End of Gaming Magazines draws near

Electronic Gaming Monthly, a staple in the videogame world here in North America, has ceased to be.  We all knew it was coming, but some didn’t think it would be as abrupt an end as it was.

I subscribed to EGM for most of the time I was into gaming.  Elementary through high school, then post college when I wrote game reviews.  It had exclusives I wanted to read about, and the quality of writing was so much better than what I find on IGN, Gamespot and Kotaku, places I have ventured before.

So EGM is gone, 1up is still around, but in name only.  Where can someone who likes decent-quality writing go for their gaming news fix?  Ignoring the blogs, options are limited.

People are mad at Ziff-David, the now-old publisher of EGM and 1up. People are mad at UGO, the new owner of 1up.  But who should people really be bad at?  The videogame publishers.  They’re the ones that had the ad dollars that paid the costs of running a magazine and its online counterpart.

The gaming industry as a whole did all right this past holiday season, and analysts predicted they would come out OK; however, these companies witheld their ad dollars and allowed EGM to die prematurely.  The game publishers that loved it when their latest products received cover-page treatment would then turn their backs on the magazine that helped get them the sales.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *