Weekend Thinking 9/5/2009 - Digital VS Paper

With the closure of EGM and talk of many papers having problems it's all doom and gloom for the print industry at the moment. But I find it hard to think of a world where I don't want to get the Guardian everyday (UK News paper) and my copy of EDGE in the mail every month.

1UP, Gamespy and Joystiq are all well and good for my up to the minute news needs and skim read reviews, but when it comes to multipage features and articles I can't bring myself to stare at the screen for that amount of time. Don't get me wrong some of these sites have great articles that I will read but, there is something to be said for lying on my bed reading though the high quality paper pages.

I think the day of your "main stream" gaming magazines are gone with the exception of maybe the likes of game informer which has some sort of tie to Gamestop I believe. As talked about in the recent episode of the bitmob podcast specialized and high quality subscriber based magazines are the way to go.

Looking again at EDGE it has around 29,000 subscribers in the UK and most likely gets a few more from news stand sales. Not a massive number but they have a dedicated audience that will pay the £4.50 a month or yearly subscription fee.

Coming back to my main point the digital age has changed the print industry a lot and even more are on the way. But there is still a demand and there will continue to be for good quality print. They just need to find a market plan that will work.

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Toby Davis

May 09, 2009

I enjoy print even if I have to use my own paper to print the material to read instead of on the computer most of the time.

Phillip Machnik

Considering Newspapers are going th way of the dodo, I don't see much hope for many printed publications. The Listen Up podcast this week discussed the idea of EGM coming back without newstand sales and at a higher price point with a more collectible quality to the paper stock and art. I would pay for this but I don't see it as a viable business venture at this point.

Brett Bates

One other advantage that Edge has is distribution costs. England is just a wee bit smaller than the US.

I think you're right: the day of the mainstream gaming magazine is nearing its end. But it's not the end of gaming magazines. They'll just become more of a niche product, perhaps with a particular focus (say, retro gaming), and a business model vastly different than what we've seen in the past. They'll be hobbyist-run, and designed more to break even than make a profit. They'll take advantage of new e-ink devices like the Kindle, which cut costs considerably. Or they'll team up with the numerous print-on-demand services, which print books by the order, eliminating overhead.

Former EGMer Jeremy Parish and friends are trying out this latter route with a quarterly magazine based on their retro gaming site, GameSpite. It's called GameSpite Quarterly and the first issue will be out soon, on the GameBoy. Read about it here: http://tinyurl.com/o5dbud. Ten to fifteen dollars for something as lovingly produced as this? You can bet I'll buy it. There's still something about having a physical object in your hands that's appealing, and I'm glad that Parish and co. are trying it out.

I love my internet, but I don't want it to kill the longer form journalism I love. Long live print!

Matthew Nelson

Thatâ€™s for the link, I will look into getting that. Yea The UK has a major advantage in terms of size. Hell Northern Ireland the part I am from could fit several times over into some US states.

I think games "journalism" (some can't make up their minds if they want to call it that), is going through a big change in general and I hope once itâ€™s over we end up with a few good mags.