This post has not been edited by the GamesBeat staff. Opinions by GamesBeat community writers do not necessarily reflect those of the staff.
Editor’s note: Both EGM and GamePro hope to change the perception that if print isn’t dead, it’s certainly close. Can they succeed? Brendan share his thoughts on the matter. -Aaron
I pick up a new issue of game magazine.
I go to a nearby coffee shop and try to open the magazine, but it sticks. It has to search for a signal. Lucky for me, I paid up my “Access Content From Anywhere” fee, which is part of a contract I’m locked into until I can hand over my first-born child.
When it finally connects, the front page informs me I am missing a plug-in to view the images. A few minutes and several dubious links later, I am ready to get reading.
Loading….loading…cannot find page.
I close the magazine and open it again.
Loading…
A wild article appears!
I read. I enjoy. The article gives me much to consider. But suddenly, the article grows a long tail and dozens of voices start chiming in.
“This is Crap.”
“Yer a faggot, dude.”
“Shut up.”
“I think the issue of blah blah is blee bloo and here are five hundred words explaining my one thought.”
“EXCUSE ME FOR BOTHERING YOU GREAT SHOOZ AT ONLINE STORE NOW SALE.”
I turn the page to escape the –
Loading. There are a lot of people in the coffee shop, gumming up the works.
Just as I tuck in to the next article, the page goes blank.
The magazine’s battery has died.
Print isn’t dead.
What really happened in the above scenario: I picked up the new issue of GamePro, threw it into my backpack, pulled it out at the café and, using only the magic of available light, read it front to back (or at least the things that caught my interest).
None of the ads blinked at me with epileptic enthusiasm. Articles sat unmolested by outside opinion. I didn’t need to install anything. Pages were just there. I invested $7.50 (CND) for the privilege of owning it. I did not have to pay hundreds of dollars for a special apparatus to read it on, plus a subscription to a network to access it; one modest sum and it was mine.
The digital content market is booming. DVR, smart phones, netbooks, Kindle, and the forthcoming iPad loom in our future like a black obelisk, sent to excite the apes into evolution.
The Information Age has given users constant access to the digital, and the digital has the benefit of being immediate. Screenshots, news, and previews were once the exclusive domain of print magazines, but now gamers can hop online and surf a buffet of information as it happens.
We can engage with the people who write reviews and take them to task for having opinions. Instead of picking through a summary of some press conference a month after it happens, we can watch a live stream. We can go on forums and talk to our favourite developers. We are, through sites like Bitmob, empowered to share our thoughts as equals, blurring the divide between amateur and professional.
Greg Egan once wrote, “We are living in the science fiction of our youth.” The Information Age has changed the way we do business, the way we enjoy content, the way we interact with each other and the way we see ourselves. It is a revolution (YouTube) and an evolution (Celebrity Twitter). We live in interesting times.
Change asks an important question: In the face of progress, what happens to our old ways? Some would throw print under the bus like so many bathwater babies. Game magazines have become obsolete now that their purpose is served better, faster, and fuller online. With that mindset, it’s reasonable to “Ziff” away all ties to print and focus on the “FU” future.
But maybe the future doesn’t have to be so FU. Maybe instead of giving up on print, we can give it new purpose.
The imminent resurrection of EGM presents an interesting model for the coexistence of print and digital content. The model does not assume there is one best way. It plays to the unique strengths of each. Steve Harris recently shed some light on the project.
Each month, he will publish a physical magazine. In the same month, he will also publish four issues of EGM[i], a digital supplement.
As a fan of magazines, the most telling thing Steve Harris talks about in his message to the people of Earth is paper stock. Gone are the hallmark bible-thin pages of old. New EGM will be printed on heavier stuff. Nothing gives me more hope for the magazine. It is a physical product. Cheap paper suggests cheap content. We are tactile creatures. I don’t want something fragile — I want it solid. If I’m going to hold it in my hands it want to feel it.
I believe the content will be heavier, too. It has to be.
New EGM would be wise to look at new GamePro. In two issues, John Davison has established the future of his magazine as features. The Internet is the best place for immediate content — print is to ponder. Print is a playground for your best writers, designers, and artists to do their best work. It is a tangible medium, and should have solid, tangible content. Ideas explored instead of an information relay race. Stuff that can survive the pressure of being as indelible and present as digital content is fleeting and ephemeral.
There are no absolutes at this point. I think the death of print has been greatly exaggerated, but I may be wrong. Maybe I suffer from a failure to evolve; I’m the first monkey murdered when it goes to bones. But as much as I enjoy everything I can, do, and see online, I will always love being unplugged, mobile, alone, and engaged; the special, sacred communion of reading something that’s there, warts and all; the whisper of a turned page.
[Hi Bitmob. Longtime reader, first-time contributor.]