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
I've been meaning to write something about print magazines for nearly a year now but just haven't gotten around to it (it was subscribing to another mag and the death of GFW Magazine which formed the core idea of the blog post). I guess I should rustle something up following this latest news.
I have to say that as someone who has just finished a year's subscription to EGM, I won't be mourning its demise. It has some really interesting people working for it (I subscribed after hearing the writers on the 1UP Yours podcast) but I found the mag to be a poor read indeed. In my opinion it read as if 1UP pushed out a side-project magazine rather than the other way around.
However, I am sad that a lot of those writers - many of them the most interesting on the podcasts - have lost their jobs. I'm sure most of them will be snapped up by other sites/publications though.
Game coverage and journalism is still spotty at best. Games themselves are the most complicated form of media, both in terms of what they are and how they affect society. I personally still think the idea behind good sensible game journalism is still nebulous and unclear. That can only be bad for print game mags, when print itself is floundering.
That doesn't say the memories of reading Street Fighter strategies over and over were worthless though. Since I started making money for myself, there were only two magazines I ever bought (outside of the typical gamestop-forced Game Informer subscription) -- Play Magazine's cover on Odin Sphere, and EGM's breakout story on Street Fighter 4.
As always, thanks for posting up some comments, both of you!
My history with EGM magazine is probably the main thing that kept my interest in them. I will admit that once the 1UP network was created, the issues seemed to diminish a bit in quality from the way they used to be. One thing I've always noticed about the later EGM issues is how very thin they almost always are compared to the novel-sized issues in the past.
I've actually been considering a voluntary subscription to Game Informer magazine for a while now. You automatically get one with an Edge card purchase at Gamestop, right? How much are they now? It's been quite a while since I last went to a brick and mortar Gamestop store. :p I mainly stick with Gamestop.com, Circuit City or Best Buy now for my gaming needs.
I generally don't ever agree with GI scores. Their cover stories are okay, but you can't deny that some times they feel more editorial than informative -- something that I still think is darn awesome about your reviews Kevin -- so I'd say it's a mixed bag.
In the world of the internet though I honestly don't think that print has much longer... :/ It's unfortunate but that's the future. I know there's novelty in print but that's what we said about CDs, and now where's that? Hell, the only thing stopping digital distribution is the fact that not everyone has high-speed access yet; once everyone is downloading at 3 megs a second, you can say goodbye to Gamestop and the rest. At the same time, the bonus is *supposed* to be that costs are cut -- just imagine, not having having to account for freight and shipping and all that. Of course, I'm talking decades here but it's not like it isn't already happening. Just look at how well Steam is doing as just one example, if not GoodOldGames, Gamefly, etc.
There's something about going to the mailbox to collect a magazine that keeps me subscribing to at least two at a time. I guess its the novelty factor in receiving some mail. :D
+1 for my review mention. Informative is what I strive for. I sit down with a game and take about 2 pages worth of notes before typing up a review like I'm preparing for an open-notebook exam.
With digital downloads, as long as the systems have the hard drive space for them, I could see it happening. I still prefer having a hard copy of my games though overall. With games like Siren: Blood Curse, they begin to take up too much HDD space. Siren takes up around 9GB on the PS3. When I downloaded it, that game took about a good day to download and install all of it. Of course, if we have faster connections in the future then that would be elimated, I suppose.
Despite my feelings about EGM as a magazine, its passing is sad. I prefer my gaming news online (obviously because it's fresh) but nothing beats reading a well-written review or feature on the printed page. There's also the thrill of seeing what makes the cover.
I'm SO GLAD EGM IS KAPUT! They so deserved it since they became Sony Gaming Monthly in Feb. 1998! The magazine Ed Harris and Sendai created was turned into an over-priced catalog for Sony products. And anything Nintendo was bad!
Post a Comment