Ten things #2a: Press Start

Two talented teams of writers and designers have recently launched preview issues of interesting, independent videogame magazines. It’s about time.

First, a little genre history.

Next year marks the 30th anniversary of the consumer videogame magazine, at least in the west (both Computer and Video Games and Computer Gaming World, since you ask).

Much like with the music industry, the mainstream publishing marketplace around videogames in most countries is dominated by PR-friendly publications who exchange exclusive access / first playthroughs / advertising revenue for pre-ordained favourable reviews.

When your target audience is teenage boys, and everyone is clamouring to be the first to cover a new game or console, there’s less call for principled journalism or sophisticated design. However, gamers have been progressively getting older, as those of us who played on consoles as kids suddenly have jobs and disposable incomes. And so has emerged a more mature niche, not just for the games themselves, but for magazines as well.

Even before, there were exceptions to the mainstream dross, of which the most notable is probably Edge (NB: I used to be a subscriber). It has long championed independent thinking, while also never selling its back page, or opening and closing spreads for advertising.

Edge has featured some good design touches over the past decade or so, and in the early 2000s, its reporting from within the industry was remarkably edgy and well-written; I’m also fond of it for three other reasons:

i) Like The Economist, it doesn’t credit individual journalists, as views stated are those of the publication as a whole.
ii) Readers tend to obsess over the numerical score at the end of reviews; Edge defuses that somewhat by explaining its scoring system thus: “1=one, 2=two, 3=three, 4=four, 5=five, 6=six, 7=seven, 8=eight, 9=nine, 10=ten”. It also ran one issue without numerical scores, and invited readers to guess what it had allocated.
iii) In more than 200 issues, each featuring a dozen or so reviews, it has only awarded a 10 to twelve games.

Despite this single beacon, games journalism has been pretty poorly served. In 2004, British journalist Kieron Gillen called for the emergence of a New Games Journalism. A manifesto appeared, as did a much-discussed, well-written review by Gillen to demonstrate this more experience-based writing style.

Online, perhaps a natural fit for a geeky medium based around interaction, The Escapist emerged almost exactly five years ago (happy birthday guys), combining personal tales from industry insiders and devoted gamers. Insert Credit, another “New Games Journalism” outlet, also trod that (on)line between zine and something more substantial.

Meanwhile, print-hungry gamers searching for fresh perspectives have been mostly served by zines, and the occasional review in serious newspapers.

As far as I am aware (and I’d be delighted to hear about other titles), it was Amusement that broke the standoff, with a beautiful, witty videogame magazine marrying fashion magazine stylings and great writing. It’s still going, each issue looking as good as, if not better than the last – check out, for example, their “buggy” issue (scroll sideways on that page for spreads). I also love that they sell a lifetime subscription for 199 euros. They even offered an RFID interactive edition. The only problem, for monolinguistic readers of this blog at least, is that Amusement is (currently) only published in French.

And so, an opportunity. As mentioned, two new independent videogame magazines have recently produced issue zeros, with first issues on their way very soon. Like Insert Credit and The Escapist, they both have two-word titles, and I’m eagerly awaiting to see what they’ll do in their official Issue One’s. I’ll talk about both in my next posting.

Bonus links:

• Zero Punctuation, the Charlie Brooker of games reviewers.
• History of UK computer magazines.
• Game Mag Weaseling, a column on videogame magazine history.

UPDATE: “r” in the comments rightly points out that Charlie Brooker used to be the Charlie Brooker of games reviewers, for PC Zone among others. In a strange coincidence of timing (or perhaps not), PC Zone has just closed. Commenting on its demise, Brooker namechecks Zero Punctuation as continuing its legacy.