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%.
So every 3-4 years another one of these movies is pumped out. What's the deal with this? It's a VERY specific idea for a "genre". I'm really sick of people switching bodies due to some tiki curse or whatever only to find out just how "hard" the other person has it.
Just once I'd like the twist ending to be that only ONE of them learns that lesson, the other person actually WAS completely right about their life being harder than the first person (let's say a citizen of Somalia changing places with a busy American business man). No seriously, if another medical drama tries to tell me "everyone has problems" as though all problems are equal and the lesson is apparently "suck it up and stop complaining"...
Posted by: etoven - 7th July 2011, 2:37 PM - Forum: Ramble City
- No Replies
So, I was listening to a report on NPR, I forget what it was about.. A little while in, one of the guest speakers Neshail Noris was interviewing happened to mention that a certain individual in a county not to far from me, was a priest, who is currently in prison, and is due to be released soon.
He was in prison for raping a baby... That's right! He raped a god damn baby!! What Tosh.O jokes about in his comedy standup the hill billies in this hell hole are already excelling at.. I'm forced to wonder how many people in Salem are in lockup for raping babies. The story wasn't even about this guy, I think it was about prison reform or something.. But, in my opinion they should have devoted the hole half hour to talking about this freak of nature.
The retards in this hell hole make me so god damn sick to my stomach the thought that we're the same species makes me want to end it all.
Yes, really, at age 47 he's a player/manager for the Yuma independent league team. I hadn't heard of this until I saw this article, but I thought it was really interesting. Jose Canseco was one of the more interesting baseball players of the late '80s to the '90s. I always kind of liked him. Then of course he was one of the poster children for steroid use, but on the other hand he also wrote that book exposing the whole thing and naming names of steroid users, a pretty brave thing to do. He now claims that because of that book he's been blacklisted out of pro baseball, which is possible. I'm sure a lot of people didn't like what he had to say there...
As for what he's doing now, it's a little sad that someone who was a great player is now reduced to this, but if he can still do it, and is still in the game, why not?
Either way, I'd say people who are baseball fans should read the article, it's kind of interesting.
Sacred 7 01 - This is Sunrise shonen mecha. That's about all you need to know. Sacred 7 is very shonen, and above all very Sunrise. The hero is a guy who's somewhere on the borderline between depressed and being a jerk. He's a school student, and everyone except for this one girl is scared of him. He has special powers, and doesn't like that because he hurt a bunch of people with them once. But this girl doesn't believe he's dangerous, so she asks him to join her school club.
First, our MC refuses the rich girl's request for him to fight for good with his powers. Then, villains attack! And oh no, the girl who asked him to join that club is in the area of the attack! The monters are stone Medusas, who can turn people into stone and destroy stuff. Fighting them are an army of girls in maid dresses led by a very rich girl and her butler who is also a strong fighter and can drive a mech. Yes indeed, this is anime, bad anime, what else could you have expected? (That this kind of thing is predictable says some things about anime today I think... but anyway.) Anyway, the hero decides to go save the girl on his scooter. When he arrives his powers go out of control and he destroys one stone monster but goes crazy. The rich girl stops him (somewhat risky move) and then turns him into a costumed superhero with a long red scarf, so he can fight the monsters without going nuts. And so he does. End of episode.
Overall, it wasn't very good. It wasn't the worst thing ever, but it was quite bland and generic for the genre. Its main unique feature of sorts, I guess, is that there were some in this episode, and we can surely expect much more of in the future, Sunrisey antics. ... Problem is, that's probably more a bad thing than a good one... :)
At least there isn't some conspiracy thing, yet, the people in the city clearly noticed the monsters. I wonder where the story's going to go with that, if anywhere.
(Don't ask me anyone's names, I don't remember any of them except for Wakana, the girl he rescued, whose name I just managed to remember. They aren't especailly memorable, and the show's more about destruction, brooding, ridiculousness, and fighting than it is anything else anyway.)
