This is a call to arms – a first in a series of articles in which I, as a self confessed miserable old bastard, will explain why the old days actually really were the ‘good’ old days. Why the gaming industry as a whole is slipping into a steaming pit of mediocrity, brought down by the erosion of standards of modern life with all of its ridiculously convenient… EVERYTHING.  So, bah humbug and all that, and on with the first article in which I slate the press (I know – can you feel that fourth wall creaking?)

Take a look at the ‘gaming press’ today and what do you see? Allow me to tell you.  You see a bloated mass of ‘official’ publications, toeing the party line, screaming about how great their sponsoring manufactuer’s flagship machines are and bombarding you with more useless tat than you would normally find in one of those really tacky ‘gift shops’ in town – you know the one… it smells a bit funny and it sells such joys as ‘musical chinese stress balls’ and uber cheap Rizlas that aren’t actually Rizlas.

Official Nintendo Magazine is the worst offender for this, showering its readership endlessly with keyrings, pencil tops, console stickers and the laziest of all gaming magazine add-ons – the tips book (of which more later). Official Playstation Magazine is, of course, much more ‘grown up’. Not for the Sony boys (no girls it would seem – Sony not having pulled its winning feminine crowd puller of ‘painting the console pink’ on its beloved PS3 hardware yet) the tawdry gewgaws of cheap, plasticky giveaways and feeble, badly written tips and cheats guides. Oh no, you just get a disc. A disc and a magazine so thin that it actually feels like they should be taken to court under the Trade Descriptions Act for calling it such, when it is really no longer than the average pamphlet that we all, in fact, know it to be.  But mainly it’s the disc, all shiny and promising with its…demos.

Hang on though, can’t you download demos on the Sony Network? (No, I’m serious – can you? I haven’t yet been able to bring myself to mortgage all my belongings and actually buy one of the damned things, so I honestly couldn’t tell you). Anyway, you get the disc and the pamp…I mean magazine, and you pay somewhere in the region of £6 if I recall correctly.  Then there is Official Xbox 360 Magazine, which is more or less the same offering as Sony’s effort, except slightly less glossy and shiny and generally more ‘fun’ looking. And slightly cheaper. It’s almost as if the mags themselves were a metaphor for the consoles they represent.

You also see ‘independents’. There are such heady delights as 360 Gamer, N Gamer, and…errrr – is Powerstation still around? I can’t remember seeing it recently. If you have, and you want to let me know, then please don’t. I don’t care. Really.

Finally, you see the ‘multiformat’ mags – remember C&VG back in the 80′s? You know, when it used to be an actual magazine that did actual reviews by actual journalists? Before it went shite, basically? Same idea here. Sort of. You have Edge, which is frankly so self consciously pretentious that I worry for the sanity of a) its writers and b) its readership. Then you have GamesTM, which used to be really rather good quality but slowly seems to be (d)?evolving into Edge mk2, and then, finally, you have GamesMaster. GamesMaster which is nice and soft on your bottom when that stupid bloody puppy has run off with all the proper bog paper, although make sure you remove the tips book first – those cheap recycled pulp pages are rough on the old backside.

You see all of these things, and you wonder (or at least I did), what happened to the halcyon days of old. Remember Your Sinclair? Remember Mean Machines? Amiga Power? Remember the days when magazines actually gave you news?  Not recycled propaganda from the PR office of a giant publisher or manufacturer; not the drivelling self indulgent prattle of whiny post emo young adults who think that they’re so bleeding edge cool because they read manga and play Japanese Import games; not even the ridiculous, posturing ‘interviews’ handed out by ‘industry figureheads’ bleating excitedly about how their game is going to ‘change the way that people look at games’. Just simple honest news.  Facts.  Games that were coming out.  Games that were out.  Letters (that weren’t written by an 8 year old and accompanied by a crayon scrawl of Sonic).

Your Sinclair used to last me the whole month until the next one came out, and that wasn’t including the cover tape that came affixed to the front, packed with old games and the odd demo of a new one. I would read every article, every review, all the letters and previews because they were written with passion. With wit. Mostly with good old fashioned journalistic skill.  Nowadays, as long as your pages are glossy and you have more shiny pics than the next mag, this seems to suffice. Unless you’re one of the ‘serious’ mags that is, in which case you have to have ‘controversial’ scores and indulge in articles about things which seem to be ever increasingly divorced from actual games and the playing of them.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for a bit of serious journalism, but when GamesTM printed an article defending a game based on the Columbine Massacre, and used it as an excuse to have a whole debate about whether games could ever be used as a serious medium to address serious, real world issues such as murder, genocide and rape, I couldn’t help but think they had lost the plot of what it is that they were there for.   Games are just that – games, and to suggest that you can use them to address such issues in a meaningful way is, as far as I am concerned, madness.

I digress – what is the point of this tirade you may ask? Well, it hardly seems that a month goes by in videogaming circles (well ok, my videogaming circles, which are populated by interesting and intelligent people) without the subject of the ‘death of the printed gaming press’ being discussed. It is argued that the advent of the worldwide web, and the proliferation of informative gaming sites (such as this very one that you have chosen to visit today, dear reader) is making printed magazines less relevant.

They can’t provide cutting edge news as they once did, because by the time they print it has already been announced, dissected every which way by the web media and beamed to every interested party via their laptop/ipad/mobile phone. They can’t really score ‘exclusive’ reviews anymore, because there will always be someone on the web who has already played the game, finished the game, uploaded their speed run to YouTube and posted their review online before the mag even went to final editing. So the argument goes that they are no longer relevant, and that eventually they will have the good grace to die quietly.

All of this may be true but I don’t see that it necessarily has to mean that the traditional gaming press has to die. Why can’t they adapt? Your Sinclair managed to keep going for almost a year as the Speccy died a death. The reviews dried up, sure, but they still managed to keep going with a reasonably sized mag, delivering interesting articles and adapting to the climate. Can you imagine that these days?  It just wouldn’t happen. The answer, I fear, is that we are living in a ‘disposable’ generation these days, and I find this upsetting, because ultimately, the printed press could and should be so much more.

Think about it – the web page that throws out reviews and articles doesn’t have to be well written. Very rarely will there be any kind of ‘proper’ editing, and as long as the publishers are happy with their review scores then money will carry on pouring into the site just the same, regardless of the quality of the copy.  For that matter, there are a host of sites (like, ahem – this one) that are independent and small and don’t require advertising revenue to run (although, of course in the case of some of them that’s because they are just awesome *comedy wink to camera*) and can spew out whatever vitriolic fanboy ridden pustulence that they choose.  Contrast this with the ‘proper’ press, where you have to answer to an editor, to a publisher (of the mag, not the games – keep up) and ultimately to a readership who will quite happily vote with their wallets if you are crap.

At least that’s the theory. The reality, as I’ve outlined, is that the gaming press these days is declining at a rapid rate. From Edge with it’s ‘too cool for school’ image and ridiculous philosophy that as long as you’re glossy and use big words then you’re sophisticated, to the oversized advertising pamphlets that are the official mags and the patronisingly childish ‘indies’ inbetween, gaming must be the most badly served pastime in modern times in terms of the journalism that it has de-generated into. Where are the decent interviews, the thoughtful (and thought provoking) columns, the intelligent reviews? Well I’ll tell you where – they’re mostly in Retro Gamer. A magazine that is consciously modelled on a halcyon age – a better time when magazines were something to be read and enjoyed, rather than thrown away once you’d ripped off the free gift/tips book/demo disc.

That says all that it needs to for my money. These days, retro is the new chic, and for me it speaks volumes that the only decent print based games journalism these days is stuff that is based on consoles, games and people from a time when the internet was the preserve of a few nerds in various universities.

As to those bloody tips books – I’ll cover them in a later article – suffice it to say that they represent another facet of all that I find bad with modern gaming. For now, I want you to leave this article and think – really THINK, about the last time you read a gaming magazine cover to cover and enjoyed it. When it engaged you and made you laugh/cry/grin. When it reached you on a deep level. I remember mine, and if I get enough responses I might even share with the group.

Last five articles by Greg

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• Timing is Everything?
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