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[pepeno]

I had this thought for a while that i could not express properly for a while. I was watching one of videos about death of gaming mags/sites with typical message where streamers/youtubers killed them because "online" and on surface level that explanation makes sense. After all video > than text for many people. But still there was something not sitting with me well listening to that argument. The other argument about game university students and activists also made some sense but it still didn't sit with me well.

I still have a collection of old CDA (polish gaming mag) and started to check up on them going from early ones to later ones and it finally hit me.

Gaming mags/sites just stopped doing what they were doing previously.
Every time you bought CDA (or other gaming mag) you were always excited to see what kind of new games are on horizon. They were essentially a tool for you to see what is interesting on horizon and each gaming mag had different people specializing in different genres. If you bought two mags then usually those two mags had different games in them covered. Sure there could be big games that both covered but each mag had their own discoveries.

- Each of those people since they had favorite genre and played ton of games from that genre were specialists/veterans who knew inside out if something was good or not
- Those people actually played ton of games often completely noname because back then there was no sequel diarhea so you couldn't easily relly on what was previously good.
- And it wasn't just reviews. Previews and news from those people put those games on map. Some unknown game from Ukrainian dev called stalker ? They had 0 money on PR and yet someone who played their demo was so astounded that they reserved 4 full pages talking about it raving about what he saw.
- If someone saw from their genre trully awesome game they would invite other people from mag to play it and see if they like it. That's how it was discovered if something was trully special when suddenly whole gaming mag crew was playing one game completely being taken over by it. GUYS WE HAVE FOUND IT ! THE NEXT GREAT BIG GAME !

Now compare it to the time where there were still some mags and sites. All talking about same things, playing same big PR games, with people who never specialize in anything so their recommendation isn't valuable to fans of genre. They never found anything new, they just talking same talking points, same games, etc. The industry around it professionalized, suddenly people from outside of gaming started to write about games they played, looking for broadest appeal. Rise of activists was just end game for gaming mags and sites. And accessibility of online content just took them out of misery.

In other words there was no point in reading them.

On other hand all of above moved over to youtube. People like asmon specialized in mmos so if you were fan of mmos you watched his channel. And unlike most of gaming mags he plays like almost all mmorpgs for a good while. Even if it is shit he gives it a chance. There are people who specialize in racing games, jrpgs, tycoon games and so on. In other words gaming mags died but people who made those gaming mags didn't, the spirit of old gaming mags moved and professionalized hollow gaming mags tupas died.

Another weird thing is that reviews and numbering at start with gaming mags was just a guide to find something fun to play and at start there was no review scores. But gradually gaming mags as they professionalized started to onanize scores because that is what publishers liked the most. And since they wanted mainstream reviews to drive traffic instead of actually writing good opinions from professionals/veterans of genres they started to play around with scoring not watning to hurt publishers who would often pay for ads which is where 7/10 = poor game 8/10 mid game 9/10 good game 9.1+/10 amazing game now comes from.

By comparison youtubers and streamers don't give scores, they just play the game with the audience and say their opinions, just like early gaming mags. Sometimes they give scores but score isn't a point really opinion is most important, replicating spirit of early gaming mags.

---------------

The medium died when you opened mag and there was 0 new discovered games by staff. In medium where there are more and more games per year released that was just unacceptable to public and they just moved to people who actually check out new games constantly.

How many times by the end of gaming mag era there were games that blew up out of nowhere ? Constantly and none of gaming mags were usually talking about them. They were just focused on gta4-5, gears of war and whatever next AAA game will be missing completely new games people wanted to get to know about.

 

[Tobimacoss]

Nah, magazines were a dying medium with the rise of the internet, especially iPhones and smartphones. You have gaming sites with all the same info that would go into a magazine, but that info isn't limited to single issue, it's cumulative and vast.

It was going to happen naturally.

 

[Griffon]

I agree with OP, the press gave up on finding the unknown and instead only reviewed the games with the biggest PR campaigns.

If "journalists" were still a thing, they'd be looking at steam games with low amount of reviews and searching the good ones by themselves. Doing their actual supposed job of discovery.

Sadly now it's too late, the only niche games they're going to cover now are activist trash.

 

[poppabk]

I think they went downhill once they stopped including pages of Basic you could type in for days and it would be a crappy game at the end.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Though YouTube does recommend stuff after watching a video. But it's usually tailored to something similar.
Discoverability has become much more echo chamber like these days.

 

[Trogdor1123]

They died because their business model didn't evolve and relied mostly on printed media.

 

[Hookshot]

They were always doomed to die. It's sad because when you physically have one in your hand and are turning the pages you are more engaged so you will pay attention to the whole page, read it all and see the pictures or adverts. If you visit a website you don't bother clicking all the tabs or links, you either see what you were after or swipe through ignoring things.

 

[Durin]

I agree with you OP, activisim and video wasn't the only thing that killed these gaming sites and mags.

Ultimately they died because they stopped being by/for gaming enthusiasts. Core gamers/enthusiasts are the only demographic that will actually show up to read gaming news every day or get ever magazine issue. Anyone else is a fly by night view you might only occasionally get.

You stopped getting people who were the nerdy sages that played everything for fun, instead getting more of the people that can't beat the Cuphead tutorial.

You started getting people who liked writing, politics or were dropouts that couldn't make it in other media (books, movies, etc.). It's often why outside AAA slop, their personal recommendations are usually narrative-heavy/game mechanics-lite titles much of the time. The amount of walking sims these people waste words on got old.

You also had these sites/mags consolidate into a few companies, focusing on search engine optimization, access journalism, and clickbait-y headlines.

Final reason I'll throw in is in the early 2010s when they said "gamers were dead", and the increasing combativeness they had with their own audiences.

Youtubers/streamers, are most often just nerds enthusiastic about one game or certain genres, so you get something closer to what we used to have there.

 

[Angry_Megalodon]

They died because they are normies who don't bring anything of worth to the table. They can't even put games in their right category or genre, for fucks sake. A few well-informed Youtubers are doing their job, which means that there's demand for that service. What has changed is the people providing it.

 

[Loomy]

It's not that deep. Physical publication in general just stopped making financial sense. The cost to print and distribute magazines, newspapers, phone books, etc got way too expensive when the internet became more accessible.

Couple that with the fact that the audience for a niche hobby is small to begin with, they were destined to die.

Magazines no longer existing is not about content. Its about cost. Websites took over when magazines stopped being relevant, and youtube took over when long form content stopped being desirable.

 

[Ozzie666]

I don't know anyone other than old people who read physical news paper or have them delivered, I'll see cafes with copies that people might browse through. By the time those papers get printed, the story is old or outdated. When asked, most people say I get the paper for the puzzles and quizes.

Imagine EGM being a month outdated. I do miss them, don't get me wrong, much better than 'leakers' and 'journalists' now on social media. With no E3, makes it even more pointless.

 

[MayauMiao]

Game mag was dying way before Youtubers/Streamers became a thing.

Magazine simply cannot keep up with the Internet, not in speed and most importantly videos.

 

[VGA-Games]

Nowadays these wannabe Journalists are Activists in their Hearts and not Video Gamers!!!

 

[MayauMiao]

Probably another huge factor why gaming magazine died.



More than half of the content are ads, and you still have to pay for it.

 

[kpopSuperstar]

I got magazines because they had screenshots and info on games. I still remember reading about Perfect Dark in the N64 magazine.

When the internet took over, I could find the screenshots and info online. The use for them went away.

 

[Stuart360]

I used to buy like 8 game magz a month but its pointless now with the internet. It still blows my mind that newspapers are still a thing.

Just another thing the internet killed from my youth.

 

[Sooner]

You're just wrong.

 

[DoctorFish]

Game websites only cover the big things now because that's what gets clicks. While playing the role of finding unknown games can be both useful and maybe even a little noble, the majority of people aren't looking for games. Everyone is oversaturated with games at this point. People already know what they're interested in and what they really go to gaming journos for at this point is validation for their interests/opinions, no matter how tenous or lacking merit that validation may be.

 

[Pimpbaa]

Either I'm high or nothing of what you just said made sense. I made many more bad choices in regards to game purchases when I was relying on game magazines only if I think what you are trying to say.

 

[pepeno]

Game websites only cover the big things now because that's what gets clicks. While playing the role of finding unknown games can be both useful and maybe even a little noble, the majority of people aren't looking for games. Everyone is oversaturated with games at this point. People already know what they're interested in and what they really go to gaming journos for at this point is validation for their interests/opinions, no matter how tenous or lacking merit that validation may be.

That's my point. Even then finding good games was actually hard. The primary role of those people in those mags was to search through what was out there and find gems to show to their public. That's why you bought those mags. If you didn't do that you had to do your own resarch buying crap games blind.

Also the argument about cost to produce doesn't make sense since production of such magazine got CHEAPER rather than more expensive. Just imagine the amount of work in 90s you had to do to produce magazine vs now where computers accelerate that job into stratosphere.

The argument about sales also isn't really standing up since all of those gaming mags started literally with very very very small numbers. Just imagine your target audience in 90s when the amount of people who played games could be counted in 100s of your 500k city rather than like half now.

Like I said in OP. I think professionalization of this kind of work lead to explosion of costs. Where something earlier was group of 7 people banding together to make something happen now you had 30-50-100 people working on same amount of content, with editors, proofreaders, graphic designers, managers, executives and so on. Focusing on things that don't matter like new car for CEO or graphic design of their mag than playing actual games searching for those gems.

And this phenomenon isn't really only concerning gaming mags, that's what happened to gaming itself too. It used to be normal for 1 guy to be artist, programmer and writter at the same time. And now 20 people do those jobs that used to be work of 1. Previously one math wizard would literally write engine in assembler and do most of the production (Chris Sawyer's Rollecoaster Tycoon) on hardware that was not possible to run such game.

 

[Cakeboxer]

No. The internet is faster, cheaper, and more convenient. For the same reason, video rental stores have disappeared.

 

[calico]

Mags were killed by the internet. Sites were killed by woke.

 

[vaibhavpisal]

I used to visit gamespot regularly back in the day. They used to cover all games worth talking about.

These days I mostly find rage bait there, with covering only major games. Or some of them that they wanna highlight for some reason. (Blue Prince, for instance)

 

[Hanzaki]

Youtubers and streamers?

what a clueless take...

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

What research is to be made in this area of entertainment, in a world where a leak on X essentially dictates what every website will talk about for the next week? It's the people that killed any incentive for exclusive research and content, giving 99% of their super short attention span to the latest tweet and flaming about it for a day before moving on to the next. The market has spoken. Vox populi, vox dei.

By the way, that kind of content still exists. But it's not the kind of content that gets discussed. As much as I don't like the guy and his motives are as clear as day, a person like Jason Schreier makes the kind of exclusive content that once made people read mags and websites. Of course, it's not really about games. But the industry has grown enormously since the 90s, and while everyone and their mom can make a tweet with a cropped screenshot of a supposedly upcoming game and a line of text (half of which is question/exclamation marks), that kind of research is definitely gaming-related, like it or not.

 

[HerjansEagleFeeder]

Not sure if OP is right, but he could be. I certaintly like his thinking and the hypothesis is, at it's core, sound and worth reflecting on. Reminds me how much I miss cool gaming mags. Maybe someday in the future.