Saturday, February 19, 2005

Online vs. Print

A post at www.damnedmachines.com lists reasons that print supposedly sucks. Their number one reason is this:

"This point has been brought up already, multiple times. You can try to keep selling a magazine to people who don't realize that sites like GameSpot do exactly what you do and do it better or you can realize that you, your writers and your audience are growing older. ... Where are the articles on people using DDR for weight loss? On couples going on virtual dates in World of Warcraft? On the difficulties of gaming while parenting? On people who quit their jobs to game? A day in the life of a MMORPG GM? On the weirdos working on Sociolotron? On industry gossip? There's a million ideas out there like this."

While it's true that the gaming magazines need to move toward covering the culture more than just the games, I don't see the internet sites writing these stories, either. Yes, there may be personal accounts of such issues; but researched, investigative articles on these topics aren't to be found on the internet, either.

They go on to "liveblog" EGM quite critically, a truly misguided choice - of all the gaming magazines out there, EGM is trying the hardest to move the industry into the mainstream. They have the most non-game ads, they expanded their "Press Start" section about the culture to almost half the magazine, and they bring in guest writers every issue to report on trends.

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