Games mags in a coma
Posted in games on February 11th, 2010 by RevStuI know, I know – it’s serious. You’ll have to forgive a little indulgence on this one, because few people seem to care much about paper-and-ink videogames magazines any more, and I still do. Done halfway-properly (eg Retro Gamer, and NGamer the last time I saw it, which was admittedly quite some time ago), they offer an experience that websites just can’t match, and there ought to still be a place for them.
Unfortunately, games mags have committed a long slow suicide over the last decade, becoming institutionally corrupt and attempting to take websites on at their own game, which is a hopeless battle. What’s more, they’ve focused on gaming platforms which aren’t very well suited to static images – look in a PC games mag or a 360 one and you’ll find it hard to tell one game apart from another in the featureless swamp of grey, green and brown fantasy worlds and bleak future dystopias.
