Tendo City

Full Version: R.I.P., Computer Game Magazine Demo Discs - PC Gamer US drops the disc
You're currently viewing a stripped down version of our content. View the full version with proper formatting.
So, the September issue of PCG just arrived (on that note, September issue, in early/mid July? Yeah... but anyway.), and in it, they announce some changes, including that they're upgrading to heavier, nicer paper (good) and that they're dropping the discs (not so good).

Now, I say this in general there because PCG is the last PC gaming exclusive mag publishing in the US. In Europe there probably are some PC gaming magazines which still come with demo discs, but in the US this is the last one, and it's dropped its disc now.

Now, of course, many people get CDs. For games and demos, a single CD has been near-useless for most of the last decade; while I'd subscribed for five years before that point, I stopped subscribing to PCG for many years in mid 2001 mostly because of how much thinner the magazine was getting (it's even thinner now I think, under 100 pages every month), and also because the discs now could only hold two or three demos instead of the 10-15 they had years before. I said that if they ever switched to DVDs, I'd be back.

Well, they never did, but I did resubscribe anyway last year when there was a $5 for subscriptions deal (on that note, the subscription's about to run out... I wonder if there'll be anything similar this year). I'm glad I did now, because now, even if it's not as good, I have the last issue of the PCG CD...

As for the DVD thing though, while the normal subscription never included them, they did make it so that the newsstand version came with DVDs some of the time, but subscribers continued to get CDs. Yeah, that really never made sense to me, people who subscribe get punished? But anyway, the result was that by the last year the disc had on average maybe one demo on it, and it couldn't be something major because those demos would be larger than a CD. In addition, while in all of my older PCG issues each CD came in a custom cardboard sleeve printed with art and the list of games on the disc on the back, the ones from the past year just come in a generic papersleeve. It's pretty lame, so cheap... So on those regards I can see why they'd drop the disc, it can't hold much and I assume that DVDs are just too expensive (though maybe if the mag still cost $30 a year, like it did in the '90s, instead of $20 like it does now it might be more possible... I imagine that that price would simply be too high for these days though...).

If they ever offered a DVD subscription I never read about it... I'd like to know if such a thing ever did exist, but really it should have! And still having CDs in 2010, that's just a joke. Of course though, I thought that still having CDs was kind of a joke in 2002; I had a DVD drive then, had PCG offered a DVD edition of the magazine, even for a bit more, I might have paid it; even though I did have cable and could have downloaded the stuff too (and indeed, that was one of the reasons why I stopped subscribing, though the significant page count reductions in the magazine itself (and, arguably, quality reductions as well, though I do think in quality at least it's rebounded some in more recent years, page count wise it hasn't at all), and the shrinking amount of content on the disc, were the main reasons). As I've said, the discs showed me demos and other stuff I'd probably never have found, or thought to download, on my own. For a PC gamer that's a nice thing to have I think.

But anyway, yes, as far as I know that really is how it was, and yes if I am right about that it's dumb. The only explanation I can think of is that newsstand copies sell for more (remember, that $20 or $30 is a lot less than the cost of buying all of those issues on the newsstand), so maybe that's why they put the DVDs there? But that doesn't explain why they didn't make it an option for more money, which I can't remember them ever doing, at least.

Also, apparently European PC gaming magazines often include full version games, but in the US that has always been extremely uncommon, so that's not a reason to keep including discs. US gaming mags do cost less than European ones though.

Even so though, it is sad. One of the major reasons I subscribed to PC Gamer in 1996, in addition to the big, thick size of the magazine (200-400 pages a month!) was the great demo discs, and the section in the magazine that went into detail about each demo and its controls too. It was great. The disc pages were downsized over time, along with the size of the magazine, but still, I liked having the discs...

So yes, I will miss PCG discs. I still have my five year collection of those discs from '96-01, after all, and it's fun to go through them sometimes and look at those old demos... and also, particularly earlier on (1996, pretty much), PCG had a fairly impressive demo interface, even in that age of multimedia disc interfaces -- you didn't just click on buttons and menus, but it played like a graphic adventure. You had to solve a simple little puzzle to go down to the PC Gamer Underground. Once there, you could explore the office, looking at various desks, which would have things like things to click on with little voice clips on the answering machine, or a rolodex-like thing with contact information for all the companies with demos/content on the disc, information on other magazines from the publisher, little joke bits (anyone who remembers Coconut Monkey would remember that PCG had a good sense of humor), etc. I liked that at the time. :) Later interfaces simplified things, perhaps unfortunately, but still I did like the discs.

Up through 2002, at least, PCG discs are all marked with a number, like 7-7 for Oct. 2001 for instance. The first digit is the version number of the interface it uses, and the second the issue number since that interface was first used, so that'd be the seventh issue with the seventh interface. Neat little touch.

Now, most people are going to say "who cares, just download the demos! I mean, why did the discs fade 10 years ago anyway, it's obviously because of broadband, etc". And that's true. However, I would say that having it on a disc there got me to try things that I'd probably never have bothered to download, if I had to go look up each demo individually and choose to download it; even if I wasn't going to download that demo, having it on a disc in front of me made me more likely to want to try the game. I know PCG said they will still have a downloadable supplement to replace the disc, hopefully this will keep that tradition but hopefully with a bit more content than the single-cd discs have been able to for many years now.

Anyway, I hope that PCG's changes go well. I'd like to think that there's still a place for a dedicated PC gaming magazine, even today. It's a solid magazine, too; the 5-page article this month on how the adventure game genre could be improved was pretty interesting, for example, and in last month's issue PCG refused to go for the overdone DNF-bashing and gave the game an 80%.
Given that both demo discs and game magazines are virtually obsolete in the age of high-speed internet, I guess I don't really care that much.
Great Rumbler Wrote:Given that both demo discs and game magazines are virtually obsolete in the age of high-speed internet, I guess I don't really care that much.

So much this. If there's one thing we know about ABF, though, it's his tendency to hold onto anything obsolete as long as he possibly can :D
Read my post! I talk about those things. I focus on the discs of course, but I say some about magazines themselves.
And the discs were still CDs? Lol
I know, it's completely pathetic. In Europe they've gotten DVDs, often double-sided ones, for years and years, but PCG and CGW? CDs unless it was a special one funded by some MMO or something that wanted it on a DVD. Pretty lame. I don't think our lower magazine prices entirely make up for the disparity...

As I said, I can see ditching CDs. I just wish it was in favor of DVDs instead of nothing. I give some reasons why discs are nice with magazines, even with the internet (it exposes you to things you probably wouldn't otherwise try, it gives you more product for your money, etc).

Also, I don't entirely disagree that gaming magazines are a bit dated -- remember, I didn't subscribe to any (that cost me anything) from 2002 to 2009. That's quite a while. And I only re-subscribed to PCG last summer because of the $5 subscription deal (that's the same reason I re-subscribed to Nintendo Power at the same time; I hadn't been an NP subscriber since 1997, though I had read issues sometimes at the library.)

As for the value of a magazine though, whether it's for gaming, news, or what have you, yes, the internet absolutely has hurt magazines a lot, and for some good reasons. I do still like magazines, though -- beyond just gaming mags, while I don't subscribe to them myself my mom does get Newsweek, and I read it when I'm there for sure. I like some other magazines too, like National Geographic, etc. The feel of having an actual magazine in front of you is better than reading the same article online, it really is...

And also, while this applies to gaming less because of the lower quality of the work in general, journalism is in pretty bad shape these days. The internet doesn't pay the bills, it just doesn't. Where are we supposed to get journalism from if the newspapers and magazines all lay off their staff? Websites don't have investigative journalists. Nor do many newspapers now, due to all the damage from dropping subscriptions. It's inevitable and understandable, but it is creating big holes in our media world that are not being filled.

This certainly affects serious news a lot more than gaming stuff, if just because gaming magazines have rarely been known for particularly good journalism (for good reason), but some of it does carry over I think.
Web sites CAN have investigative journalists though. Just look at some of the gaming news sites, where people actually do call developers and organize interviews. There's nothing prohibiting that for more important news. As for "paying the bills", cut the fluff. No news show needs a "situation room". Every last news report can be given in front of a simple wooden desk in front of a blue screen, no exceptions. Any news site that wants to stand out just needs to prove their worth, just like any newspaper did.

Anyway, I really don't care about video game news magazines. Their information is late compared to the internet, and videos say a lot more than any picture. As for demo disks, download them. The argument of being "exposed to games you otherwise might not try" applies equally well to demos on the front page of the big online game stores, only better because it can be updated quicker than once a month.

The internet is the future of news. As protocols allow it to be more closely intertwined and more convenient in places where radio and TV currently stand, it'll be less and less appealing to bother with the "steady feed of whatever we want to you watch/hear" method. There will still be a place for it, emergency broadcasts mostly, but heck even "up to the minute" stuff can be managed via RSS feeds. I don't currently subscribe to "feeds" myself because most of what I check up on I don't care to have a constant update on, but soon that'll change when things like official weather warning channels and presidential announcement channels get going.
Quote:As for "paying the bills", cut the fluff. No news show needs a "situation room". Every last news report can be given in front of a simple wooden desk in front of a blue screen, no exceptions. Any news site that wants to stand out just needs to prove their worth, just like any newspaper did.

Newspapers and magazines cut the "fluff" years and years ago. They've been cutting off slabs of meat ever since, gutting their reporting desks, overseas bureaus, and more. Only the very richest papers can now afford to have solid overseas desks, such as the New York Times; even major ones like the Chicago Tribune and LA Times don't anymore. And magazines... yeah, it's bad.

You don't quite understand how much trouble journalism is in because of the internet, do you?

I mean, I understand 100% why it's a problem -- I don't want to pay for news either, not when I can get it for free! And I don't really, I don't subscribe to a newspaper for now for instance, or newsmagazines (though I may someday if they're still around and I make more money). But the effects of that that is doing to the field of reporting is incontestable and very bad. Bloggers are not reporters, not really. Heck, news blogs are just reporting on reports FROM newspapers, more often than not -- and if those papers are making no money, then how can they continue to do that work? They can't. So they fire the people, and the public at large suffers.

Quote:Web sites CAN have investigative journalists though. Just look at some of the gaming news sites, where people actually do call developers and organize interviews.

I probably would agree that there's less difference between gaming website staffs and magazine staffs, if just because gaming reporting, as I said, isn't exactly that good... so yeah, this probably does have less of an impact on gaming than other things, there just wasn't anywhere near as far for it to fall. That doesn't mean that I don't think supporting a magazine like PCG isn't a good thing though, I very much do.

Quote:Anyway, I really don't care about video game news magazines. Their information is late compared to the internet, and videos say a lot more than any picture. As for demo disks, download them. The argument of being "exposed to games you otherwise might not try" applies equally well to demos on the front page of the big online game stores, only better because it can be updated quicker than once a month.

You don't read gaming magazines, do you? And on that note, have you ever read an issue of PC Gamer? Because this has nothing to do with the kind of content a magazine like PCG is about... you're right, magazines don't often break news anymore (though they do once in a while). They try to make up for that with other content; there's usually a few pages of news, but it's not the focus because lots of people will have seen that stuff already. Instead they do exclusive reveals, reviews, articles, columns, and the like -- other content that's as good or better than anything online.

First, as with all magazines, there's short letters and news sections, and previews as well. These are less important now than they used to be, sure, but magazines do sometimes still get exclusives and they're often interesting anyway.

But beyond that, for instance, PCG's columns have always been one of my favorite features about the magazine. For a while in the mid '00s they really had cut back on them severely, but they've since restored them to their former glory, and now PCG's five columns are almost always interesting. As always they cover some nonstandard things, too -- PCG still has a wargaming-focused column and a sim column (like, racing sims, flight sims, tank sims, sub sims, etc), for instance, as well as an RPG column and several others. PCG has also added an MMOs section, with several pages of content about MMOs and the like, which makes sense given the importance of the genre to PC gaming now.

And also, they have articles. As I mentioned above, for instance, the latest issue has a five page long article about graphic adventure games, what went wrong with them over the last decade-plus, and what this author thinks can and should be done with the genre. It's pretty interesting, I bet you'd find the article interesting.

And finally, of course, they have reviews, mostly of games, but also of some hardware. PCG has always reviewed a good volume of games; while something like Game Informer reviews very few games each month, almost all major titles for the PS3/360, PCG reviews titles both major and minor. They review things that IGN and the like usually would never would even cover, for instance, like, well, wargames. This issue has 14 pages of reviews (pages with text on them, there are three more with just images).

Of course I would say that a magazine is a suppliment. It's not going to be your primary news source of course, and as they are limited for space reviews will usually not be as long in a magazine as they can be online. But a good magazine can be an interesting, well worth reading product anyway. That's definitely what I think about them, at least -- even if they certainly aren't as important as they used to be, and in some ways that's a good thing (being able to get news quickly over the internet is great!), they have managed to stay relevant and interesting, I would say. At least, some of them have.

Quote:The internet is the future of news. As protocols allow it to be more closely intertwined and more convenient in places where radio and TV currently stand, it'll be less and less appealing to bother with the "steady feed of whatever we want to you watch/hear" method. There will still be a place for it, emergency broadcasts mostly, but heck even "up to the minute" stuff can be managed via RSS feeds. I don't currently subscribe to "feeds" myself because most of what I check up on I don't care to have a constant update on, but soon that'll change when things like official weather warning channels and presidential announcement channels get going.
This really doesn't have much to do with magazines, but as for other mediums while you feel that way lots of people do still watch TV shows. Yes, they'd rather watch them when they want to (understandable, having to follow their schedule is annoying), but plenty of people do still like that kind of thing...

And remember, returning to the top of this post and serious news -- news doesn't come from a vacuum. It comes from reporters paid to do their work, by news organizations who have resources. The analysis comes from similar types. How does this happen in a world where everyone reads free online news feeds? Where does the money to pay the reporters and maintain the news organizations come from? Web ads, so far, simply don't pay enough to maintain that kind of thing. Some papers now are trying to set up paywalls, like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal and others have in various forms, but we'll see if even that works... who wants to pay when you can find stuff (even if it's not as good) elsewhere online for free? The problem is, without those serious news sources, those free ones online suffer too.

Basically, the internet has completely messed up the worlds of television, radio, movies, music, videogames, news, and more, damaged all of their business models severely, and there's no clear picture of what the result is going to be...

Of course this isn't all bad, I love a lot of aspects of the internet for sure! But good or bad it is interesting to think about.
It's "messed it up", I guess, but it can ALL be done online. Every last one of those things you listed gaming magazines doing? That can, and IS, done online, right now! There are letter columns, commentary, "articles" (that's very generic, ALL of that is articles), "reveals" (you just said that reveals are done online, why are you claiming this is exclusive to magazines in the next paragraph?), and so on. Yes, I did used to read gaming magazines. I read PC Magazine too. There's nothing there that isn't also done online, and nothing there that isn't done just as well online.

It's a fact that a lot of online news sources are just regurgitators. That's also true of the printed newspaper business. 90% of everything is karp. So? As long as the ones that aren't garbage can stand out from the crowd as more reliable, less tabloid like, then they will do well. Investigative journalism can still happen. Funding can be difficult, but there are ways, and saying "I ideologically believe that I should sign up for it, but I'm too cheap to pay" isn't really saying much more than an admission of a lack of integrity. Do what you believe, or don't. If you can't afford it, that's fine, but say that. Don't try to say you being cheap is some big example of the problem when fixing that is perfectly within your power.

I'm sure the printing press destroyed the jobs of countless scribes, but people moved on and adapted. People want news. If the source dries up, they'll pay. If too many people are stealing news from others instead of contributing, it's the same as drying up. More to the point, there will always be people willing to do a deep investigation perfectly free of charge, as wikileaks can attest to. It'll be fine. This is a self-defeating prophecy, because people WANT to get information and society at large will step up to fix it one way or another, just like Y2K.
Ever since online play and all the perks of the internet have become the norm for home console systems like Xboxlive and so fourth, It seems to have drawn away a significant portion of hardcore FPS players from their traditional home of the P.C, Not only that retail stores have cut down the amount of shelf space for PC-Games or outright eliminated them all together, Is P.C gaming dieing or is it just me?
No, they all just went to Steam.
DJ -- Once again I disagree with most of what you said... I'll respond in length later.

GR - No, it's most certainly faded badly over the past decade. PC exclusives these days are mostly either MMOs or Eastern European; major North American publishers do not publish many. That, obviously, did not used to be the case at all. I think there's no doubt whatsoever that PC gaming is a pale shadow of what it was in the '90s. The current mix of console ports, MMOs, indie titles, and Eastern European games is interesting, certainly, and probably is a recovery versus where the PC market was a few years ago, but it's nothing compared to what we used to have.