Paper or Plastic
How does the gaming magazine still survive against the all seeing internet?

Games magazines were once the true bastion of gaming news. The likes of Zzap and C&VG were where you would first see exclusive shots of upcoming titles that made you giddy with excitement, news about what developers were up to in their little personalised cubicles somewhere ‘out there’ where developers lived and worked and it was these bastions of information where essentially all your gaming ‘news’ emanated, as the more mainstream publications placed gaming in the child’s play / non interest realm. Those were the days when picking up the games magazine of your choice in the newsagents was a delight and you knew you’d sit and read it cover to cover, soaking up every morsel of knowledge it had to offer so that you could talk to your friends about it at school or at the next computer club meeting. But are the days of the hardcopy gaming magazine numbered? Should games magazines consider a paid online alternative to ensure they are going to be able to bring true exclusives to their readers as the internet mocks them time and again? Why do we still purchase these magazines every month when we already know everything the pages have to offer short of the letters page, essentially spending money for defunct or late information? It’s an interesting conundrum and although this article can’t come to an overarching response, what it can do is get you, the reader thinking about the paper / plastic dilemma facing the games media machine today.

Not the 9 O’clock news…

Before the internet did life even exist, but more frightening now is could we exist without it? For many of us the internet has become a staple in the modern life diet and without it we’d dehydrate and flounder like a fish out of water. It is a wealth of information that has almost consumed most societies with its ease of access and instant elucidation. Log on to find almost anything, not sure what elucidation is, don’t make a run for the bookshelf, stay there in front of your computer, open another window and look it up! It’s not often you’ll be hit with a googlewhack (a search term on google that brings up a single result), usually you’ll find someone out there has written about it, mentioned it or alluded to it on numerous occasions and for the print media this can be a nightmare because the majority of information on the internet is free.

Gamers Flocked to the Internet….

Video Gaming information found a natural home online because the home computer has always been utilised for gaming and so is inextricably linked to the gamer with they themselves having knowledge of keyboards, connections and gadgets galore. Games sites both official and unofficial sprung up and over the last few years it seems every man and his dog wants to put forth their thoughts on gaming, be it via actually running a site or taking part in the many that exist. This therefore means the internet as one big games magazine has a staff of over a million reporters, photographers, industry insiders etc. compared to the standard few dozen of a print media outing. Time too plays a large part in exclusive material and with the internet it is almost an instantaneous conduit from the source to the reader, whereas games magazines must adhere to the time constraints set down by release dates and print times. With paper you are therefore getting information that may well be a couple of weeks old when it gets to you, with the internet the information may only be a few minutes old when received.

The Internet Doesn’t Have Cover Disks!...

Print magazines are fighting an uphill battle with regards to exclusives and gaming news so what can they do in order to at least give them some handholds and stay in the game (so to speak)? The Gaming magazine Cover Disk exists to cause you the reader a dilemma and it is this, is it worth a fiver (£5 for our non UK readership) for a magazine with fairly superfluous information and a game disk with a couple of playable demos? Sure it is! Dependent on a couple of reasons lodged firmly in the human psyche: habit, impatience and ever present acquisitiveness. Habit is when you’re in your newsagent and you pick up the magazine you’ve purchase EVERY month for the last however many years and you don’t want a gap in what you proudly refer to as your ‘collection’. Impatience enters into it when although the game on the demo disk is released in a week you want to play it NOW! And Acquisitiveness, that all powerful need to possess, be it related to habit (ie the perfect collection) or impatience (ie your pals may be talking about this demo and you haven’t played it) takes over and before you know it you’ve handed over that nice crispy five pound note only to receive a tiny copper coin in return, but you smile to yourself because your hierarchy of gaming needs is sated, habit, impatience and gain are happy for another month. All in all the lure of the cover mounted games disk will help a video games magazine sell copies, particularly if the games are playable and not just for show, because games trailers we can of course see for free and sooner online.

Tangible Portable vs Ethereal Anchored….

This is something else that has to be considered when engaging in the tug of war between paper and plastic. It’s nice to sit on the couch and flick through the latest gaming magazine, it’s there, in your hands, it’s tangible and real but most importantly it’s portable and simple to navigate, sure the news is old by plastic standards but it’s on good solid pick up and play paper so you can relax.
Unless you own a wireless laptop the realm of the plastic ethereal anchored online gaming magazine will have you hunched at your desk, but you do so with glee because this is where the REAL news is, this is where ‘new news’ exists to be discovered and your tangible portable paper friend won’t include this stuff for weeks!

Reasons Paper Beats Plastic….

As a woman I am fundamentally unenlightened as to the apparent joy of what I’ll call ‘rest room readership’ but I do realise you’re not likely to use your wireless laptop whilst on the commode. This area of paper readership reeks of fun double entendre; are gaming magazines going down the toilet being one and perhaps there is a use for those pages after all being the other. It does however tie in nicely with the portable and anchored argument so warrants a mention.

The Way Ahead is fraught With ….

The video gaming print magazine needs to consider its lifespan and come up with ways to keep the gamer paying out month after month for regurgitated exclusives and news that is weeks old by the time it hits their joypad loving little hands. Many of the big gaming magazines do have websites however these are for the most part not on par with many of the games communities available elsewhere on the internet and certainly not as personal or intimate. A suggestion may be to implement a sort of symbiotic conjoining of paper and plastic to bring the readership what they deserve, up to the minute articles in a well written way that is available both online and off. Keep the print magazine the home of well written interest pieces whilst avoiding it becoming a den of porn advertising in its pages (as OXBM appears to be heading) and somehow connect this to the internet site which can cover up to the minute news and reviews thus putting it on the same footing as the other plastic based information available. Some may argue that what the print media does have over the online stuff is talent but I’d tend to disagree, the difference here being that many people online write about gaming for the love of gaming (I count myself amongst them), we are not paid and therefore have nothing to gain from our many hours other than self fulfilment coupled with the hope someone will take notice and perhaps offer them freelance work (yes please!) so it’s a little sad to suggest that the print media are talented whilst online ‘media’ are all cut and paste hatchet jobs, both have something to offer. The trick is to latch onto just what that is and utilise both mediums in order to ensure the customer, which is after all the one with the power to make or break you, gets the best possible format available. It’s a tough call but if done right both can survive and make the perfect affiliation, though from this online writers position it must be a symbiotic relationship between paper and plastic for paper to survive.


Article by Angela