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From: JAB <noway@nochance.com>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action
Subject: Re: Goodbye Game Informer
Date: Mon, 5 Aug 2024 09:15:43 +0100
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
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On 04/08/2024 16:54, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
> 
> Probably most people won't care, but "GameInformer" -the long running
> computer game magazine- shuttered its business the other day.
> 
> Which probably shouldn't be a surprise; after all, who reads (print)
> magazines anymore? (although, like most publishers, they relied more
> on digital subscriptions these days). More tellingly, "Game Informer"
> was a division of the "GameStop" retail chain, which in recent years
> has been better known for its stock antics than its retail
> performance. The chain has been struggling, and that "Game Informer"
> has survived this long is, frankly, sort of amazing.
> 
> What was surprising was how /good/ "Game Informer" was. While it
> didn't do any hard-hitting journalism, it still had well-written
> articles and reviews that weren't just puff-pieces designed to get you
> to buy the next game (which is what you'd expect from a magazine
> funded by a video-game store). Amongst the surviving 'old-school'
> video-game magazine publishers, they were probably the best.
> 
> And while the likes of online publishing -Kotaku, GamesIndustry,
> PCGamesN and the rest- have taken up the slack, there was a lot to be
> said about a publisher who actually still put out printed material. It
> implied a reliability and soundness that you often don't get from the
> more fly-by-night online offerings. They were a standard baseline
> against which you could measure the competitors.
> 
> So it's sort of sad to see them go. Even if I was part of the problem
> that led to their demise (I let my subscription lapse years ago...
> although that was mostly because the only way to renew the
> subscription was by physically going to a Gamestop store).
> 
> Fare thee well, "Game Informer". You weren't great, but you were good
> enough, and your passing is just another sign of the passing of the
> golden age of computer gaming.
> 

I do kinda miss actual magazines and still have fond memories of popping 
into the newsagents during my paper round to see if the latest issue of 
Crash* was in yet. When I finally got a PC I did buy a magazine now and 
again but certainly not consistently. Now you can get so much of the 
information online, why pay for it.

*For those that don't know it was an iconic magazine for the Specky 48k 
which ditched the whole pretence that home computers were for 
educational purposes and not for playing games.