http://www.gamecenter.com/News/Item/0,3,0-5223,00.html?st.gc.fd.gn.i

"Gamecenter is closing shop at the end of this week, wrapping up a fun-filled, four-and-a-half-year run. We're still working on a couple of feature stories to be published by week's end, so don't delete your bookmark just yet."

My game news links list in my browser is starting to look rather thin.

Holy shit! Wow. Can't they just put up porn links, or something? I hate to see Gamecenter go! They had the good sense to hire great writers at least, like Tom and Mark.

Hey.. wait a minute. Now I know what the problem is. It's these damn all-star writers and their giant salaries. ;) WE NEED A SALARY CAP!

wumpus http://www.gamebasement.com

Ack! No offense to Gamespot, but if I had to choose between the two, I would rather have Gamecenter stick around.

>>Holy shit! Wow. Can't they just put up porn links, or something? I hate to see Gamecenter go! They had the good sense to hire great writers at least, like Tom and Mark.

Hey, at least give some credit where credit's due. We at good old Computer Games are single-handedly responsible for Tom Chick's existence. Erm, as a writer. Or something. I think we gave him one of his first assignments.

And Mark Asher only writes today because I pissed him off so many times on Usenet. I think after enough times of me telling him to put his money where his mouth was when the accusations flew of all of the bribery and such being thrown around the industry (I still missed out on it all... damn), he started leeching work from websites.

All this Gamecenter closing means is that I'll get even more resumes and requests from suddenly scrambling freelancers.

Hey freelancers, if you're reading this PITCH US SOME FEATURE STORIES. We get sick of having to develop any and all feature articles.

"All this Gamecenter closing means is that I'll get even more resumes and requests from suddenly scrambling freelancers."

Heh -- no kidding. You're lucky you're in Vermont, otherwise they'd be waiting in your office in the morning.

Tom is pretty insulated from the website shakeup due to the amount of magazine work he gets. This affects me more than it does him.

There was a big round of investing in the web, and it looks now as if many of the markets for freelancers were never really viable once the VC and IPO money was spent. It's odd though. Less than a year ago the website scene was booming. Now it's going belly-up. I wouldn't be surprised if we close this year with just two or three commercial sites left.

>>I wouldn't be surprised if we close this year with just two or three commercial sites left.

Which is probably all the market can really sustain. There will still be fansites, which is terrific, but they'll no longer be moneymaking ventures (which they probably had no right being).

Funny, a year ago everyone was predicting the death of all the print magazines... hmm.

>>Funny, a year ago everyone was predicting the death of all the print magazines... hmm.

And PC gaming as well... ;)

BenT

"Funny, a year ago everyone was predicting the death of all the print magazines... hmm."

Now now, be nice. A sportsmanlike winner doesn't gloat. ;)

For the record I subscribe to cdmag. I love the depth and quantity of magazine coverage, but reading about stuff that's already two months old isn't exactly thrilling, either. What is the current lead time? I hope we can get that down as low as technology will allow..

wumpus http://www.gamebasement.com

---

Quote:

Funny, a year ago everyone was predicting the death of all the print magazines... hmm.

---

Bah... that should be "I never feel like reading the mag takes away from the content I get on CGO and vice versa."

--Dave

Argh! That's bad news. Gamecenter was my second most visited Gaming site (after QuarterToThree, of course ). They just had great contents and an easy to navigate lay-out.

I, too, would have preferred Gamecenter to survive over Gamespot. :-(

C'est la vie...

Mark: Have you started looking for a new home for your excellent Gamespin column?

>>Now now, be nice. A sportsmanlike winner doesn't gloat. ;)

If I were gloating it would have been something like, "It's about time these websites died." They were usually the ones gloating about having more readers, being first with stuff, etc. I was always like, "Well, we'll see."

>>What is the current lead time? I hope we can get that down as low as technology will allow..

It's two months, and there's little that can be done to speed that up because physically printing and distributing a magazine takes time. It's actually in your hands about three weeks after we send it to the printers.

>>Do you think that the web has bolstered the readership of the print magazine?

That's hard to say. I think the web, in general, has made more people aware of gaming. Whether it's our site generating readers or just there being more potential readers is pretty hard to gauge.

>>Now the big question is, when do we get to see the new site (and new URL?)

Soon (I believe). Not my area. You will see a new, redesigned CGM in a couple of months.

>>I'm guessing it also has to be cheaper to pay one staff for content made available in both mediums, right?

Sure, it defrays costs in an accounting sense to use people for both. Same for freelance budgets.

Et Tu CNet?

If new forms of ad-based revenue don't materialize (and that might not happen until broadband significantly penetrates the market) then i think hybrid subscription/fan sites will start to take off. Already fan sites have surpassed technically all but a few mainstream media outlets, and typically attract the best and brightest rising stars of their genre or specific game, which tends to create attractiveness that feeds back on itself and makes the line between commercial and fan very tenuous already. Witness
www.infoceptor.com
aok.heavengames.com
www.mrfixitonline.com

All professionally done with far more content that mainstream sites: and more because they allow fans to contribute without reimbursement, whereas mainstream sites require payment for every two-bit article published by every hack writer. This causes stagnation at mainstream sites and makes interacting with the current community difficult at best, so gauging currents and eddies in the games' community is almost impossible for a mainstream reporter.

So what needs to develop are websites that require payment up front, subscriptions in a word, while still allowing a great deal of content and published material to arise from the users themselves, without reimbursment. Most gamers would probably have little problem with this sort of setup except that subscrition based sites quickly become mutually exclusive, even at 1$ per month.

>>>If I were gloating it would have been something like, "It's about time these websites died." They were usually the ones gloating about having more readers, being first with stuff, etc. I was always like, "Well, we'll see."

Considering who owns CGM/CGO/Chips&Bits, there's no way anyone there would be gloating. My prediction and hope is that theglobe.com will go bankrupt and divest all its decent game properties to someone else. Amen! I told you I hold a grudge Mark....


- JF

Uh, is that James Fudge who used to have the byline on all of the CGO news? I just noticed after reading this post that there is no byline on any of the news at CGO, anymore.

Grudges?! What happened here?

--Dave

>>My prediction and hope is that theglobe.com will go bankrupt and divest all its decent game properties to someone else. Amen! I told you I hold a grudge Mark....

It's a lovely thing to hope a company goes bankrupt, because you're essentially hoping people will be out of work, families will lose their houses or not be able to feed their kids, lovely things like that.

It shows good character to hope for things like this, and is sure to impress current, and future, employers when saying things like that in a public forum.

>>>Uh, is that James Fudge who used to have the byline on all of the CGO news? I just noticed after reading this post that there is no byline on any of the news at CGO, anymore.

No grudge with CGM/CGO. All the folks there are great! Just don't care for theglobe.com :) we'll leave it at that.

The new Computer Games Online site (with the new URL, www.cgonline.com) will be up "real soon now," probably within the month. It's a lot of work to get all of the crap up and running that you need for the back end, ads, databases, etc. and even now we're probably going to have to do a lot of hand work in the transition. But it'll be worth it, I think, because you'll get the same content as before (at least; we want to add stuff) with a much more modern and attractive (and friendly--no frames!) look.

Robert, I'm looking forward to the new site. I could live with the frames in the current one, but I resent how I get "trapped" and can't use my back button to leave the site. That's my biggest beef.

Wendilus, no I haven't found a home for Game Spin. There aren't too many homes left at this point.

Vostok, the problem with subscription models is that they just haven't worked in the past. People just feel like they shouldn't have to pay for content on the Internet. Those fansites you mentioned are excellent, but if they started charging most people would go elsewhere.

This is depressing. In my net travails, I perused the other gaming sites, but always came back to gc. Game Spin was by far my favorite column.

In re: subscription models, I agree you have to get people past the mental block on "pay per view" Internet content. But I would also argue that subscription models will always fail as long as they are still a pain in the ass. I don't want to have to sign up for each web site that might want to charge me 1/3 cent per page viewed. For instance, there could be a central "I-bank" which you can (anonymously?) deposit money into and silently withdraw from as you are viewing content.

The big advantage of e-content delivery is that its cheap and easily accessible to the public. The biggest disadvantage to the consumer is that they can't kick back in the La-Z-Boy to view it. The biggest disadvantage to the producer is that there are few good technical solutions to the copyright problem. Surely the big media publishers can solve this problem!

If you can find people with disposable cash who will look at what you put on your site every day (and who will miss it if they can't), you can sell them subscriptions.

dailyradar.com
gamefaqs.com

If any of these guys said, "Look, we need $20 a year from all of you to continue doing what we're doing," they'd have thousands of subscribers overnight. They could keep the banner ads too, because they're not bothering anybody.

Well for subscription i don't think completely blocking out users would ever be a good or marketable idea; better to provide some viewable public webpages, not only to lure customers but reassure them they are buying quality information. And pay-per-page would be insane and unworkable; you would probably subscribe in monthly segments to gain full access to all content available.

This all falls apart however once people start having to using credit cards just to visit popular game sites, and the more credit card numbers floating around on less than secure sites the greater the potential for fraud and theft. Probably what would happen is that very large, respected public providers of "e-money" would provide an intermediate between the site and customer so also to mitigate some of the redundancy of entering all those cc#s over and over, and also to provide smaller sites respectable security which they probably could not afford.

"It's two months, and there's little that can be done to speed that up because physically printing and distributing a magazine takes time. It's actually in your hands about three weeks after we send it to the printers. "

Hey-- I've got an idea! How about if we distributed the magazine on-line instead of waiting to print it, transport it on trucks, distribute it via US mail, etc? Oh wait, never mind. ;)

Two month lead time is a bummer though. As I said, I do enjoy the in-depth coverage and exclusives.. but I really feel like the cat's out of the bag by the time the magazines get to anything.

wumpus http://www.gamebasement.com

>>Two month lead time is a bummer though. As I said, I do enjoy the in-depth coverage and exclusives.. but I really feel like the cat's out of the bag by the time the magazines get to anything.

Well, that assumes the first information is the best information. I'd prefer information later if it was of higher quality (i.e. the last preview is always the best preview), but readers like yourself say you want it faster.

"Well, that assumes the first information is the best information. I'd prefer information later if it was of higher quality (i.e. the last preview is always the best preview), but readers like yourself say you want it faster. "

Two months is a LONG time, though, don't you think? Even a few weeks would be okay, but 8 weeks? Sheesh.

Those damn irritating atoms. Bytes, baby, bytes!

wumpus http://www.gamebasement.com

"It's a lot of work to get all of the crap up and running that you need for the back end, ads, databases, etc. "

Imagine that! A database driven web site. Can't imagine what possible use anyone would have for something that that.*

wumpus http://www.gamebasement.com

* This post dedicated to Mr. Mark Asher ;)

>>Two months is a LONG time, though, don't you think? Even a few weeks would be okay, but 8 weeks? Sheesh.

You're right. That preview of a game coming out in December will be old news in eight weeks.

"You're right. That preview of a game coming out in December will be old news in eight weeks. "

Considering it might have been cancelled, or other big news announced in the two months it takes to go to print, yes. Spin it however you want, but eight weeks is the achilles heel of the print media. Sometimes it may matter, sometimes it may not, but it's a weakness.

wumpus http://www.gamebasement.com

>>Considering it might have been cancelled, or other big news announced in the two months it takes to go to print, yes. Spin it however you want, but eight weeks is the achilles heel of the print media. Sometimes it may matter, sometimes it may not, but it's a weakness.

Sure, but how about a website is full of fleeting information? If you don't see the news today it'll be scrolled off the page tomorrow. And if you're interested in that game you may type it into a search engine and pull up an old preview in an archive, which will be full of inaccurate information.

Speed of information is undeniably the web's greatest strength; however, it comes at a cost. If you're going to be a web news guy, you're almost required to do it on a daily basis or you'll miss most of the major news events.

Alternately in print you read about something one month, it gets cancelled or changed, and lo and behold next month there's a story about how it's canceled or changed. So if that's your main source of news, there's really no problem with that delay.

"Alternately in print you read about something one month, it gets cancelled or changed, and lo and behold next month there's a story about how it's canceled or changed. So if that's your main source of news, there's really no problem with that delay. "

What about being scooped?

Eight weeks is a long time for an article to sit quiescent. If, by the time it's published, I've already read four different web-based articles on the same game, where is the value? Sure, the magazine coverage might be a bit more in depth, maybe some exclusive screenshots, but am I really learning anything I didn't know already?

Exclusives will become the name of the game in that case. But how many developers are willing to lock down their media coverage to a small, select group of magazines and ignore web coverage altogether to cover that eight week span?

wumpus http://www.gamebasement.com

>>>Exclusives will become the name of the game in that case. But how many developers are willing to lock down their media coverage to a small, select group of magazines and ignore web coverage altogether to cover that eight week span?


A lot of them. Game Developers know that if they go with a magazine, chances are that they'll get a more refined piece done on their product -- esp a mag like CGM. For instance, take a look at this month's issue (March 2001). There's an eight page (i think) feature on Dungeon Siege by Cindy Yans.
It isn't a great piece because it has a bunch of nice eye candy (although it's sweet looking!), it's a great piece because magazines hire talented people like Cindy (and Tom and Mark, and that Dave fellow) to take the time to really look at the game they are writing about.

it's simply a question of quality over quantity....


JF

"Alternately in print you read about something one month, it gets cancelled or changed, and lo and behold next month there's a story about how it's canceled or changed. So if that's your main source of news, there's really no problem with that delay."

The problem is when your readers are also website readers. Then the news in the magazine does tend to be pretty stale.

I don't think there's any way to avoid this. Websites are going to win on timeliness and depth of coverage of news.

For me it's just one part of a magazine I don't really read now, like the hardware section. The other parts interest me though.

>>Eight weeks is a long time for an article to sit quiescent. If, by the time it's published, I've already read four different web-based articles on the same game, where is the value?

That can be a problem but in exchange for the publicity of a cover, publishers are willing to withhold information specifically for print coverage. Where did you read about the Dark Elves of WarCraft III first? In the magazine, because Blizzard refused to give out information to anyone.

>>Sure, the magazine coverage might be a bit more in depth, maybe some exclusive screenshots, but am I really learning anything I didn't know already?

That's a failure of writers and editors to come up with interesting angles that go beyond the standard feature list.

I'd argue that our WarCraft III story went beyond the standard article by offering all sorts of secondary material, i.e. histories of the series, histories of the WarCraft universe, etc. You'd probably have to go to five different websites to find all of that information, but there it was all in one place, presented in an appealing fashion.

Also, our recent Mech cover story had articles on the history of BattleTech and some other stuff in addition to a preview of MechCommander 2.

Websites COULD do this but most don't, because they tend to be fixated on the one game being covered.

>>Exclusives will become the name of the game in that case. But how many developers are willing to lock down their media coverage to a small, select group of magazines and ignore web coverage altogether to cover that eight week span?

All of them. A magazine cover is worth a lot more than any individual web preview. Again, you look at a month of coverage versus a day on a website. You get to put it in front of buyers and say, "Look at this media coverage" and they'll buy in more copies of your game. And let's not discount the "10-page" story in terms of cost: an ad page costs $10,000. That's $100,000 worth of publicity right there. (And yes, you get the same impact on the web in terms of page views and impressions when people read the article.)

Also, it's an ego thing; do you think anyone is as excited when they get a preview on Gamespot, when they're one of the thousand previews per year, as when you're one of 12 covers/year... that's a select group.

I have to agree with Steve. There's really no comparison between the level of interest on the part of game companies over being in the magazines or on a website. Website coverage is still kind of a dime a dozen sort of thing. It's important to the game companies, but they don't have to work too hard to get it.

Didn't read the whole thread yet, but...

On Mark's "3am" update where he listed all these major game sites and the house ads they were running, the forgot us! Good 'ol Computer Games Online!

I just refreshed our front page four times. The ads were:
Fallout Tactics
House ad for Chips & Bits
Fallout Tactics again
House ad for the magazine

You guys are different though. House ads for the mag and Chips and Bits are one of the reasons you exist. The site's helping to market those properties which have a revenue stream outside of web ads.

What does running a house ad for UGO do? Ok, they sell stuff too, but they and Snowball are still startups in online commerce. Chips and Bits has been around forever, it seems like.

Anyway, both UGO and Snowball (IGN) seemed to have identical business plans: Rapidly grow the network without bothering to grow corresponding ad sales.

Back to the "I'd rather have Gamecenter over Gamespot" comment from earlier, I would have to agree. It's funny though. A few years back, I would visit Gamecenter only as a last resort. This may have been before they got the great columnists like Mark & Gamer X, whoever he may be, but I just didn't agree with many of the reviews, etc.

Gamespot, on the other hand, was my game new mecca. I LOVED it. I doubt there was a day that went by (when I had net access) that I didn't check it at least once or twice. That all changed during this past summer when they decided to upgrade the site.

Or, as I call it, BROADBANDIZE the site.

It got to the point that I had to wade through 5 different pages just to read a review AND the main page took about 3 minutes to load on my browser. At home, with my DSL connection, the change meant nothing... but as I had just started my new job and had nothing but a lowly 56K modem at work, this meant that what used to be a quick peek at the latest game news now turned into a waiting game.

Not only this, but I think that there was either a mass exodus of the talented reviewers & columnists from Gamespot or someone brought a home lobotomy kit to the office one day... the quality of the reviews began to go down the toilet, reviewers harped on insignificant details that really were a small part of the overall game (yet tried to claim objectivity) and just generally started to bug me.

Not fun. So I tried Gamecenter again out of sheer frustration, and voila! There was the good ol' Gamespin column... my Daily Dose of Gamer X... pretty non-hype based news... and the reviews were less than 8 pages long and had some kind of basis in reality!

So, long story short... I became a Gamecenter junkie again (actually, I'm now more of a Gamerankings.com junkie) so I'm sad to see it go. Gamespot HAS cleaned up its act a bit in the last few months and I don't mind going there now, but I don't know what will be my main source of game news now.

CGO is a great site... but I hated the revamp w/ the frames a year or two ago and haven't been back. It just took too long to wade through the site.

I'm looking forward to the new CGO, though I have no idea what it will look like.

I always thought Gamecenter did a good job with the news. You'd often find more in-depth stories there. I used to write a lot of them and I always made it a rule to contact the company and get additional information taht wasn't in the press release.

I tend to hit the news portals most of the time now -- Blues, Stomped, Evil Avatar, VE. They have too much news though. I'd like a site that filtered out some of the marginal stuff.

For this site we know we can't compete with other sites for breadth of coverage, so for the news we just trust our instincts and post things that interest us and hope that people visiting the site find them interesting as well.

"For this site we know we can't compete with other sites for breadth of coverage, so for the news we just trust our instincts and post things that interest us and hope that people visiting the site find them interesting as well."

You've been doing a great job so far. It's really too bad the pay-per-visit market had to collapse just as Q23 was getting up and running. God knows I'd be making you guys a few bucks a week with the number of times I drop by here to read the news and check out the message board (it's nice to have a place to talk about the industry seriously with the typical "Shut up, you suck!" posts that show up at a lot of places).

"It's really too bad the pay-per-visit market had to collapse just as Q23 was getting up and running."

That's what really kills me. Tom and I and a couple of others who eventually dropped out had discussed this site for months and months before we ever got it going. And then BANG!

Anyway, we had PopTop and Gathering willing to support us with some advertising this month, and we have a couple of other advertisers interested for the following months, so it looks like we can cover our expenses, which is nice.

So just tell your friends to drop by so we can get our traffic up. That will help us get our rates up a bit.

Grim news.

Any chance that GameSpot will pick up some of the staff? Or that Game Spin will continue on Qt3?

Peter

Gamespot isn't planning on expanding their group of current freelancers. Game Spin may continue somewhere. I've had a couple of nibbles. I just have to decide what I want to do.