A bit of news not about the games, but about other media connected to them. And it's a bit of sad news, too: Game Informer, the oldest (33 years!) monthly gaming magazine printed in America (it was one of the few ones still printed on paper) is closing down:
It was first printed in August 1991 and by now had more than a million subscribers. Now it seems that its 368th issue (which explores The Casting of Frank Stone game) will be the last. It is unclear what is the reason behind this and if the owner company GameStop was involved in this decision.
Still, it is a shame that one more beacon of game journalism is no more, even if I never read it. Maybe someone else is more familiar with it. @GoLLuM13, @j7schultz or @SKYTRiXSHA, maybe you?
I never read the magazine as well (it wasn't available in my country), but I was a frequent visitor to the website since around 2011. Apart from putting out articles that were head and shoulders above today’s "gaming journalism," they crafted such a cozy and jolly gaming space. I highly urge y'all to check out Game Informer’s Super Replays on YouTube.
Those GTA V and Batman Arkham City covers from them are permanently seared into my brain.
Paper press is in decay, but they could adapt and stay alive on social media, are they not doing that? It is always sad when a solid company closes, especially one from our beloved gaming industry.
It's always sad to see something like that happening. And I’m sure GameStop’s financial issues aren’t strange to this
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@j7schultz They actually did take steps to digitalize the magazine to have a wider reach on social media.
Game Informer's model was to reveal a cover art for an upcoming game -> share exclusive footage on YouTube -> publish some game details on the website -> in-depth look into the game in the physical/digital GI Magazine.
It's such a shame that the internet rewards walls of text that has nothing of substance, instead of creative endeavours like this 😔
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@GoLLuM13 Not sure if this has been rectified yet, but after the announcement of GameInformer closing down, access to the website was revoked and the poor laid off employees couldn't even access their work 😓
We're seeing some high levels of tomfoolery in the gaming industry this year.
@GoLLuM13 Not sure if this has been rectified yet, but after the announcement of GameInformer closing down, access to the website was revoked and the poor laid off employees couldn't even access their work
This is sad. Long ago there was a good gaming magazine in Russia called "LKI", in Russian it stood for "Best Computer Games", and it came out 1998-2011. Not 33 years, but 13 years is not bad. It was started by a man named Andrei Lensky, and he was its main editor. But in 2010 he passed away due to illness, and without its leader, the magazine started to have format and organisation problems, and eventually first stopped printing in paper and a bit after that ceased production altogether.
But the reason I am remembering it is because, even though the magazine is long gone, it was all digitally preserved and its website is fully accessible even now as a token of history. I would hope that was the normal practice, but apparently not. Which is a shame, there really should be some sort of rule or law about content preservation, for posterity and nostalgia if nothing else.
Maybe the Internet Archive will allow to access Game Informer materials?
I would guess GameStop's financial problems are a large part of this. They have been struggling for a good while. The paper press is in decline too, Poland also had paper magazines for computers or gaming stop issuing.
At least there are still many great websites with gaming news and resources.
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Paper press declines indeed; everything is moving online.
In Finland, we have one of our oldest game-specific magazines, "Pelit-Lehti," which is still going "strong" or so; of course, it's also declining hard but is still kept afloat, which is fantastic.
I would guess GameStop's financial problems are a large part of this. They have been struggling for a good while. The paper press is in decline too, Poland also had paper magazines for computers or gaming stop issuing.
At least there are still many great websites with gaming news and resources.
That is true. Though I am on the fence when it comes to paper issues. On the one hand, these days there is this idea that this is a symptom of some sort of trouble for the magazine, financial or otherwise. I do not really see it this way, I want to say that going digital is a natural progression after smartphones became as widespread as they are.
I'll need to look into which of these (paper or digital) is more environmentally friendly, though. These days it can be hard to calculate that.
And true, there are many websites, but it is hard to find good impartial ones that do not feel like either a commercial or simply a personal impression. True gaming journalism is not common, in my experience. This is one of the sadder things about Game Informer: maybe not always reaching it, but it aimed for impartial credibility. You trust the "brand", but now that brand is gone and you need to find something else you can trust.
What are some of those great websites that you mentioned?
Paper press declines indeed; everything is moving online.
In Finland, we have one of our oldest game-specific magazines, "Pelit-Lehti," which is still going "strong" or so; of course, it's also declining hard but is still kept afloat, which is fantastic.
going full paperless is not necessarily bad when it helps your outreach and saves resources. I'd say it's bad when it is a symptom of financial problems and the reader decline. Good luck to Pelit-Lehti.
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