Toronto Thumbs

Dr. Wylie’s Revenge
Gaming Magazines or Breakfast of Champions?

We expect next generation consoles from electronics companies, and we most certainly expect next generation games from the developers. We should also expect next generation gaming magazines from publishers.

Last column, which was way too long ago – thanks for the deadline extension, Mr. Editor – we discussed who on Earth would spend his or her hard-earned dough on the current rags some prefer to call gaming magazines. With the advent of the Intertubes (which gave us online walkthroughs, trailers, screenshots, and a glut of industry news), gaming rags must be irrelevant by now? Aren’t they?

So the question is: How do we save this once-beloved industry?

I have three suggestions.

First off, a no-brainer: Cut the cover price. At an average of $12 a pop, I may as well go buy myself a book from Chapters.

Look at it this way. For the same price of yesterday’s gaming news accompanied by a bunch of screenshots I’ve already seen on Xbox Fanboy, I could buy myself a package of bacon, a carton of eggs, a pound of potatoes, a jug of orange juice, whip myself up a sweet breakfast, and still have nearly enough money left to rent a video game from the local rental outlet to play after I eat my massive breakfast while watching Saturday morning cartoons. I’ll take the breakfast and video game rental, thanks.

So cut the price to $5 bucks, same as most other magazines are charging.

Second, gamers like games. That’s why we game. So include a game disc that can be played on the relevant system. And for goodness’ sake, don’t load up that disc with demos we can download for free. Get us some demos we can’t get through our console dashboard. Get us some invites to game betas (Did Crackdown ever get a big boost from scoring the ticket into the Halo 3 beta – imagine what that could do for Xbox Magazine). How about a few exclusive Rock Band tracks? Even third-party software would be a welcome step up.

Third, get us some free swag and some discounts on other stuff. Most gamers would buy a magazine just for a limited-time free download of an arcade game. How about giving away some promotional hats or t-shirts for an upcoming game? A big, powerful gaming magazine should be able to get a few hundred (or thousand) to offer to either select markets or to subscribers. Wired magazine has a section of discounts for its readers. Nintendo Power could offer the same section, with discounts on games of the month or accessories of the month.

Those are my three beginning suggestions. But there are so many ways to improve the gaming magazine industry that I just don’t have the space (I hear the Internet is full now), and you don’t have the attention span for me to get into them in depth.

However, just to gloss the surface of a few more ideas: magazines should be at the very least creating a strong crossover between their websites and their print magazines, with the site and magazine working together seamlessly; radio stations are constantly holding contests to keep listeners – it should be ditto for magazines; I’d like to see more feature/collectors editions, focusing on one game, and along that same line, a yearbook for each console would likely sell well.

I admit I’m a pessimist, so even if the gaming magazine industry continues to teabag its readers, I’m sure they’ll keep on buying a crappy overpriced product.

If you’ll excuse me, I’m off to buy eggs, bacon, potatoes, and some OJ. And I think I’ll rent Battlefield: Bad Company as well.

Posted in Dr. Wylie's Revenge |