A very short history of video game magazines…
I’m deep in the trenches trying to the get the Forgotten Worlds #4 Kickstarter over the line. You can find out more and support it here. Huzzah! Etc.
Issue 4 looks back at a bunch of classic video game magazines, including EGM, CVG, Mean Machines, Super Play, GamePro and more. Each feature is based on interviews with the folks who were there; the writers, editors and artists.
So, to help drum up some extra promo for the magazine and the Kickstarter, I thought it might be fun to cherry pick some of the more interesting interview quotes for an abridged history of video game magazines.
I guess you could call it an oral history. That term was big a few years back.
Anyway, here you go. You can find the proper article in the physical magazine.
Our cast:
Julian ‘Jaz’ Rignall - CVG, Mean Machines
Richard ‘Rich’ Leadbetter - CVG, Mean Machines
Dan ‘Shoe’ Hsu - EGM
Michael Meyer - GamePro
Paul Glancey - CVG
Peter Scisco - Compute!
Richard Monteiro - Sega Pro, Raze, Play
Daniel Wilks - Hyper
Magazine offices were gritty and gross back in the day.
“The working conditions were pretty disgusting, the office was a mess, there was no air conditioning, probably about a quarter of the people smoked in the office — and the games room was stiflingly hot in the summer. I was pretty surprised at how bad it was when I went to interview for the job [at CVG]. The funny thing is, of course, that the stuff piled up in there (most of which ended up in a skip) would likely be worth a lot of money now.” Richard ‘Rich’ Leadbetter
Early gaming magazine writers were few and far between, and mostly fell into it by accident.
“Honestly, there were very few games writers in the 80’s – and most of us were teens that were instantly enamored with our first taste of this new technology, but didn’t have the money to buy the machines and games that we wanted – so we parlayed our limited writing abilities into mini-careers – but mainly to get the free games. Things were much more career-like in the 90’s because video games no longer seemed like some flash in the pan hobby and rather like an entertainment industry that was here to stay.” Michael Meyer
Magazine layouts were a product of the technology available.
“Magazine design in the early 90s was a reflection of the techniques and technology of the time – i.e., paste-up and limited computer functionality. The design had to be simple and boxy. Inevitably, as the decade wore on, publishers became fully digital and pages became busier and busier. The combination of digital layout and readily-sourced information from the internet resulted in an explosion of creativity.” Richard Monteiro
A magazine’s commercial viability was dependent on both ads sales and the actual number of magazines sold.
“Magazine publishers always have to think in terms of how many advertisers they could sell pages to, because ‘pages pay wages’, and the expectation was that there would be loads of official [Mega Drive] games coming that would need lovely full-colour, full-page ads in MegaTech.” Paul Glancey
Japanese game developers in the late 80s and early 90s were often leagues ahead of their international counterparts. Which helped fuel the grey import market.
“Japanese game development was generally more sophisticated than European game production. Japanese developers often had large teams of people that included individuals dedicated to specific development tasks. That enabled many Japanese publishers to produce deeper, more thoroughly designed, far more rigorously tested, and better-looking games than many of the comparative, more home-brewed European titles of the era.” Julian ‘Jaz’ Rignall
UK and US magazine publishers had very different distribution models.
“One of the things we always talked about was the newsstands sales, and for them to be a bigger deal for the English market. Like, I know in the US we really drove hard for subscriptions, and while we also had a big newsstand model, [in the UK] it was primarily about newsstand sales." Dan ‘Shoe’ Hsu
The irreverent humour of the UK magazines was very much a product of its time, and would probably not go over well today.
“Stuff like Mean Machines' ‘Insult Corner’ would absolutely not work today. People are far more sensitive these days, and I imagine the sort of rhetoric we got away with back then would be very poorly received today. In the 80s and 90s, people were far more tolerant to that sort of humor and understood that while it may have sometimes been a bit cruel, it was not spiteful and was ultimately being made in jest, even though some poor individual was the butt of those jokes.” Julian ‘Jazz’ Rignall
Magazines kept their editorial and ad sales teams separated to ensure the commercial side didn’t sway the review scores.
“When I started writing for EGM, I remember I was one of the lower reviews for Turok on Nintendo 64, and I didn’t know this until years later, that Acclaim pulled advertising because of my review... But this is how the magazine was set up. The advertising department was not allowed to share that with us, because they didn’t want to put pressure on us to be more favourable. So it was about keeping those two worlds very separate, so that there’s no undue influence about what we write about, or how we score things.” Dan ‘Shoe’ Hsu
The Playstation really did change gaming demographics.
“The average age of the gamer increased with the arrival of the PlayStation. But that didn’t translate into extra advertising revenue streams for us. Lifestyle marketing agencies weren’t nimble enough to recognise the opportunities early on. And neither were we. By the time both sides became switched on to the idea, the larger publishers with presence in various vertical markets locked in the agencies.” Richard Monteiro
Even the Sega magazines were concerned about the Sega Saturn’s viability.
“I knew the Saturn was going to struggle. The reason the Megadrive flew was because Sega US had a lot more control, which lead to loads of third-party games and a reason for people to buy it. With the 32x it was barely an upgrade and expensive for what it was, and then Japan took control of Saturn and it launched with a disappointing selection of titles as they wanted to control releases much more closely. We'd got wind of Sony's plans for PlayStation and their charm offensive with publishers and knew of at least three times as many games on the way, so it was obvious that the writing was on the wall for Sega.” Steve Merrett
The internet changed everything.
“The transition from the 90’s to the 2000’s is really the seismic event in the gaming industry’s trajectory. Once the internet started playing a major role, everything changed. The ability to stream games and comment has propelled this industry to heights previously unimagined. Here’s hoping we can tamp down some of the hatred and trolling that has become so synonymous with the gaming industry in the 2020’s.” Michael Meyer
“When I first started in games magazines, the Internet was a kind of goofy thing and advertisers were reluctant to pump dollars into it. Each issue was raking in 50 or 60k in advertising and selling tens of thousand of copies. As soon as the Internet gained any momentum in gaming circles, you could watch circulation and advertising revenue falling in real time.” Daniel Wilks
