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

Probably most people won't care, but "GameInformer" -the long running computer game magazine- shuttered its business the other day.

Which probably shouldn't be a surprise; after all, who reads (print) magazines anymore? (although, like most publishers, they relied more
on digital subscriptions these days). More tellingly, "Game Informer"
was a division of the "GameStop" retail chain, which in recent years
has been better known for its stock antics than its retail
performance. The chain has been struggling, and that "Game Informer"
has survived this long is, frankly, sort of amazing.

What was surprising was how /good/ "Game Informer" was. While it
didn't do any hard-hitting journalism, it still had well-written
articles and reviews that weren't just puff-pieces designed to get you
to buy the next game (which is what you'd expect from a magazine
funded by a video-game store). Amongst the surviving 'old-school'
video-game magazine publishers, they were probably the best.

And while the likes of online publishing -Kotaku, GamesIndustry,
PCGamesN and the rest- have taken up the slack, there was a lot to be
said about a publisher who actually still put out printed material. It implied a reliability and soundness that you often don't get from the
more fly-by-night online offerings. They were a standard baseline
against which you could measure the competitors.

So it's sort of sad to see them go. Even if I was part of the problem
that led to their demise (I let my subscription lapse years ago...
although that was mostly because the only way to renew the
subscription was by physically going to a Gamestop store).

Fare thee well, "Game Informer". You weren't great, but you were good
enough, and your passing is just another sign of the passing of the
golden age of computer gaming.

I do kinda miss actual magazines and still have fond memories of popping
into the newsagents during my paper round to see if the latest issue of
Crash* was in yet. When I finally got a PC I did buy a magazine now and
again but certainly not consistently. Now you can get so much of the information online, why pay for it.

*For those that don't know it was an iconic magazine for the Specky 48k
which ditched the whole pretence that home computers were for
educational purposes and not for playing games.

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On Sun, 04 Aug 2024 11:54:14 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

Probably most people won't care, but "GameInformer" -the long running >computer game magazine- shuttered its business the other day.

I had subscriptions to QuestBusters, Computer Gaming World, PC Gamer,
Computer Games Strategy Plus and Computer Game Review. But somehow, I
missed on ever subbing to Game Informer. Or maybe I only I subbed to
them briefly, I don't remember. I hope they weren't the best of the
bunch, because if they were, then I missed out.

I don't want to go back to the days of relying on these magazines for information, but I miss them all the same.

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On Tue, 06 Aug 2024 11:29:20 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

Helpful hint: the entirety of the Computer Gaming World archive is
available (legitimately!) online. You can read every issue at >https://www.cgwmuseum.org/

I own a lot of issues of CGW but I do not have them all. Thank you for
the link. It is now bookmarked forever.

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Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, 06 Aug 2024 14:15:26 -0400, Mike S. <Mike_S@nowhere.com>
wrote:

On Tue, 06 Aug 2024 11:29:20 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson ><spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

Helpful hint: the entirety of the Computer Gaming World archive is >>available (legitimately!) online. You can read every issue at >>https://www.cgwmuseum.org/

I own a lot of issues of CGW but I do not have them all. Thank you for
the link. It is now bookmarked forever.

Well, if you like that, wait until you get a load of these:

- Questbusters
https://archive.org/details/questbusters

- Computer Game Review

https://archive.org/search?query=Computer+Game+Review.&page=2

- Electronic Games Magazine
https://archive.org/search?query=electronic+games

- Strategy Plus
https://archive.org/search?query=Strategy+Plus

- Crash Magazine
https://archive.org/search?query=crash+magazine

- GameBytes *
https://archive.org/details/GameBytesMagazine **

- Interactive Entertainment *

https://archive.org/search?query=interactive+entertainment

I have purposefully left PC Gamer off the list because it's still a
going concern (and, if I recall, they sell access to their
back-issues). But all the rest are defunct magazines so I've little
qualm pointing to where their content is available online.

Congratulations. You can now read like its 1991 again! ;-)

Dang flashbacks. :)
--
"And [the young Macedonian believers] did not do as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord and then to us in keeping with God's will." --2 Corinthians 8:5. Hot!
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Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> looked up from reading the entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

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

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

Probably most people won't care, but "GameInformer" -the long running
computer game magazine- shuttered its business the other day.

Side note: GameStop didn't just stop publishing the magazine. They
killed the entire site. Because why preserve a 3-decades long legacy
in any way?

GameStop... classy to the end.

They probably can't afford to pay for hosting for it.

(but the GameInformer staff should be grateful that at least GameStop
didn't issue NFT jpgs of their faces... or sell their likeness to make >FunkoPop bobbleheads. ;-)

Yet. Wait till the stock takes a dip again.

Xocyll

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Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> looked up from reading the entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

Probably most people won't care, but "GameInformer" -the long running >computer game magazine- shuttered its business the other day.

Which probably shouldn't be a surprise; after all, who reads (print) >magazines anymore? (although, like most publishers, they relied more
on digital subscriptions these days). More tellingly, "Game Informer"
was a division of the "GameStop" retail chain, which in recent years
has been better known for its stock antics than its retail
performance. The chain has been struggling, and that "Game Informer"
has survived this long is, frankly, sort of amazing.

What was surprising was how /good/ "Game Informer" was. While it
didn't do any hard-hitting journalism, it still had well-written
articles and reviews that weren't just puff-pieces designed to get you
to buy the next game (which is what you'd expect from a magazine
funded by a video-game store).

So not favored by Derek Smart then?

Amongst the surviving 'old-school' video-game magazine publishers, they were probably the best.

And while the likes of online publishing -Kotaku, GamesIndustry,
PCGamesN and the rest- have taken up the slack, there was a lot to be
said about a publisher who actually still put out printed material. It >implied a reliability and soundness that you often don't get from the
more fly-by-night online offerings. They were a standard baseline
against which you could measure the competitors.

The other problem, is print takes time, which meant their only online competitors had up to date news and reviews and they couldn't, due to
the logistics of print.

So it's sort of sad to see them go. Even if I was part of the problem
that led to their demise (I let my subscription lapse years ago...
although that was mostly because the only way to renew the
subscription was by physically going to a Gamestop store).

Fare thee well, "Game Informer". You weren't great, but you were good
enough, and your passing is just another sign of the passing of the
golden age of computer gaming.

It's sad to see a lot of the old stuff going, but we romanticize this
stuff and forget all the bad stuff that went with the good.

Was talking about this yesterday in fact, with the guy at the wine store
(I was wearing a jokey t-shirt that mentioned Dos, he laughed, and it
was off down memory lane; BBS and such.

He said he has fond memories of the pre-internet tech stuff, but he
wouldn't want to go back to it.

Remember when animated gifs became a thing and some websites drenched themselves in them and took an hour to display the page on a 56k modem connection?
Oh look this forum, everyone has an animated gif for an avatar, and each
was a megabyte or so in size - 50 comments per page, do the math.

So much so the browser companies (well netscape anyway,) introduced a
toggle off for the images so pages could load in something approximating
real time.

Various things I mourned in passing, but when you take a good hard look
back without the rose coloured glasses, they weren't nearly as good as
we remember, they were simply good for the time, and their time has
passed.

Xocyll

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On Tue, 06 Aug 2024 15:21:48 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

Congratulations. You can now read like its 1991 again! ;-)

I kept all of my old issues of PC gaming magazines because they really
are important to me. Thank you for the links.

I completely forgot about IE or Interactive Entertainment. I own a lot
of those CDs. I think they were $10 back in the day. A silly waste of
money of course, but my teenage self did not think so at the time.

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On Tue, 06 Aug 2024 15:21:48 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

Congratulations. You can now read like its 1991 again! ;-)

I was also able to find Compute's Gazette on that Internet Archive
site. This was my first magazine subscription when I was a kid. It was
for Commodore owners and I had a C-64 at the time.

Like Ant said, dang flashbacks....

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On 07/08/2024 17:50, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

And the same with tech, and TV, and books, and generally everything in
the past. The rough edges of our hobbies had their charm, sure. But I
love 'living in the future'. Sure, there are problems today too --lots
of problems!-- and a lot of our modern toys don't live up to their
potential. Who'd have expected the Internet to turn into the advertising-riddled, disinformation-soaked hellhole it too often is?

It does feel as though internet content is rapidly going even more
downhill with so much of it based on who do we generate traffic for our
site with the least amount of effort involved. Who needs staff writers
when you can just use an AI to create a story for you with the right
keywords. It kinda reminds me of games as service where the link between
give us money for a game experience is becoming more and more stretched.

Then there's the real darkside as demonstrated last week in England with
riots fuelled by misinformation on social media. The positive is that communities finally came together and said enough is enough, you don't represent us and no you can't come to our town and smash shops up or try
and burn down hotels.

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- It won't have a print version (well, understandable, given
the economics of the thing. Still sort of sad to see it
go, though)
- Last I heard it won't have the same staff, so it's basically
just the name being reused

Last story I saw said there will be a print version, and the original
staff as well. I think you're right to question the motives of the buyer though, just what was the business motivation for this acquisition....

rms

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