Another fairly big site is biting the dust. www.fandom.com is closing down for good may 10th. Sections of their site are devoted to gaming and gaming related things like pokemon. No offical annoucement but one section spilled the beans...


http://www.fandom.com/smilinJackRuby/Editorial.asp?action=page&type_id=220270&obj_id=269574&cat_id=222953&sub_id=0
"As some of you know, Fandom`s been on the ropes for a little while now and we recently received word that the site would be pretty much going down as of May 10th. It`s been a valiant fight this past month to "keep hope alive," but now it looks like it`s going away. "

If Fandom.com can't make it, that's a bad sign for smaller sites. Fandom should be an ideal site for making money from sales of comic books, graphic novels, action figures, movies, and just all the fan-related stuff.

By the end of the year there may not be much left, just sites that are run as hobbies and sites that are supported by corporations and are run at a loss.

CNET's announcing quarterly results May 1st. It will be interesting to see if they meet their projections. I'm sure they were projecting a loss, but if the loss is greater than anticipated, who knows what they'll do?

Interesting:

http://www.netslaves.com/comments/987770689.shtml

UGH
Why the hell can't I have 60 million bucks to burn? For Christ's sake.

Re: Netslaves

Wow, that's brutal and bleak.

We pay for our montly content with a single ad page in any given month.

Actually, one ad page probably pays for the all the mag's monthly content and probably all the content & production costs for the website, too.

All the rest of our costs are delivery, right?--including printing & shipping and stuff for the magazine, marketing & ad sales, and bandwidth/server costs for the site.

How many people must Salon have working for them if they're burning over $2 mil a QUARTER on production costs? The site isn't THAT great or big, damn.

They probably spend a lot of money sending their people on different assignments or whatnot. I still can't imagine anyone spending that much money.

They get A-list writers, which is why the site, editorially speaking, is so good. How much is Garrison Keillior (sp?) getting to be their weekly advice columnist? Seeing as how he's, like, famous and all, probably a lot. They're probably paying thousands of bucks per article.

"Actually, one ad page probably pays for the all the mag's monthly content and probably all the content & production costs for the website, too."

Are you sure? I'm guessing a single page ad is $15,000, tops, and might be less. That covers the freelance articles and salaries of all the full-time content producers?

>>Are you sure? I'm guessing a single page ad is $15,000, tops, and might be less. That covers the freelance articles and salaries of all the full-time content producers?

A full-page ad is considerably less on average. I think the rate card might be $10K, but I'm told no one actually pays that. As I said, that covers the freelance budget, and that's about it, mainly because I make $250,000/year like the EIC of Salon. Uh huh, right...

Jesus... should I get my diploma in Audiovisual communications, or just go for the gusto and get a journalism degree?

Tom, Steve was kidding. You probably know that, but just in case.

There were a golden couple of years where writers made good money due to all the coin being tossed at the Internet. Things seemed to have normalized again and those $225,000 editorial positions at places like Salon are disappearing.

And when I say good money, it's all relative. Good money for freelancers isn't anywhere close to $225k. I did get paid $900 by CNET for writing some 1500 word previews, though. I considered that good money. CNET was a nice cash cow for the freelancers that were lucky enough to get regular work. Other game sites hated CNET for that reason -- they drove up freelance rates.

Now a 1500 word preview would probably go for $500-600, tops, if you could find someone to pay you for it in the first place.

Good god Tom!
Don't get a journalism degree for the money!
I mean, it's possible to make a great deal of money from writing but the greater hurdle is actually making a *living* doing it.

I'd recommend getting the AudioVisual Com degree (unless newswriting is in your blood). AVCom is a good place to fall back on and the only hurdle I had with my straight up Communications Degree was for my first journalism job (that obit thing). After that, all that really matters is your portfolio.

-Andrew

Heh, yeah I got that much. I'd consider 900 bucks for an article VERY good money - that would cover my bills for the month.

hehe I was just about to post about Daily Radar buying it.

So it looks like we'll be left with Game Spy and Gamespot by the time its over.

Yeah, GameSpy and Gamespot are it. Gamepower may be fairly secure, but it's not really a major site.

I think by the end of the year it will be GameSpy, Gamespot, and the magazines. And who knows about GameSpy and Gamespot? If CNET continues to lose money anything's possible and I have no idea if GameSpy makes or loses money.

The problem is that no one will invest in these Internet properties anymore, so if they continue to operate at a loss the plug may have to be pulled. CNET has a lot of money, but they also have stockholders.

Pretty wild news.

Er, I didn't mean to imply that CGO would go away. I think of that as part of the magazine, for some reason. Sorry about that CGO folks.

Wow, no more Daily Radar. I assume the Next-Gen site (which was sorta abandoned to make room for DR) will still exist? After all, if CGO and cdmag are complimentary..

wumpus http://www.gamebasement.com

Dunno Wumpus,
The email I saw said pretty plainly that all Imagine online content is scrapped.

Also, they just canned the guy who was just hired to run the Maximum PC website. Maximum PC magazine is still around and profitable....

I'm not sure what the business model is for running a website that's affliated with a magazine. It makes sense, sort of, but how do you make money from it? Do you just write off the expense of the website as an ongoing commercial for the magazine? I have no idea.

In CGO's case, it's also an advertising vehicle for Chips and Bits.

I understand from Ars Tech is going to be pulled as well. Of course I'm just reporting a rumor I hard from the shack

It wouldn't surprise me if Gamespy is done by the end of the year. They are, as my ex-boss at Mplayer said, "about 5 years behind the rest Mplayer as far as money goes." I don't know about GameSpot, but what Mark said makes sense.
I think it will be the magazines with full control over the net, since they have an alternate source of income.

Mark said:

"I'm not sure what the business model is for running a website that's affliated with a magazine. It makes sense, sort of, but how do you make money from it."

The idea is that you don't have to. The website can viably serve as a promotional tool for the magazine (and if you sell a few ads, all the better).

Really the site and the magazine are one and the same--it's all the same staff running both, and they share most (not all) content, which means that the cost of running the website is actually quite low.

{Shock horror} I might actually have to subscribe to a paper magazine again and put up with 2 - 3 month old news.

I can also imagine Usenet becoming popular once again.

Are the days of dialup BBS'ing coming back ? I might have to fire up my old Remote Access and Bluewave programs again !!

If BBSes come back, I'm there man. :) Still got mine on backup.
BTW the Dailyradar thing is all true. go to their site to see the farwell

Hah, check out the PCXL page, too.

Psssttt, this is all part of Quarter to Three's master plan to take over all gaming news on the Net! The next targets are Blues News and Voodoo Extreme! Oh wait... someone's walking over here... gotta run!...

It says..

"We had a standing bet. Tens of thousands of people emailed us after we closed PCXL. They told us that if we brought it back in any form, they'd pay for it -- pay even more for it than before. We knew it wasn't true. So, just to prove the point, we brought it back. You didn't pay for it. Now cram it.
Love,
The staff of PCXL "

They were open not even a week. Exactly what were they expecting? Also thetens of thousands of people wanted the gaming magazine pcxl that featured games, humor, and pg rated pictures of attractive woman. NOT some web site called PCXL that featured a watered down version of Husler humor.

Ah, the PCXL guys didn't mean it. It was just a parting shot. Most people didn't even know the page was up, and for those who visited it, there was nothing to sample. No one's going to subscribe sight unseen.

I can't believe both Daily Radar AND PCXL are gone. Now where am I going to go to read a hastily written article about games followed by an in-depth feature to convice me I'd really like to fuck Natalie Portman?

Oh yeah.

Hey,
Let's not forget people lost their jobs here.

Some even lost their columns.

I mean, there but for the grace of whatnot go us all.

-Andrew
PS: Not that I'm immune to the obvious shadenfreuden temptation as well....

Yeah, I'm just picking on 'em.

Of course people lost their jobs. And that's never really a good thing. I know a couple of the guys over there and they're nice guys.

But the product...the product just wasn't that great. They were the brunt of many jokes about the quality of games websites, and in most cases, deservedly so. Mabye it was the management. Maybe it was the 95% of the edit staff over there I've never met in my life. Maybe it was the apparent concern with putting stuff UP rather than making sure it's GOOD. After all, it seems like that works for UPN.

Of course, when UPN's shows all get canned before their 3rd season, people will lose their jobs. And I'll still make fun of UPN.

I figure, hey, if there's any time to pick on DR and PXCL, it's now. What harm can you do? They've closed up shop already! =)

I'm not going to argue with you about the quality of Daily Radar. But the site did feature some good stuff. Stuff that got buried or, worse, ignored by people prejudiced (understandably) by the rest of the site.

My weekly column, "Andrew's Views", ran 53 issues (each issue only linked for a stupidly short 24 hour period) and my other column, "Beatdown", got it's start there before amassing a much larger following at Sharky Extreme (sadly canceled when they killed the Games dept). AV was a good column, with a loyal audience, which never got it's due over there. Well, that isn't true I guess. When they froze the entire freelance budget they kept paying me for it (monthly), but still. They let some good columns fade away much too quickly.

Another case in point was Tom's "Out There" column work. It was great, the Showbiz site felt hollow when it disappeared and his movie reviews were the best and bravest that site ever saw.

Sadly, the editors frequently and intentionally targetted the lowest common denominator. I think they squandered their credibility with their Quake 3 vs. Unreal Tournament debacle. "Let's launch the site by showing how biased and out of touch our staff is!"

Most DR content can best be described as banal but their freelancers often weren't. That got lost in the Daily Radar bashing I think....

Mainly I mourn the site because I hate unemployed editors. They ply their contacts and steal work from us freelancers. It's safer for everyone if their contained somewhere.
;>

-Andrew
PS: UPN does indeed suck.
PPS: Y'know, I still miss OGR Jason...
PPS: Andrew's Views and Beatdown are now available! http://www.andrewsbub.com/column.htm,http://www.andrewsbub.com/column.htm for samples.

What the HELL happened with that link?

"It's safer for everyone if their (sic) contained somewhere."

Repeat after me: it's always nice to have an editor.

From DR's own top ten reasons Daily Radar will no longer publish:
"1. We are bias."

That is either an existential statement, or truly, "It's always nice to have an editor."

"I can't believe both Daily Radar AND PCXL are gone. Now where am I going to go to read a hastily written article about games followed by an in-depth feature to convice me I'd really like to fuck Natalie Portman?"

I know I have my moments of rudeness, but this is just crass. I winced reading that. :P

wumpus http://www.gamebasement.com

"But the product...the product just wasn't that great."

Unfortunately for all the remaining websites, the quality of DR is irrelevant. They did what they were supposed to do from a business perspective -- put up content and generate traffic. That they did that and were unable to be profitable presents a rather chilling example for the remaining websites that have to become profitable to survive.

If you go to their page and see the list of people saying thank you, there are 33 names, and that doesn't include Chris Kramer who just left days ago. That's a big clue as to why they couldn't make it. That's a ton of overhead to carry. Compare that to Blue's News which is three people (four if you count the web programmer who does stuff for them now and then).

You can also compare those 33 to Gamepower, which is two editors and I think two other production people. I doubt Avault has many people, and I know they don't pay their writers much of anything.

Thirty-three people is just too many for this kind of market with little advertising revenue to be had. I am a bit surprised that they didn't try to slash their payroll and keep the site going, though. If the market turns around, they'd be in a good position. That Imagine was willing to just shutter the site probably means they don't forsee a turnaround in the market anytime soon.

I liked Daily Radar. More so when it first launched but it was still an interesting read. I will miss them but not much. Sort of like Gamecenter. I liked it when it first launched but towards the end all I was reading was Mark's column.

I miss is some of the old old sites. Intelligent Gamer online (igonline.com), Online Gaming Review (ogr), and PC Multimedia Entertainment (pcme.com).

What I can't understand are peoples' devotion to sites like Blues and Voodooextreme. They are just news reposted. They generated very little content. Which is fine and I stop by every day because its easier to go to Blue then 50 other sites but if those other sites go away, what are they going to repost?

"From DR's own top ten reasons Daily Radar will no longer publish:
"1. We are bias."

That is either an existential statement, or truly, "It's always nice to have an editor." "

I imagine that's a dig at the kinds of nonsensical, crazily worded hate mail game sites tend to inspire. Maybe you were missing a lot of the jokes at Daily Radar...

Mark said:

---

Quote:

Compare that to Blue's News which is three people (four if you count the web programmer who does stuff for them now and then).
You can also compare those 33 to Gamepower, which is two editors and I think two other production people.

---

Daily Radar killed one of my favorite sites, Next Generation Online. They replaced it with juvenile crap that immediately sent me elsewhere for the real industry news and intelligent commentary. I have no sympathy for their demise.

--Dave

Yes, Computer Games Online is the online arm of Computer Games Magazine; or, to put it another way, there is only one Computer Games, it just happens to have a website . There really aren't any CGO staffers, other than maybe one tech guy who is increasingly working with other stuff in the company as well. It's not fancy, but it's cheap, and we don't have to sell many ads (usually sponsorships) to pay our way. No downloads, either--that costs a bundle.

Of course, we don't have the variety of content other sites had, and cost-cutting is putting a rein on our use of freelancers a tad, but the quality is good--unlike many sites, because we're really a print mag, we don't put up anything that wouldn't be good enough for dead trees.

Yeah but since Computer Games Magazine is an arm of theglobe.com the clock is ticking...

"Maybe you were missing a lot of the jokes at Daily Radar..."

Not just some of the jokes, ALL of them. I never bothered to read Daily Radar because the juvenile humor was completely and totally unappealing to me. I'm simply not in that target market. I never watched much Matlock, either, for the same reasons. Just like with Matlock, I will not mourn DR's passing.

"I will not mourn DR's passing."

I don't really mourn them, but from a selfish point of view I'm now competing with more writers for freelance work and/or possible full-time jobs in the industry. That's not the greatest situation.

It's also just one of many that are going under, I'm sure. I'm not even sure that Gamespot is a sure bet to survive.

"Yeah but since Computer Games Magazine is an arm of theglobe.com the clock is ticking..."

I don't like theglobe.com's chances, but if CGM is making money, they should have a good chance of being picked up by someone. A lot will depend on how profitable they are. There's always the danger that if the price drops low enough Imagine or Ziff will buy them, shut them down, and shift the circulation over to their own mags.

Er, sorry CGM and CGO people. I'm just thinking out loud here. I hope that doesn't happen.

---

Quote:

I don't really mourn them, but from a selfish point of view I'm now competing with more writers for freelance work and/or possible full-time jobs in the industry. That's not the greatest situation.

---

You know, along those same lines, I wouldn't mind paying for a site like this. Assuming the reviews are still keeping from people I respect/trust like Mark and Tom.

There really are no free lunches. Even on the internet. If I have to pay to get the game coverage I want when I want it, I'll do that. But this site is one of the few right now I would actually pay to frequent. And no, I'm really not kissing ass, just speaking my mind. :)

Actually, some of the regulars over at Jaded's Pub took up a collection to help with site costs a little while back. And no one was asking for money, they just did it.

Heh - well, it's only the sites that need to have full-time staff or that have huge traffic and expensive bandwidth bills that are in peril. There are plenty of sites like ours that are small and run just for fun, though we'd love to make a meaningful profit.

I hope CGM-CGO doesn't close either. If anything because I subscribe to them and they would end up being the fourth (and the last) mag I subscribe cancelled this year if that happens.

Jason said:
"I can't believe both Daily Radar AND PCXL are gone. Now where am I going to go to read a hastily written article about games followed by an in-depth feature to convice me I'd really like to fuck Natalie Portman?"

Then wumpus said:
"I know I have my moments of rudeness, but this is just crass. I winced reading that."

Yeah, that WAS pretty crass. Besides, I don't need any convincing.

Then Mark said:
"Er, sorry CGM and CGO people. I'm just thinking out loud here. I hope that doesn't happen."

Me too. But hey, that's be a lot of subscribers to move over. Our last audit put our circ about 50k over PCGamer for the month of December, making us the #1 gaming mag for the first time ever. Yee-haw.

"Our last audit put our circ about 50k over PCGamer for the month of December, making us the #1 gaming mag for the first time ever. Yee-haw."

That's impressive. Congrats.

>PPS: Y'know, I still miss OGR Jason...

Me too, sometimes. I miss the folks I used to work with there. And nobody has yet to do a news page quite like it.

I'll freely admit that OGR had a lot of faults, though--many of which I didn't see at the time.

You never know what will happen. In any business. I suppose I could always develop a liking for selling cars. Whatever it takes to stay in Vermont :-).

>Unfortunately for all the remaining websites, the quality of DR is irrelevant. They did what they were supposed to do from a business perspective -- put up content and generate traffic.

I'm not so sure. As you pointed out, there were 33 people saying "thank you." There's a thought on the 'net that, if you put up enough stuff, people will find it and click on it. At least, the first time.

But if it's not good, that's all you can rely on. You don't have repeat traffic, you don't build a community, you don't get exclusives because you have a bad reputation, etc.

Ultimately, if their content was really good, could they have put up half as much with half the staff and generated nearly as much traffic? Would that have balanced the books? I wonder...

"I'll freely admit that OGR had a lot of faults, though--many of which I didn't see at the time."

Yeah, but it had an enthusiasm I don't see any more. Chris Jensen, you, Radcliffe and me as the rapidly rising freelance reviewer.
I cut me teeth and learned a lot there.
Great site.

Ok, buying Cirulis' column maybe wasn't a cost effective idea...
;-)

-Andrew

> we don't put up anything that wouldn't be good enough for dead trees.


Y'know Bob, I think we might have a new slogan there. =)

>Our last audit put our circ about 50k over PCGamer for the month of December, making us the #1 gaming mag for the first time ever. Yee-haw.

Er, yeah, except it sells about 3 copies a month at newstands.

Those audit results couldn't be more misleading - probably because chips & bits customers are considered "paid subscribers" (aside from the fact that the audit report references average circulation numbers, not "paid" circulation).

CGO may be the best computer gaming magazine currently available - it certainly is the most consistent in quality - but PC Gamer is the only computer gaming magazine with retail presence.

I wish the CGO/M folk well - CGO is probably my first stop when surfing for gaming news these days, but The Globe.com is definitely doomed (in the very near future), and the transparent press releases it has been putting out recently in order to try to desperately facilitate a sale of CGO/M have been damn embarrassing.

"Ok, buying Cirulis' column maybe wasn't a cost effective idea..."

I think maybe publishing a magazine wasn't a good idea.

I'm listening to the CNET quarterly results conference right now. They lost $11 million first quarter and project losses of up to $55 million for the entire year. They don't expect the ad market to rebound this year, so that's bad news for any sites hanging around hoping for that to happen.

CEO Shelby Bonnie also hinted at making users pay, though he seemed more interested in making them pay by divulging personal information so CNET can qualify them better to advertisers.

Rob Merritt said :

"What I can't understand are peoples' devotion to sites like Blues and Voodooextreme. They are just news reposted. They generated very little content. Which is fine and I stop by every day because its easier to go to Blue then 50 other sites but if those other sites go away, what are they going to repost?"

Well I think you have just answered your own question. One reason I use VoodooExtreme daily is that it saves me from visiting websites that I wouldn't normally touch except for a specific bit of information or a download.

Saves having 50,000 bookmarks cluttering my web browser.

"I think maybe publishing a magazine wasn't a good idea."

Yeah, that was slightly before my time there. The odd thing was that AirAge had a lot of newstand clout and I remember seeing that first issue everywhere from Barnes & Noble to CompUSA.

In Milwaukee you'd be hard pressed to find Maximum PC, CGM, and sadly, CGW on the stands locally. Then again the New Yorker is also a bitch to find here.

So far as Voodoo Extreme goes, well, I'd use it if they'd can the stupid attitude. They make PCXL look cool, imo.

I used to do a small feature in Beatdown where I'd directly quote Billy "Wicked" Wilson, here's an example:

"DAMN fine stuff. If you can overlook the overly crude, disgusting stuff here and there, that even makes guys like me go 'ugh, God, did they have to show that' (while your laughing so hard it really doesn't matter anyway), then you'll dig this show. Great stuff. Not sure if it's better than Dumb and Dumber, but up in that so-called region. Very, very cool stuff...'the future of web'...um, crap, I can't think of something to go along with that."

I think he was talking about "Me, Myself and Irene"
Anyway, it just creeps me out.

-Andrew

>>Er, yeah, except it sells about 3 copies a month at newstands.

More like 30,000. Sorry if that doesn't meet your standards.

If we wanted to try to sell 100,000 on the newsstand we'd have to triple our print run and deal with retail and distribution, which costs a fortune. It's cheaper to work on subscriber retention then go down that path. (The old marketing 101, "it's cheaper to keep an existing customer then get a new one.")

But whatever.

>>Those audit results couldn't be more misleading - probably because chips & bits customers are considered "paid subscribers" (aside from the fact that the audit report references average circulation numbers, not "paid" circulation).

Probably? Hmm...

Now I'm not the magazine circulation expert I assume you are, and don't have as much insight into our own internal workings as you appear to, but unless we're the most creative people in the entire magazine industry, we're not doing anything everyone else isn't doing. The rules for audits are extremely clear, and there are really big books that explain what you can and cannot do.

In other words, if our circ is "misleading," everyone's circ is "misleading."

(And whatever Chips does for circulation, it also has/had a deal to push/boost CGW subscriptions.)

Again, whatever.

>>and the transparent press releases it has been putting out recently in order to try to desperately facilitate a sale of CGO/M have been damn embarrassing.

Jeez, sorry for actually trying to promote changes at the magzine. Rumor has it I actually asked for those press releases to be issued, and have asked for more because we've never promoted ourselves. We complained about Happy Puppy and Kids Domain getting the majority of the PR attention, and there you go, a couple of press releases.

Now beyond that, I'm not as privvy to the motivation behind these as you are, but regardless, a redesign is big news for a magazine; it's practically a relaunch, since our next issue looks NOTHING like previous ones. Totally new logo, new cover design, new interior. We're sorta proud of it. Sorry to publicize it. In the future, we'll be sure to keep these things under wraps to avoid embarassment.

But hey, thanks for the feedback/insight. It's been very... yeah. Whatever.

I don't know too much about the magazines, but apparently PC Gamer is the king of newstand sales and makes a nice profit from those, considering the mag retails for what? $7? $8?

The knock against CGM is that they've boosted circulation with Chips and Bits sales, applying $2 of every game sale to a new buyer to create a paid subscription.

The knock against CGW is that they've been going downhill since their first issue. :)

If you really want to gauge the health of the magazines, it's not that hard. Find out what they charge for ads and then look at the current editions of all three. Which ones have the most paid ads? That will probably tell you a lot. Circulation in one sense is meaningless if it doesn't allow the magazine to charge more for their ads. PC Gamer could double their circulation, but if it didn't result in more ad sales at a higher rate, it wouldn't do much for them.

It sounds like a hell of a lot more complex a calculation than you make it sound Mark. I think Steve has pointed out often in the past that ad sales aren't the focal point for dollars taken in by the magazine. They don't "make or break" the mags. Therefore they wouldn't be the thing to use as a bellweather of their health would they?

Steve has given out tons of information on how CGM does business both here and in other forums. Given all that he's disseminated through the last year or so, and that every single time someone tries to put down the mag as being on its death bed he pulls out facts to back up its success, I'm inclined to think that CGM is doing just fine.

Haven't we been over this like a zillion times lately WRT CGM/CGO?

--Dave

>>Which ones have the most paid ads? That will probably tell you a lot.

That generally tells you which magazine has the highest circulation.

Anything beyond that, well... I'll leave it to all of the magazine experts out there to figure things out and explain it.

"I think Steve has pointed out often in the past that ad sales aren't the focal point for dollars taken in by the magazine. They don't "make or break" the mags. Therefore they wouldn't be the thing to use as a bellweather of their health would they?"

How does a magazine like CGM make money if not through ad sales? I don't even know what their ad sales are like, btw, so I wasn't implying anything. Steve said they sell 30,000 copies on the newstand, which means that 300,000+ are through subscriptions. How much profit do they make on a subscription?

I just checked subscription prices. They charge $30 for 12 issues with the CD. They charge $20 for 12 issues without the CD. I have no idea what their printing, handling, and mailing costs are. If they really do get at least $20 per subscription, that's not bad. But if a lot of those subs are just $2 taken from a Chips and Bits sale, then they're printing and mailing a lot of magazines at below cost, I'd venture.

Anyway, I have no idea about the fiscal health of CGM. Their biggest problem is that they're owned by a sinking ship. Theglobe.com hasn't scheduled their Q1 results announcement yet, which may mean they're delaying it as long as possible. Their stock has been delisted which means they have little chance of raising additional funds through sales of stock. At the end of 2000 they had $16 million in cash remaining and had lost $103 million, and advertising revenue represented 65% of all revenue. CNET just forecast today that advertising would be depressed for the remainder of the year. Theglobe.com also issued this statement at the end of the year: "We have received a report from our independent accountants containing an explanatory paragraph that raises substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern".

It doesn't sound good for theglobe.com. Of course it doesn't look good for UGO, IGN, and a bunch of other concerns either.

---

Quote:

Anyway, I have no idea about the fiscal health of CGM. Their biggest problem is that they're owned by a sinking ship.

---

Does this all mean it'll be like 1993 again when, as I recall, there was no online gaming news and the words "sucks" and "dudes" and "****" never appeared in CGW (sorry to keep harping on that :D) and I didn't have this growing gut and I was pretty happy even though X-COM hadn't come out yet. :) It's been all downhill for me since then!

Maybe the Web itself will disappear, since like exploring the moon (where once we realized you couldn't make money off anything on the moon there was apparently no justification to ever go back), there's apparently no money to be made off the Web, just revenue loss. Hot dog!

"I think he was talking about "Me, Myself and Irene" Anyway, it just creeps me out."

Use Marvin Sedate. All the Voodoo Extreme, None of the embarassing pimp-speak. I didn't mind it in 1997, but now it's getting a wee bit old. Think of it as a political protest. If you squint really hard while reading you can even pretend it's new OMM content.

http://www.gamebasement.com/sedate

Also, CGO/cdmag is good stuff. Though Steve may have terrible taste in music*, he runs a top-notch magazine.

wumpus http://www.gamebasement.com

* this is a joke

CGO *IS* CDMAG. I think you mean CGM when referring to the print. It'll become more clear when the new website launches.

Geez, I hope don't so something shameful like put out a press release about the relaunch of the website. I mean, if *I* was running a dot-com, then when I made major changes to one of my products, I sure won't make noise about it. That's desperate. ;)

RE: OGR the magazine... it wasn't our idea, or real AirAge's. They had this magazine called...ummm...name escapes me, damn. Anyway, they had a computer game magazine before that which was doing poorly. Mike Davilla was in charge of it. He left the company, orphaning the magazine. AirAge decided to move the OGR brand, which everyone seemed to like, to the print magazine--after all, they had like three or four more issues in the pipeline as far as printing and distribution contracts and stuff goes, it would be a waste not to publish anything at all.

Hence the birth of OGR magazine, which most of us at OGR considered a complete contradiction to what OGR was. I mean, we were ONLINE Gaming Review. It was like saying "Website: The Magazine." Fortunately, AirAge quickly agreed and decided to cut their losses as soon as they could and put the focus back behind the website.

The magazine thing had little to do with the website being sold off. That's a completely different story, which I promise I'll tell when I leave this industry one day. If anyone runs into Doug Radcliffe and puts a few beers into him, I'm sure he can tell it far better than I can.

Wow, on CGO Bauman says they have close to half a million subscribers? or was it circulation? am i reading that right? thats GREAT! and i just resubscribed a few months ago (and haven't got a new copy), then got email to say theyre doing some new thingy, so getting that June mag next month or somthing.

BTW, Jason, i thought the few OGR mags were pretty good (I liked the cover for Deathtrap Dungeon hehe)...the layout was nice, the writers pretty good, and wasn't too "fanboyish". was a good companion mag to get with CGS+. Though a 'zine' meant for "online" is a contradiction it was still a good mag...just needed some pinup playmates...joking!

BTW, how much of OGR's staff continued with CGO? just curious... btw, are alot of the ppl of OGR and CGO from the chicago area? i always got that impression b4 for some reason... and did you guys work with the old EGM/CGRCDROM when it was based in Lombard,IL b4 they sold it off?

etc

When we obtained OGR, we retained one person, and that was Jason. He had pictures of us doing terrible things to squirrels, and so we had to give him a job.


There has never been a separate CGO staff. All the content that's ever been on CGO has been generated by the Computer Games (nee Strategy Plus) staff and freelancers. At times we've assigned higher or lower quantities of articles, depending on the whims of publishers and how much they wanted online versus in print, but ultimately it's all "magazine" content. Despite attempts by former owners to create two distinct entities on the cheap, we've always been be one organization with two (sometimes more, if you count the old special issues) venues. Our internal organization has been, at times, bizarre, but that's neither here nor there.


As Steve points out, magazine ciruculation isn't something you can just make up. Yeah, there are devices and tactics you can use to tweak it, but ultimately it's all highly regulated, and as noted before, there are really big books full of rules about this stuff. I run away when I see them, because Alan, our circulation manager, is the only one who understands their arcane incantations. I'm afraid they'll summon Shub-Niggurath or something.

We have no control over our corporate future. We just try to turn out the best game mag we can, both in print and online. We're redoing the entire mag in June (this news story has a shot of the June cover and a reduced image of our new internal layout), and by E3 in a couple of weeks we hope to have our new website look up and running as well.


When I saw the staff list for Daily Radar on their farewell page, I nearly choked. Our entire editorial staff consists of essentiall five or six people depending on how you count.

Mtkafka said:
"btw, are alot of the ppl of OGR and CGO from the chicago area? i always got that impression b4 for some reason"

It's funny you should say that. I think former CGS+ editor Steve Wartofsky was long gone by the time the OGR thing happened (whatever happened to him when iMagic went away?), but he was from the Chicago area. Bauman can tell you a lot more about him, but I always understood that he operated from Chicago when the magazine was on the east coast, with help from Marc Dultz. The story about how Wartofsky and Dultz left the magazine is one I don't know much about, but Bauman could also probably tell over some beers.

Jason said:
"RE: OGR the magazine... it wasn't our idea, or real AirAge's. They had this magazine called...ummm...name escapes me, damn. Anyway, they had a computer game magazine before that which was doing poorly. Mike Davilla was in charge of it. He left the company, orphaning the magazine. "

It was Computer and Net Player, formerly Computer Player, formerly Larry Flynt's Video Games and Computer Entertainment. I wrote for them...when Air Age bought it, they did a nice job of improving everything about it from layouts to paper quality to pay rates. But I suppose being fifth place in the games magazine market at the time was too deep a hole. I don't know much about the administrative details behind the fall, who to blame for it, or whatever, but I'm sure everyone, including Mike, will give you a slightly different story. IIRC, Mike said he didn't so much abandon the magazine as he was replaced by Paul (Bannister? I can't remember the exact last name - he was the OGR head). Paul was riding high on OGR's success at the time, so if management favored him it wouldn't surprise me.

Anyway, from what I understand, despite Air Age's efforts, the whole games thing was never profitable for them, they lost a lot of money on it, a few good editors lost jobs, and also quickly canned the games book division they were starting up. Air Age went on with their core airplane modeling magazines and are doing well with their Flight Journal magazine. IMO, I think they saw the popularity of digital entertainment, felt they needed to get into it, but perhaps underestimated the difficulty of making a last place magazine a winner in a competitive market.

---

Quote:

Mtkafka said:
"btw, are alot of the ppl of OGR and CGO from the chicago area? i always got that
impression b4 for some reason"

It's funny you should say that. I think former CGS+ editor Steve Wartofsky was long gone by the time the OGR thing happened (whatever happened to him when iMagic went away?), but he was from the Chicago area. Bauman can tell you a lot more about him, but I always understood that he operated from Chicago when the magazine was on the east coast, with help from Marc Dultz. The story about how
Wartofsky and Dultz left the magazine is one I don't know much about, but Bauman could also probably tell over some beers.

---

Video Games and Computer Entertainment. Wow haven't heard that name in awhile. I have a huge stack of them somewhere. It was my favorite magazine at one point but I don't remember why..

I think my new warning sign for gaming news sites is when they add "Show Business" and "News for Men" sections. Yup, that seems to indicate you're well on your way to your demise. :) Therefore, CGO/CG is safe from total demise cause they haven't resorted to it yet.

IGN, on the other hand....

"When I saw the staff list for Daily Radar on their farewell page, I nearly choked. Our entire editorial staff consists of essentiall five or six people depending on how you count."

The had 1 EIC for the whole site
2 editors (1 senior, 1 assistant) per section
7 sections (Showbiz, PC, Tech, Nintendo, PSX, Sega, Direct Hit)
+ assorted artists and staff writers.

Bloated beyond quality is an understatment.

-Andrew

I've an OGR story - a couple years back I sorta covered a Nox launch event in Virginia for Gone Gold (just as a volunteer thing). Another guy was doing the same. We talked briefly during the pizza break and he kept raving about OGR and how he reads it all the time. This was AFTER CG/CGO had assimilated OGR and OGR I'm quite certain was no longer up at the time (the domain was dead and there was no OGR section at CGO).

He kept rambling on and I kept saying "but...". After a while I decided he was a big unhinged and I wasn't quite sure if he could cope with the reality of OGR's demise (as I'm sure Martin Cirulis couldn't, either) so I just smiled and said "Oh yeah, that OGR's great!" :)

"I've been known to have a beer or two at Cavanaugh's with Bruce Geryk."

I live in Milwaukee, but he and I have gotten together on several occasions as well. He's the scariest drunk in the world.

"He says I'm afraid to drink with him. That's not true. I'm afraid of him, period."

You are very perceptive. He gets this feral look in his eye and starts talking about what will happen when he rules the world. "Up against the wall!" kinda stuff.

"I mean the guy's an investment banker turned medical student. God knows what horrible things he does to those lab rats."

You should see his house. Hitler books everywhere. He's the Mengele of pharmaceutical pure research.

Nah, just kidding... (about that last line ONLY)

-Andrew

Actually Geo, there's a new very amateurish looking site calling themselves Online Gaming Review out there now. Nothing is sacred.

Just noticed this at the DR page:
"Everyone who ever wrote a word for Daily Radar"

Write 34 reviews, 3 interviews, 4 junkets, 2 walkthroughs and 70 columns weekly and this is how they remember you.

-Andrew

"The had 1 EIC for the whole site
2 editors (1 senior, 1 assistant) per section
7 sections (Showbiz, PC, Tech, Nintendo, PSX, Sega, Direct Hit)
+ assorted artists and staff writers.

Bloated beyond quality is an understatment."

I'm surprised they didn't cut back to 5-10 people and just keep the site going. OTOH, the advertising forecast is grim for the rest of the year, and there's no guarantee it will pick up next year. I guess it's understandable to close something that won't make a profit the rest of the year.

Thanks for ignoring everything positive I said about CGM/O, Steve, but to respond to some of our points:

>In other words, if our circ is "misleading," everyone's circ is "misleading."

Which other gaming magazine is counting computer game purchases as "paid subscriptions" to a magazine? Not PC Gamer. Not CGW. Hell, even Incite didn't try to manipulate its "paid circulation" in that fashion. But maybe, as you suggest, it's not unprecedented. You indicated that CGW did something similar? What and when?

>Jeez, sorry for actually trying to promote changes at the magzine. Rumor has it I actually asked for those press releases to be issued...because we've never promoted ourselves. ...a redesign is big news for a magazine; We're sorta proud of it. Sorry to publicize it. In the future, we'll be sure to keep these things under wraps to avoid embarassment

Fair enough - CGM/O deserves it's fair share of Globe press. It's the misleading substance of those releases that was embarrassing.

>If CGM is a profitable concern, then the financial health of TGLO is irrelevant

That's not true. In TGLO, CGM at least has a parent that is willing to run the business. Even if a business is profitable at an operational level, that doesn't mean that there's people willing to assume it, when there's less risky and capital intensive ways to get a better return on your investment.

>I'm surprised they didn't cut back to 5-10 people and just keep the site going.

They should have done so long ago. They were badly managed or had their head in the sand hoping the world would change back to 1999.

>I guess it's understandable to close something that won't make a profit the rest of the year.

It also just becomes easier to abandon a business when so many others have as well -- the stigma of failure is lessened, and it becomes hard to justify continuing to throw money at an enterprise when so many others have concluded it's not viable.

It's pretty wild that sites like Daily Radar/Imagine and IGN/Snowball can't find a way to effectively monetize their tremendous volumes of traffic, but then again, even more "mainstream" sites like Yahoo are having tremendous difficulty doing so.

On VE, since this thread is completely out of control. I liked VE better when there was more Billy and less Apache. Apache is like all of the annoying things about Billy without the good stuff. ;)

-- Xaroc

Well, it might've been too obvious, but this is kinda funny. Check the graphic they used for the story...

Eurogamer

--Dave

>>Thanks for ignoring everything positive I said about CGM/O, Steve, but to respond to some of our points:

You basically said, "I really like your publication, but you're lying." It's a little hard to ignore the latter and focus on the former. But really, why bring it up at all? Did you have a reason? Do you closely analyze all publication press releases and audit statements?

(Maybe we're all trying to show off our 1337 insider-ness, which if we're talking about the inner workings of CGM, I think the staff wins by default since, I dunno, we're actually working here or something.)

Maybe you have a wealth of knowledge and a lot of experience in magazine circulation and publishing, but unfortunately I don't. (That's why we have a circulation director. He's not really hip on the current games, either.)

What I do know is that all of the info is in the audits. If you think something is misleading, your beef is with BPA, who signed off on it. Go whine to them. We didn't go public with those numbers, which we very well could of, until they approved the audit.

(Compare our openness with CGW, which apparently hasn't made its audits available since 1998, according to our circulation director. They bad-mouth our circulation, and we probably do the same about theirs, which is expected since we're all competing for the same advertisers.)

But if we were hiding something, if we were trying to mislead people, why would we publish the results of the audit? It's not some sort of requirement to make them available; based on our past history of our audits matching our promised numbers, we could hope they didn't call us on the numbers.

So anyway, it's all there in the audit reports, knock yourself out. If you want to ask CGW what kind of deal they had with Chips, knock yourself out.

But if you're looking to buy an ad page, which is the main reason to care about this issue in the first place, you might want to contact one of the ad guys directly.

"It's the misleading substance of those releases that was embarrassing."

What, exactly, is misleading or embarassing in any of those press releases? Our circulation is audited by the same people that audit all the other magazines (actually, I guess Gamer gets audited by a different agency, but whatever), and the press release does not in any way misrepresent that information. As for news stand sales, they make up about 100K of Gamer's ~400K circ, and I seriously doubt that's their primary source of income. Even if 100% of that 100K were profit, that's probably only a little more than their production costs. And 100% of it is almost certainly NOT profit; 30-40% sell through on news stands is considered to be outstanding. Even assuming that they get that (and actually, I wouldn't be surprised if they did), they have to print three issues for every one that they sell.

What news stand sales do get you is more circ (which means more ads) and more visibility (which means more ads). Both good things. But magazines typically don't make their money on the news stand. It's just not how it works.

We are also doing (have already done, actually) a complete redesign, and there's certainly nothing embarassing about that (if anything, the only embarassment there was our old logo, which sucked almost as much as our soon-to-be dumped web site design). I think it's a good thing to promote the magazine a bit more than we have in the past. I can't imagine why I should be embarassed about it.

I'm writing MTV for a Celebrity Deathmatch between Steve Bauman, Desslock, Bob Mayer, Jeff Green and the Rob guy at PC Gamer.

Only one can win! :)

Oooh, what will my special claymation ability be? Blinding bald head? Laserbeam thick glasses? Halitosis? Ok, the last is not true. I think.

---

Quote:

Even if a business is profitable at an operational level, that doesn't mean that there's people willing to assume it, when there's less risky and capital intensive ways to get a better return on your investment.

---

>You basically said, "I really like your publication, but you're lying."

Why deal with what I "basically said", instead of what I "actually said"? - which is that the audit results give a misleading representation of the health of the magazine.

>really, why bring it up at all?

Because the press releases are misleading, and I felt like clarifying the situation. For a guy who protests over and over again that the audit has nothing to do with you, you're going out of your way to defend a comment that clearly wasn't addressed at you. Or were you misled?

It wasn't a comment directed at the editors or contributors at all -- just a criticism of the Globe's corporate conduct, since those press releases look like a transparent attempt to package up CGM/O for a fire sale. The Globe is clearly an immature public company.

If you're trying to defend the misleading nature of the press releases by stating that "everyone does it", then respond with some information, as opposed to just alluding to similar conduct.

"Because the press releases are misleading."

In what way?

Bruce, the magazine does have one asset -- its circulation list. There's value in buying the magazine solely for that list. PC Gamer or CGW could then switch the subs and bolster their own subscription base. It just depends on how much it would cost to buy the magazine and what kind of impact a larger subscriber base might have on the ad rates that Ziff or Imagine could then charge.

It could be that the ad rates they charge now are as much as the market will bear, so growing their subscriber base through purchasing CGM might not provide any return.

>What, exactly, is misleading or embarassing in any of those press releases?

- Flowery language such as this: "The wildly popular computer game entertainment print magazine" to describe a magazine which, based upon The Globe's recent corporate filings, is not particularly financially successful, and which is almost impossible to find at newstands.

- statements from the CEO of the Globe like this: "The explosive growth of electronic games has dramatically increased consumer demand for high-quality games information", at the same time as pc gaming magazines /sites are struggling like never before.

- And "by combining the emerging world leader among offline games publications with a leading online game brand, we are uniquely positioned to provide brand name advertisers with a one-stop media solution to target the highly coveted game audience".

What intelligent and experienced corporate officer uses terminology like "emerging world leader" to describe a magazine that is almost impossible to find at newstands? Or describes the combination of a site/magazine as a "unique position" when numerous competitors have done the same thing, at least as well. Or just uses words like "one stop media solution"?

That shit is embarrassing, and conduct which will punish the Globe's stock price affecting the viability of the magazine/site - and since I like the magazine/site, as I indicated in my initial post - it's annoying, which was the rationale for my post.

>But in practical terms, in all my years in investment banking, I never saw a case where a company with a history of profitability and which was currently profitable didn't attract bids.

In the current markets, I've seen lots of companies that were slightly profitable (or on the borderline) get closed, either because (the owners felt the assets within the company (cash!) were worth more than any sale proceeds they could receive or they perceived that the company's market was going to develop in a manner that was going to make it difficult to continue to be profitable in the near future, especially if a dip in profitability could burn other resources of the owners.

> But the point is that if CGM is a profitable concern, it's in far better shape than the TGLO properties that suck money, like Games Domain.

That's certainly true. But I think it'll be very difficult for any gaming site/mag to be sold right now, other than for the sole purpose of acquiring its subscription base, in which case the magazine/site wouldn't continue in any meanginful way (as evidenced by PC Games/OGR/PCXL, etc.)

>the magazine does have one asset -- its circulation list. There's value in buying the magazine solely for that list

Or they could just wait until the Globe goes bankrupt and buy the list from creditors directly and avoid the liabilities associated with the magazine.

Uhm, okay. You know, maybe I'm just jaded from reading press releases all day, but it reads like just about any other press release that I've ever read before. The flowery language, the leveraging of positives while de-emphasizing negatives... uhm, that's a press release, folks. If it's misleading, then all press releases are.

>o.k., but it reads like just about any other press release that I've ever read before. The flowery language, the leveraging of positives while de-emphasizing negatives... uhm, that's a press release, folks.

No, that's a "bad" press release, folks (and by no means standard for a public company) because it damages your company's credibility in the eyes of investors. A good press release emphasizes the positives and ignores or responds to the negatives without distorting the truth (lying!) or exaggerating in obvious ways. Those releases read like they were written by inept marketing consultants.

Bad press releases are incredibly damaging and it's a sign of poor corporate governance for the corporate officers to not realize that.

Desslock said :

"In the current markets, I've seen lots of companies that were slightly profitable (or on the borderline) get closed, either because (the owners felt the assets within the company (cash!) were worth more than any sale proceeds they could receive or they perceived that the company's market was going to develop in a manner that was going to make it difficult to continue to be profitable in the near future, especially if a dip in profitability could burn other resources of the owners."


Whatever happened to the old days when a business was setup to actually provide a service for the general consumer rather than just as a cash junket for shareholders and directors ?

Or am I just being incredible old fashioned and naive ?

"(Compare our openness with CGW, which apparently hasn't made its audits available since 1998, according to our circulation director. They bad-mouth our circulation, and we probably do the same about theirs, which is expected since we're all competing for the same advertisers.) "

Um--yeah Steve. :)
I don't know about our audits being available or not. I do know that I wouldn't trust any of the numbers coming from Gamer, CGM, OR CGW mouthpieces. It's all "funny numbers" and there are a million tricks that ALL the pubs use to jack up these figures --like sending mags to people who never asked for it, or giving a free subscription to someone who orders a game online. It's called "garbage circ" because the chance of any of those people REsubscribing is next to nothing. We all do it. Hell, if one magazine was so dominant over the others, that mag would get every single "exclusive" ---or maybe more importantly, all the ad dollars--cuz the game companies would see them as being the only one that mattered. The fact that none of the game companies really feel that any one magazine is the slam dunk leader shows you just how much they trust all these numbers that get batted around. They hedge their bets and go with all of us, because no one magazine has "won" this battle.

I think you're trying to cite common sense and "providing a service" as good reasons for running a magazine with a high powered lawyer, Sean. He probably sees things a bit differently than the rest of us.

--Dave

"I think you're trying to cite common sense and "providing a service" as good reasons for running a magazine with a high powered lawyer, Sean. He probably sees things a bit differently than the rest of us."

No David, the world sees things a bit differently than the rest of us. Without VC and shareholders you simply cannot compete on a top tier level in any business at all.

Unless you're willing to keep complete control and do it for free or low profits. Like this site and Battlefront.com to name a couple examples.

Sean is being naive and old fashioned, and I say bless him for it.

-Andrew

C'mon Bub, I'm not that naive to think that the money doesn't figure into it. Without money, none of this stuff just happens. However, I think it's pretty clear from Desslock's posts that he's focused solely on the cash factor. If you don't want to provide some kind of service and put out a sensible product, why bother selling a games magazine of all things?! There's a hell of a lot better and quicker ways to fame and fortune.

Sorry man, the "it's all about the money" approach is what put everyone in this bind in the first place. Dollar signs were popping and no one bothered to worry about their product. Now that someone is saying "LOOK, we did great and we didn't compromise our product!", someone's taking them to task for it? A change of attitude would be welcome in this entire business. We don't all have to be mercenaries.

--Dave

{Laugh!}

Thanks Andrew.

"What intelligent and experienced corporate officer uses terminology like "emerging world leader" to describe a magazine that is almost impossible to find at newstands?"

Just a quick sidebar to this debate: I'm curious as to what you're definition of not being able to find CGM on the newstands is, Stef. Personal experience? Testimonies from others? Relative retail presence to other mags?

When I went to Turkey last year and stopped over in various international airports and frequented several shops in the Mediterranean, I saw nothing but CGM. In fact, that was about *all* I saw. I rarely came across copies of PC Gamer, and I didn't see a single CGW. Hell, even in New York's JFK there wasn't any CGW (at least not in my section, checked three stores out of curiosity). In Greece, I was tripping over stacks of CGM in the street (seriously, a shitload of them were at these two corner magazine stands in Athens and nothing but CGM in this software shop across the street). So, after I get back from vacation, I visit my friend in California later in the summer. I ask him if he read my latest whateverthehell I wrote in CGW and he says "no" and I say "that just won't do" and so I go to the local supermarket to get some chips and buy a copy of CGW for him. No CGW...no PC Gamer...but there were plenty of CGM.

Now, maybe that supermarket sold out of the other two, but I doubt it. So, as far as having a legitimate retail presence, I guess it depends on where you look?

>>Because the press releases are misleading, and I felt like clarifying the situation.

I for one thank you for providing this valuable service. I didn't even know I needed it.

>>then respond with some information, as opposed to just alluding to similar conduct.

Look, as I said, ask them what their dealings are as I don't think it's appropriate to discuss them here and I regret bringing it up at all. I'm sure they'll say one thing, and I'm sure we have a different perspective. So what? This is all irrelevant. As Jeff alluded to above, it's just a pissing match.

Our audit specifically lists the number of subscriptions that came about via deals with Chips, and if you think it's anywhere NEAR 400,000, or even a significant percentage of our overall circulation, you're showing a profound lack of knowledge of both businesses.

And I keep saying this, but I'm afraid it's true: you may think this is all misleading, but BPA apparently doesn't and their analysis is the only one that matters. Our competitors can whine all they want about our circulation, and we can whine all we want about their circulation. It doesn't matter. The auditors sign off on it and it's as legitimate as it ever can be.

>>What intelligent and experienced corporate officer uses terminology like "emerging world leader" to describe a magazine that is almost impossible to find at newstands?

Our newsstand distribution, or lack thereof, is immaterial to our standing in the industry and with our existing readers. Our leadership role is based on our reputation. I think doing things like a cover redesign will increase our newsstand sales, which is part of that whole "emerging" business... the fact we're even talking about this, when the publication could just be a footnote like some of the others that have come and gone, shows... something. Actually, the fact I'm discussing this shows that I really need to spend time with my girlfriend, but that's a whole 'nuther issue...

Since you seem keen on hammering this newsstand problem into the ground, let me ask you this: Do you actually understand magazine newsstand distribution? Do you know what our plans are for this year? Do you know what newsstand deals we have in the works, or about our ongoing newsstand push since January (which isn't in the audit), about our expansion in regions of the US, of experiments with covers and in marketing, blah blah blah? Are you sitting in on every meeting between our publisher and our circulation director?

>>- statements from the CEO of the Globe like this: "The explosive growth of electronic games has dramatically increased consumer demand for high-quality games information", at the same time as pc gaming magazines /sites are struggling like never before.

Ah jeez, c'mon. The key word there is "consumer" demand; whether or not sites are struggling is irrelevant. There IS an increase in demand for game information as evidenced by an increase in magazine circulations and website traffic for game sites.

>>That shit is embarrassing, and conduct which will punish the Globe's stock price affecting the viability of the magazine/site - and since I like the magazine/site, as I indicated in my initial post - it's annoying, which was the rationale for my post.

So basically what you're saying is that despite liking the magazine and website you feel it's more appropriate to post criticisms on a public message board as opposed to offering this useful advice in private? You publicly criticize circulation, dubbing it "misleading" despite it being approved by auditors, which if seem by an advertiser could negatively affect their perception of the magazine, causing them to pull ads and further hurt our revenue. It also could give people reading this site a negative impression, further hurting circulation.

Yeah, I can see why you'd do this. It's because you care. It makes perfect sense. Thanks.

>> Oooh, what will my special claymation ability be? Blinding bald head? Laserbeam thick glasses? Halitosis? Ok, the last is not true. I think.

Hmmm, I see the Bob Mayer claymate as a round, bulbous amoeba like organism with a shine that blinds his opponents and thick distortion lenses that reflect the sun's rays into armor pierceing heat rays and a poison halitosis from sitting around all day long playing games and screaming at staffers and freelancers to meet their deadlines.... Hmmm.... actually it's just like a few newspaper editors I've worked for! :)

"The story about how Wartofsky and Dultz left the magazine is one I don't know much about, "

Dultz worked out of Vermont (mostly) and New York; he and the former owner/publisher butted heads, and the publisher fired him in '96. Wartofsky did work out of Chicago, he and the former publisher/owner butted heads, and Wart got frustrated and left in '97.

"Bruce, the magazine does have one asset -- its circulation list. There's value in buying the magazine solely for that list. "

Out of curiosity, does buying a mag, shutting it down, and then moving its circ list over to one of your existing publications mean those on the former circ list are counted as "paid subscribers" to the new magazine? I'm pretty sure CGM, Gamer, and CGW have all done this (well, I'm not sure about CGW--has their publisher bought anyone out and moved the circ over?). I know I am getting freebie subs from all the mags right now....

"Yeah, I can see why you'd do this. It's because you care. It makes perfect sense. Thanks."

Doesn't Desslock still write for Computer Gaming World and/or Gamespot ?

http://desslock.gamespot.com/ ?
http://www.gamespot.com/ ?
http://cgw.gamespot.com/ ?

And I guess CGW is a direct competitor of CGM ?

I rest my case.

For what it's worth we don't see either CGM or CGW at the newsstands here in Australia anymore. Maybe I need to travel to Turkey or Greece to find some ? :-)

"Out of curiosity, does buying a mag, shutting it down, and then moving its circ list over to one of your existing publications mean those on the former circ list are counted as "paid subscribers" to the new magazine? "

YES--that is EXACTLY what happens and is one of the reasons why mags snatch up each other. As soon as Imagine bought PC Games they then bragged that their circ went up by 100-whatever thousand. Happens every time. And yeah, CGW (or I should say Ziff) did it awhile back with Computer Gaming Review (remember them?). We bought 'em out, took their circ, and then magically had that many more "subscribers".

More power to CGM for being able to claim 400,000 readers. I like that mag! But just look for Gamer to follow suit with oh, say, 425,000 readers, followed by CGW saying 435,000 readers and repeat ad nauseum until we're all bought my Microsoft.

>>Dultz worked out of Vermont (mostly) and New York; he and the former owner/publisher butted heads, and the publisher fired him in '96.

Ooh, an anonymous person.

As far as I know, Marc never worked in New York while he was with the magazine. He spent the weekdays in Vermont then drove home to NYC for most weekends. At least that's how it was in I came on board.

>>Wartofsky did work out of Chicago, he and the former publisher/owner butted heads, and Wart got frustrated and left in '97.

We all butted heads with the former publisher/owner, but as far as I know (and I still keep in touch with him), Steve didn't leave solely out of frustration. He got a better offer from I-Magic.

Wart had fewer dealings with the publisher as I was running the day-to-day operations a few months after I came on full-time in 1994.

Ah, the bad old days... I even remember the first cover I negotiated, MechLords from SimTex (published by New World). The cover entered new realms of suck (it was a bad lookig giant-robot cover, which isn't easy to pull off), and MicroProse bought SimTex shortly thereafter and canceled the game.

Folks like to reminisce about how good the magazines were in those days, but lemme tellya, reading those old issues of our magazine... yeesh.

>BTW, how much of OGR's staff continued with CGO?

Just me. I was the only one who would move to Vermont. And none of us were in Chicago--we were in Connecticut, except for Chris Jensen in California and Paul Bannister in New York.

>Apache is like all of the annoying things about Billy without the good stuff.

And that's saying something! =) Can't say I disagree with the sentiment that it was better when it was more Billy and less Apache. Billy wouldn't have linked our June issue promotional page (that doesn't even begin to mention Unreal 2) as a crappy little Unreal 2 preview with no real info.

>it's in far better shape than the TGLO properties that suck money, like Games Domain.

You'd be surprised (it surprised me), but apparently the whole restructuring (read: layoffs and moving some people) over there worked. I really shouldn't say any more than that--corporate policy about discussing company finances is pretty strict, good news or bad.

I certainly won't pretend to know what our "real" numbers are, but I've seen audits from 3rd parties. And I do know for a fact that we're certainly printing and shipping out a hell of a lot more issues than we were last year at this time, for what that's worth.

Umm... and on that note, I think it would be better for everyone involved in the business of creating the content for publications on here to shut up about the part of the business they don't handle. It's getting out of control.

>>As soon as Imagine bought PC Games they then bragged that their circ went up by 100-whatever thousand. Happens every time. And yeah, CGW (or I should say Ziff) did it awhile back with Computer Gaming Review (remember them?). We bought 'em out, took their circ, and then magically had that many more "subscribers".

We got Incite's PC game list, which... well, it certainly wasn't 100,000.

PC Gamer folded in both PC Games and their own PC Accelerator.

I'm guessing it's all "paid" since, in theory, people did "pay" for the subscription at some point.

>Actually, the fact I'm discussing this shows that I really need to spend time with my girlfriend, but that's a whole 'nuther issue...

No Steve, you're supposed to be out there finding ME one. Remember? Tall athletic brunettes with pretty eyes... =)

>>No Steve, you're supposed to be out there finding ME one. Remember? Tall athletic brunettes with pretty eyes...

What, am I the office pimp now? Find your own chicks, man.

If anyone cares, or just ones to make snide remarks about how much longer AdrenalineVault will last, they have a couple staffer positions open (one PC, one console).

I kind of like reading their system requirements. My PII-450 officially no longer qualifies me to write for them. :)

"I'm guessing it's all "paid" since, in theory, people did "pay" for the subscription at some point. "

Steve, actually--not necessarily. That's part of the problem. A magazine gets another mag's subscription list, but that list will be composed of god-knows-how-many bogus subscriptions--people who never ordered the mag, dead people, people who ordered a game once and then started getting the mag for free.

So even when The Suits at our own mag come out with their periodic self-congratulatory press releases about our circ, I just roll my eyes. It's not that there's NO truth to any of this--it's just that, yeah, it's just a big pissing match.

Let's talk about girls instead.

So how 'bout Jessica Alba. I realize she's a little young for all you old-timers (ha!) but she's still a fine piece of.... yeah.

[Dave] >However, I think it's pretty clear from Desslock's posts that he's focused solely on the cash factor. If you don't want to provide some kind of service and put out a sensible product, why bother selling a games magazine of all things?! There's a hell of a lot better and quicker ways to fame and fortune

That's not, at all, where I'm coming from when I criticized the Globe's press releases - I think it's pretty clear that my love of pc gaming has very little to do with cash (quite the contrary).

But those press releases -are- embarrassing, from the perspective of investors, and producing lame
press releases because of a lack of previous "marketing" only highlights a fundamental problem -- public company press releases aren't just a "marketing" tool, because if they're done badly, they can really hurt the company.

To get off of the Globe and CGM -- Interplay is a prime example of another unsophisticated public company that keeps screwing itself in the market because of its immature corporate practices. I love Interplay - I definitely liked more games released by them recently than any other company (BG2, Sacrifice, Giants, Icewind Dale, Fallout Tactics, Starfleet Command 2), but it's pretty annoying how they constantly shoot themselves in the foot with their press releases (compare them to those released by companies like EA and Microsoft).

I much prefer Interplay's games than the games recently released by EA or Microsoft, and I definitely think there's better ways to run a gaming company (without changing their decisions on games). Similarly, I like CGO/M, but I think The Globe is completely inept -- it's my love of gaming (because I think we're going to eventually lose Interplay and CGO/M) that's motivating my annoyance, not my "focus on the cash factor".

>>Steve, actually--not necessarily.

Shows how much I know about all of this.

>>So even when The Suits at our own mag come out with their periodic self-congratulatory press releases about our circ, I just roll my eyes.

Don't let Desslock see one of those releases. They make him angry.

"Let's talk about girls instead."

My daughter is one years old as of last week!
She's beautiful, charming and a genius. When some socks on Sesame Street starting signing Pat-a-Cake, I sat there not knowing WHAT to do, but she's a trooper. She began touching her toes. GENIUS!

-Andrew

"Ah, the bad old days... I even remember the first cover I negotiated, MechLords from SimTex (published by New World). The cover entered new realms of suck (it was a bad lookig giant-robot cover, which isn't easy to pull off), and MicroProse bought SimTex shortly thereafter and canceled the game."

I remember that issue! Man, I really wish Mechlords hadn't been canned. It sounded really good. Of course Simtex had trouble finishing games. It looks like some of those problems have been rolled into Retro Studios where Barcia now works.

"Folks like to reminisce about how good the magazines were in those days, but lemme tellya, reading those old issues of our magazine... yeesh."

The old issues couldn't compete with the newer ones in many ways. Bruce Geryk bought a box of old CGWs at the most recent Gen Con, and I looked through them. No way would they sell at the level they do today. It's not that they were bad, but visually they were unappealing and the articles were aimed much more at a niche audience.

>>Similarly, I like CGO/M, but I think The Globe is completely inept -- it's my love of gaming (because I think we're going to eventually lose Interplay and CGO/M) that's motivating my annoyance, not my "focus on the cash factor".

I somehow doubt the ability to write the perfect press release ranks particularly high on the list of why a company succeeds or fails. Though it might make a nice scapegoat... blame marketing. No one likes them anyway.

This, for all of your info, is how a press release should look

"YOUNG CANADIAN FELLOW TO OPEN GAME-RELATED WEBSITE IN THE MIDDLE OF A MAJOR DOWNWARD SLIDE OF THE MARKET

CANADA (AP) - My site's opening soon - Gamersclick.com.

About GamersClick.com
The soon-to-open site is opening soon."

That's a good press release! Brilliant, actually. Ugh. Press releases are just major pieces of corporate propaganda. I don't really have anything against them, except that they are, contrary to Desslock's thoughts on the issue, always filled with wondrous metaphors used to exaggerate the product. That, and they're usually too long.

"Don't let Desslock see one of those releases. They make him angry."

Is Ziff publicly held? That makes a difference.

Desslock actually does all that merger, acquisition, and IPO stuff as his day job. He probably has a good understanding of the investor mentality.

>>Is Ziff publicly held? That makes a difference.

I don't know.

>>Desslock actually does all that merger, acquisition, and IPO stuff as his day job. He probably has a good understanding of the investor mentality.

Ah, well that would certainly explain why he knows so much about magazine circulations and distribution.

In all seriousness, knowing that makes me question even more why he would post negative information about a public company on a public message board. I'm sure bosses or clients wouldn't appreciate it any more then if I launched into tirades about the internal policies of, say, Electronic Arts.

>>Because the press releases are misleading, and I felt like clarifying the situation.
>...thank you for providing this valuable service. I didn't even know I needed it

Who cares what you need? Sorry to pop your self-centered balloon, but my post wasn't directed at you.

>Our audit lists subscriptions that came from deals with Chips, and if you think it's anywhere NEAR 400,000, or even a significant percentage of our overall circulation, you're showing a profound lack of knowledge of both businesses

I absolutely think those deals represent a significant amount of your "paid" subscriptions, and I certainly don't think the number of people who paid a meaningful subscription price - or who even specifically asked to receive the magazine - is anywhere near 400,000.

>Do you know what newsstand deals we have in the works, or about our ongoing newsstand push since January (which isn't in the audit), about our expansion in regions of the US, of experiments with covers and in marketing, blah blah blah? Are you sitting in on every meeting between our publisher and our circulation director?

Of course not, and I never suggested that I did. But I suspect it's a fair statement to make that I'm qualified to opine on how a publicly filed press release is going to be perceived by the market. All of the statements (mentioned in my previous post) that were in those press releases
-hurt- the financial stability of your company, not helped. The Globe's stock price went down after each release was given to shareholders.

>what you're saying is that despite liking the magazine and website you feel it's more appropriate to post criticisms on a public message board as opposed to offering this useful advice in private? Yeah, I can see why you'd do this. It's because you care. It makes perfect sense

I'm not giving advice - I'm commenting on publicly available press releases, er, in public. I'll freely comment on anything relating to the gaming industry in a public forum that's been created for gaming industry discussions. I'm not naive enough to think that anything I state here, accurate or otherwise, is going to influence a potential advertiser, let alone affect the Globe's fortunes. But you're apparently naive enough to believe that press releases are "happy marketing" tools that don't have to be written prudently.

>[Sean] Doesn't Desslock still write for Computer Gaming World and/or Gamespot? And I guess CGW is a direct competitor of CGM ? I rest my case. For what it's worth we don't see either CGM or CGW at the newsstands here in Australia anymore

I don't see either magazine much at all. The only PC gaming magazine with significant retail presence is PC Gamer. That may not mean anything, as others have suggested, since apparently newstand sales are a horribly inefficient manner of selling magazines. But it certainly concerns me, because I like both magazines.

And I hope you weren't seriously suggesting that I made comments criticizing the Globe's press releases (coupled with comments that I liked CGM/O and preferred CGO's news to GameSpot's) because I was motivated to help CGW/GameSpot because I write for them. I write for those folks because I like 'em, and I think that each of them is the best gaming mag/site.

I do think, as I said previously, that the writing at CGM/O is more consistent, however, and you're less likely to find a really poor review there than at either GameSpot/CGW. On the whole I prefer GameSpot and CGW, but I certainly would be bummed if any of CGO/M; IGN; PC Gamer weren't available.

>>[Jeff}The Suits at our own mag come out with their periodic self-congratulatory press releases about our circ, I just roll my eyes.
>[Steve]Don't let Desslock see one of those releases. They make him angry.

Heh heh - yep, they do, and I've probably told Jeff as much whenever I've seen one of them!

>>>Similarly, I like CGO/M, but I think The Globe is completely inept -- it's my love of gaming (because I think we're going to eventually lose Interplay and CGO/M) that's motivating my annoyance, not my "focus on the cash factor".
>I somehow doubt the ability to write the perfect press release ranks particularly high on the list of why a company succeeds or fails.

Sure - but it often symptomizes broader corporate governance issues (which is certainly the case with Interplay), and I'd definitely rank poor corporate practices very highly on a list of why a company succeeds or fails.

That's been proven over and over again recently -- people can be very skilled at developing a product or at being creative, but they're not necessarily skilled at running a business.

*phone rings at Jeff's house at 2 a.m. Jeff-- about to try something new with the wife based on his newfound flexibility after weeks of yoga--grumblingly picks up the phone*

Desslock: Hey, Jeff, did you see that new release that Ziff came out with saying you guys have a million subscribers?
Me: Um, yeah. Listen I gotta--
Desslock: That really makes me angry.
Me: Yeah, uh Desslock--
*muffled sounds of female whining in background*
Me: I know honey, in a minute...
Desslock: Why are you calling me honey?
Me: No, not you...
Desslock: As I was saying, this press release makes me angry.
Me: Yeah, I got that...listen...
Desslock: I suspect it's a fair statement to make that I'm qualified to opine on how a publicly filed press release is going to be perceived by the market.
Me: ...huh. Yeah. Okay then, I'm gonna go ahead and hang---
Desslock: Something must be done, Jeff.
Me: Is this the Majestic people again?
Desslock: Why does everyone keep making me angry, Jeff? Can you answer me that? WHY?

Okay that�s enough procrastinating. I�ll go write my Empire Earth preview now.

Um, Jeff,
Desslock doesn't make phone calls. He subpoenas.
So be carefull.

I'm about to hire him to come after you.

You know why....

Cheers! ;>
-Andrew

>>Who cares what you need? Sorry to pop your self-centered balloon, but my post wasn't directed at you.

Well duh. That was like sarcasm or something.

>>I absolutely think those deals represent a significant amount of your "paid" subscriptions,

Check the audit. It's not even close. Sorry.

>>I'm not giving advice - I'm commenting on publicly available press releases, er, in public.

As what? A fan, a guy who does IPOs, or a writer for a competitor? You can't solely be a fan because of the other professional affiliations. If you're analyzing a company's stock, and these quotes were attributed to you, which they could be as a matter of public record, could you just say, "Oh, that was just a message board?" Would that hold water with clients or with the bosses? Or with the SEC? Haven't they dropped the hammer on people posting on Yahoo boards, even under psuedonyms?

And as a writer for a competitor, you have the perception of bias. I don't think that you posted for that reason, but still... people wouldn't really know that with any certainty, would they? If I go around say, "Jeff Green in the anti-christ," am I doing a public service or am I just trying to stab him in the back?

(For the record, I have no evidence that shows Jeff Green is the anti-christ, not do I have any evidence that proves conclusively he is not. But I know of the area where he grew up, and it's full of SATANISTS.)

>>I'll freely comment on anything relating to the gaming industry in a public forum that's been created for gaming industry discussions.

This is a gaming industry discussion board? I thought it was the Quarter to Three board, which is frequented by, well, game fans, not just industry people. You're the one being naive if you think fans don't come to these boards to post and mingle with folks in the biz, and don't give special importance to the people they've actually heard of.

>>I'm not naive enough to think that anything I state here, accurate or otherwise, is going to influence a potential advertiser, let alone affect the Globe's fortunes.

Does this mean you not feel there's any accountability for what you say here, even if it's "otherwise" instead of "accurate?"

But do you not feel your position as a figure associated with Gamespot and CGW gives you additional credibility when discussing any game-related matter. To just say, "Bah, nothing I say here matters" is rather disingenuous. It also begs the question, "why post anything at all?"

Wow, how existential.

I'm going to bed.

"Okay that�s enough procrastinating. I�ll go write my Empire Earth preview now."

What? You mean that female whimpering in the background was just a writer's conceit? I refuse to believe it. Empire Earth can wait. Empress Green needs attending to!

Oh well. Since this thread has spun and devolved, I'll use this moment to plead for a job of some kind from any kind readers. I interviewed today for a technical writing position, which is something that I did for 13 years. I'm now staring at a test I have to take, a take home job.

"Your job is to document the steps for copying rows (records) between one table and another. You've been given the information below. Please write down the questions or additional information you would need to do a quality job with the assignment.

"INFORMATION GIVEN
"Life Support Plus 5.1 contains an application called PDF Tables. PDF Tables allows users to enter records for different types of tables. Table records can be added or maintained in any of three different ways.

"TABLE CREATION CHOICES
"- Use an external spreadsheet tool to create table records and then import them into PDF Tables
"- Use PDF Tables to create the table and its records
"- Copy an existing table. Edit the table records within PDF Tables

"Tables contain parameters that tell Life Support Plus how to use (apply) the information in them."

I then have four different PDF Table screenshots to look at.

It's not that I can't do this, but it's about as exciting as looking at my neighbor's fishing trip photos, all 150 of 'em. Every day. Over and over again.

HELP!

Mark, I would absolutely love to help you out by offering you a position at GamersClick.com, but we're all out of paid positions :( Regardless, I don't think we pay enough heh... a 19-year-old running a gaming site out of his apartment isn't exactly a major draw for VC.

I really hope you find a good job (somewhere other than CGO/M please heh), as I love your writing, and I'm sure everyone else does, too.

>As what? A fan, a guy who does IPOs, or a writer for a competitor?

...just someone who likes talking about games and the gaming industry.

>If you're analyzing a company's stock, and these quotes were attributed to you, which they could be as a matter of public record..Would that hold water with clients or with the bosses?

Huh? Now you're being wacky, brother. Why would I care if my comments are part of the apparently foreboding "public record". Of course they're for public consumption - that's why I posted them. There's nothing illegal, or inappropriate, about commenting on whether or not you believe a company is well run or not (unless it's defamatory, and last I checked "truth" was a pretty good defence to that).

Who are "the bosses", by the way?

>And as a writer for a competitor, you have the perception of bias... people wouldn't really know that with any certainty, would they? If I go around say, "Jeff Green in the anti-christ,

First off, all I said were positive things about what CGM/O produces. However, if I really thought you guys had written a bad review on something, I'd probably want to discuss that too - I find those discussions constructive and damn interesting. I'd like to get the opportunity to play Black & White just so I could see if I agree with your review or Greg Kasavin's at GameSpot's, since you both came to such different overall rating scores (if not conclusions) and I respect both of you as reviewers. And if I strongly agreed with one of you, I'd feel free to debate the other on the matter, regardless of who I was writing for.

I'm comfortable that what I actually write in these discussions makes it clear, to a reasonable person, that I'm not biased, regardless of any preconceptions to that effect.

And I think, as a gamer, that a debate between the PC Gamer reviewer of a game and the Gamepower reviewer of that game, for instance, is an interesting conversation that I don't think should be "prohibited" from occurring (or even inappropriate) in a public forum just because the writers work for competitors. It'd be apparent to reasonable observers, pretty quickly, if one of the reviewers was only interested in hurling criticisms and personal insults instead of actually debating the topic on its substantive merits.

>But do you not feel your position as a figure associated with Gamespot and CGW gives you additional credibility when discussing any game-related matter.

If someone has a preconception of my credibility (whether I'm more or less credible) after recognizing my name, I think that opinion was formed because he/she agreed, or disagreed, with what I'd previously written (or how I'd written it), not solely because my name was familiar -so of course I'm accountable for my statements - and if I thought I'd said anything inaccurate, I'd certainly try to correct it or qualify it for that reason.

This thread has gotten a bit out of control, and I do want to apologize if I've been insensitive to those folk here, including yourself, by going on and on about a topic (the ongoing viability of The Globe) that could have a significant impact on a number of people reading or posting here. It's hardly comparable for me to complain that "it'd be a drag if I couldn't read Bauman's funny screenshot captions at CGO anymore" when folks here have their livelihoods tied up with the Globe. I didn't mean to belittle or exacerbate that concern. Like I said in my initial post - I wish you guys well.

>>If I go around say, "Jeff Green in the anti-christ,
>First off, all I said were positive things about what CGM/O produces.

Oops, forgot my "Second off". Secondly, Jeff Green actually is the anti-christ, so you'd just be verifying everyone's concerns/desires.

"I interviewed today for a technical writing position, which is something that I did for 13 years. I'm now staring at a test I have to take"

Where in the world are you Mark?

RNWK is actually looking for a tech writing manager in Seattle. Technical writing is, well, technical writing. But at least you won't have to take take a test to get the job. We'll just pull you in and put you through the ringer during the day-long interview loop.

Desslock said :

"And I hope you weren't seriously suggesting that I made comments criticizing the Globe's press releases (coupled with comments that I liked CGM/O and preferred CGO's news to GameSpot's) because I was motivated to help CGW/GameSpot because I write for them. I write for those folks because I like 'em, and I think that each of them is the best gaming mag/site."

I was only being half serious - my apologies if you thought otherwise. I have a great respect and admiration for many writers/reviewers here at QT3 - including yourself.

I just believe we shouldn't be beating up on each other here. The computer game magazine arena is becoming smaller and smaller and everyone should be supporting each other.

Whether a sizeable portion of CGM's 400,000 subscribers is real or not is irrelevant. CGM is still a quality magazine (as you stated) and should be supported. Yes we know corporations are big baddies and The Globe may be no exception. At least they haven't stooped to the levels of certain games companies that I will not mention here.

I'm in St. Louis. If I was going to relocate, I'd probably look for a job in the game industry. Tech writing's ok. I had just forgotten how deadening it can be. Anyway, tomorrow I have an interview for a job where I'd write about the gambling industry, of all things. What's scary about that is that it's for a company that runs a pay-to-view website. Apparently they do ok with it, though, as there are plenty of people who are willing to pay for information about the gambling industry.

>>However, if I really thought you guys had written a bad review on something, I'd probably want to discuss that too - I find those discussions constructive and damn interesting.

I agree that they are constructive and interesting, but I question competing publications having these sorts of discussions on a public message board. Much of this is better handled in private, or better yet on the pages of our own publications.

I could go on and on about why I feel all of those early Black & White reviews were off the mark, using specific review examples, but I'd rather just say, "Read my review. Play the game. Come to your own conclusion." We're mostly in the realm of opinion anyway.

>>I'm comfortable that what I actually write in these discussions makes it clear, to a reasonable person, that I'm not biased, regardless of any preconceptions to that effect.

Sure, but if I were to post here an incredibly well-reasoned and logical critique of an article in CGW or PC Gamer, how could anyone think I was doing it for any reason other than to draw (mostly negative) attention to them and/or the article? The result of such a critique might have value to readers and that publication (though I don't think any other publication needs or wants my "help" or advice), but it would also serve to boost the standing of our own publication.

"Tech writing's ok. I had just forgotten how deadening it can be."

Isn't that the truth! I was especially moved and, I don't know, filled with dread when you mentioned that test. It just seems like such an old-fashioned way to determine whether to hire. I would not have liked walking into an interview like that. Blah.

The really nice thing about Tech Writing (at least where I'm at) is the ability to jump in and out of the job market via consulting agencies. And the money is a lot better as an "insultant" (as my 3-year old son calls them).

When you say working in the gaming industry, you're talking about writing manuals or something completely different like designing games? Curious. I should probably move this topic to its own thread, but I'm much too lazy for that.

The gambling gig sounds like it could be a lot of fun. I liked reading the Survivor guides by Vinny the Fin at the now defunct DR.

So, are you going to get a cool name, like Mark the Shark at the new work digs? ;)

I rather doubt Steve's ever written a "humorous screenshot caption" for any article on CGO, other than one he wrote originally--he's too busy thinking up ways to annoy Desslock to write screenshot captions usually.

"The really nice thing about Tech Writing (at least where I'm at) is the ability to jump in and out of the job market via consulting agencies. And the money is a lot better as an "insultant" (as my 3-year old son calls them)."

Yeah, I'm looking into that as well. Most St. Louis companies make you go through agencies to avoid IRS problems, though, so the rates I'd get are after the agency takes it healthy cut.

"When you say working in the gaming industry, you're talking about writing manuals or something completely different like designing games? Curious. I should probably move this topic to its own thread, but I'm much too lazy for that."

I'm not so niave as to think I could jump in with no experience and be a game designer, though I'd love to work on something like that. I'd probably be a better fit working as a PR person/manual writer/website content producer, etc. For the right company, I could fill several needs. But yeah, someone hire me as a game designer. :)

There are four game companies in St. Louis -- PopTop, Verant (a division that's working on Planetside), Simutronics, and a husband and wife team, the Toblers, who made that Riddle of the Sphinx adventure game you probably haven't heard of. Also Volition is in Champagne, Illinois, about 2.5 hours away from St. Louis.

"The gambling gig sounds like it could be a lot of fun. I liked reading the Survivor guides by Vinny the Fin at the now defunct DR.

"So, are you going to get a cool name, like Mark the Shark at the new work digs? ;) "

Heh -- the stuff they have seems pretty professional. It doesn't look like my slangy, off-the-cuff style will transfer. I'll have to write straight news pieces. The place is informal, though. They told me I didn't have to wear a suit to the interview tomorrow, which is nice, but I will anyway.

Mark, my part-time gig is HTML/XML coding and formatting of material written for companion web sites to college text books. Since I'm in Chicago and the company's in Cambridge, MA, relocation obviously isn't involved. Don't know what the tech writing is paying, but we could compare notes. Definitely, it's more interesting than that, probably more on the scale of your neighbor's Orlando vacation than his fishing trip. Compared to game writing, well.... Of course, my last assignment was Kingdom Under Fire and THAT would be a close call. OTOH, thanks to that review, Ben Sones did teach me the joys of microwaving a CD.

---

Quote:

They told me I didn't have to wear a suit to the interview tomorrow, which is nice, but I will anyway.

---

"Of course, my last assignment was Kingdom Under Fire and THAT would be a close call. OTOH, thanks to that review, Ben Sones did teach me the joys of microwaving a CD."

Ha ha -- ain't that the truth. Man, I know getting paid to write about games is one of the all-time cool gigs, but sometimes you get a lousy game AND YOU REALLY CAN'T STAND IT!

"But yeah, someone hire me as a game designer. :)"

You lost all chance of that once you voted for Flying Heroes as GOTY. Who'd want a game designer with that kind of taste? ;-)

"You lost all chance of that once you voted for Flying Heroes as GOTY. Who'd want a game designer with that kind of taste? ;-) "

I just reinstalled it last night. It's a classic!

Jeff, that post was priceless!

I don't agree with either side of the discussion because I can't wade through the rest of this. It is giving me a headache.

-- Xaroc

Mark Ashy, AdrenalineVault has openings for a PC and a console staff writer. It may just pay peanuts, I dunno, but thought I'd pass that long since you did say, "any jobs". :)

"Jeff, that post was priceless!"

Heh-- it was a hoot. Waiting to see how Desslock is going to top it.

--Tim

*phone rings again at Jeff Green's home*
*grumble, grumble*
"What is it now? I'm trying to sleep, Desslock!"
"This isn't Desslock, it's Geo!"
"WHAT IS IT?"
"Hey, you're stealing my phone schtick and using it at quartertothree. I want royalty payments!"
"WHAT?"
"Yeah you heard me, bub! This ain't napster!"
"****!"
"Oh and another thing, if you see any manila envelopes in your mailbox today, don't touch them. They're filled with an alien poison that will suck all the blood out of your body and turn you into a pale, pasty faced computer gamer!"
"****! I already am!"
"Oh. Damn. Stole my punchline too. Why you..."
*hangs up*
*grumble, grumble*
"Honey, I'm going to go back to niche Mac magazines, I don't need all this grief!"
"That's nice, dear."

Geo, if they paid peanuts that would be considered a raise for what Avault pays. :)

I just have to interject here that I have thoroughly enjoyed this thread.

Thoroughly.

(But, that's just my opinion.)

"Yeah you heard me, bub! This ain't napster!"

Heh-- Geo, just when I thought it couldn't get any better. Bravo!

Marky mark, you said "any jobs" so now you've gotta revise that to "any jobs that pay at least peanuts." :)

I took a few technical writing courses in college but, silly me, when I got into the real world they wanted technical writers who actually knew something technical. Oops!

That this mighty thread has not turned Discus into a quivering mass of pulsating jelly is testament to Discus me thinks.

"Yeah you heard me, bub! This ain't napster!"

Leave me out of your schtick Captain Geo.

"I took a few technical writing courses in college but, silly me, when I got into the real world they wanted technical writers who actually knew something technical. Oops!"

Well, there are two kinds of technical writers. There are the real ones, who know some code and can read blueprints and stuff like that, and then there are people like me who produced end-user documentation. Basically, my task was always to describe how to use a software product so that lay people could use it. Essentially what I did was document how to use the GUI of a given product. I only needed a shallow understanding of what was going on in the code.

Those people who can read code and also write in a clear, concise, and understandable manner are few and far between.

>I rather doubt Steve's ever written a "humorous screenshot caption" for any article on CGO, other than one he wrote originally--he's too busy thinking up ways to annoy Desslock to write screenshot captions usually

Okay, taking my own quote and then using it against me from a third person perspective is a tad wacky, Mr Mayer (the "Mayor" - please adjust your bookmarks accordingly).

"Well, there are two kinds of technical writers..."

Disagree.

Maybe it just depends on the types of jobs in demand where ever you happen to be. In Seattle there is an enormous demand for a system administrator level of writing. You're explaining how to setup some sort of server or service and how to maintain it. It can get complicated.

I've also seen a big demand for documenting complex software tools, like an encoder or even something like Photoshop is a good example. When the software isn't designed to capture the mainstream audiance, it can get complicated pretty quick.

Also, doing a programmer writer's job isn't that bad. It's not like you actually have to program anything. You do need to know a little code to write samples, but it's mostly a matter of getting the syntax right. *Reading* code is much easier than being tasked with writing an application that works. When you're documenting an API or something similar, it's almost like you're just following a path from one function to the next, discovering what it all does as you go, then just writing it down.

With web development there's even a need for another, less hard core programmer writer, to document tags and scripting, which is usually a lot easier to understand than, say, something like C or C++.

Heh, as an aside, I've seen tools that create samples from source files and could keep a non-programmer writer floating for months before being "discovered." :)

I think most of the people on this board could do any of these types writing if they wanted. If you've set up a web server, you're pretty much at the right level of technical ability, you just might have to "fake it until you make it" and be able to bluster your way through an interview.

Heh- not that I know this from personal experience, mind you.

So, Mark -- I can't believe you're getting a "day job!"

What's the world coming to, when someone has to do more than just play games to make a living!?!?

I didn't capitalize Bub, I mean, lower cased bub is not copyrighted is it? :)

I'll stick with "pal" then...

Plagiarist!
No, wait. Look, just don't take my name in vain.

"What's the world coming to, when someone has to do more than just play games to make a living!?!?"

Basically it means the world sucks. :) How dare the world expect more of me!

---

Quote:

Basically it means the world sucks. :) How dare the world expect more of me!

---

Geo glanced in the mirror and said:

"Hey, bub, you're pretty darn handsome!"
*taking Bub in vain*
;)

Heh - pretty clever. :-)

Also quite true. You are a wise, wise man Captain Geo.

I keep my eyes out for technical writing jobs but two technical writing courses only get me so far. I don't think I've ever seen a want ad for a technical writer that said, "no experience necessary." How'd you technical writers get your feet wet?

Yes I know this thread's ever morphing but you've got my interest. :)

I started at a company as an intern when I was finishing up in college. It actually paid, so it was pretty cool. I ended up going on full-time and I worked there for about 8 years.

You might talk to some consulting agencies. They might get you a contract position that will let you get the experience you need.

My first job as a tech writer was at a company that only hired new writers, becasue as a company, they didn't pay very well. There was a lot of turnover. People signed on for a year or so, finished a project and gained a (small) portfolio, then moved on.

My first project was working on a DOS-based finacial application for nursing homes. All the help was in a text file and each line had a tweleve digit number that the program read each line and displayed the text accordin to the number sequence. Also, you only got 80 characters to display per text line.

It was an enormous pain in the ass to update.

If you wanted to introduce a new eight charecter word into an existing line, you had to move ALL the charecters in EACH and EVERY one of the preceding lines.

Heh--one learns to be pithy in dire situations. It was like a crossword puzzle. Removing the stuff that changed, finding out how many characters you earned, then coming up with ways to say what you needed to, using only the amount of earned characters.

I left 9 months later and doubled my income at the next gig.

This is turning into a great thread. I'm going to put the kids to bed, then come back and start a new thread on the business of writing.

"It all comes down to price. There is SOME level at which the ROI on a purchase of CGM becomes an attractive use of capital, especially for a company in the same general industry group (magazine publishing). Furthermore, magazines don't really have any assets that can be stripped (unlike, say, an airline) so a liquidation wouldn't do anyone any good. And it's not like it's some bizarre business that no one has heard of and requires very specific technical knowledge to run. "

Nice to see you posting again Bruce! Sorry I won't be seeing you again this year at E3, feels odd not to be taking part this year! :) Of course, this is probably a s blessing for you, as you actually had to room with me last year! LOL

Anyway as an expert in the financial field (miss you articles as the IPO bear btw) and the gaming industry I had a few questions on your thoughts�

Would an IPO (err� former IPO) like TLGO with limited profitable assets sell it's only money making venture? Especially if it wanted to keep in the business at all (get relisted or get further venture capital), it seems like that they would have to keep their only real viable asset, wouldn't it?

Second, from what I've heard Chips and Bits seems to be fused with CGM/CGO. Depending on the balance sheet of profitability on these two aspects, might it be worth a competitor to make an offer and liquidate the magazine and incorporate C&B business aspect and the circulation lists into their existing business? This is definitely NOT what I want to see, sort of the "sky is falling� speculation; which by the way seems to be holding true for the industry is a whole (except EA, what the heck is up with that!!!!)!

Hi David,

I'm not a financial expert in any sense of that term. And I haven't been involved in investment banking for a number of years. Desslock is much closer to that industry than I am right now. FWIW, I would say:

(1) You assume TGLO is going to have a choice. From my reading of TGLO's financials, they need to raise cash quickly. They can't sell equity. They presumably have no access to the debt markets. Selling assets is likely to be their only recourse.

(2) I'm not familiar with the C&B/CGM relationship as far as the accounting is concerned. I also don't know the market value of the subscription list, and as was pointed out above, that sub list may or may not have value depending on how much it could boost ad rates through a circulation increase.

Sorry I can't be more specific but without better knowledge of the details I can't really offer an informed opinion.

Btw, I wasn't J.G. Bear -- Ty was. He would send me the column to get my opinion, and I'd offer suggestions, but those were his pieces.

For those who didn't bother to actually ask or check before making assumptions...

The total number of subscriptions and sales attributed to Chips and Bits deals (and also a deal involving an online games service) total just over 11,000. It's all right there in the audit, available to just about anyone who asks.

So if the big beef is that a lot of the 400,000 "paid circulation" are people who got it when they bought a game at Chips or something and had no idea they were getting it--and probably didn't want it--they amount to what is essentially a stastical insignificance. Less than 3%.

Seriously. This stuff is in the audit. This is why the company makes the audit available.

Jason, I don't know where the audit is. Is it online?

What are the numbers on the people who subscribe to the thick edition of CGM? That's what I'd be most interested in seeing.

>>Jason, I don't know where the audit is. Is it online?

http://www.bpai.com

>>What are the numbers on the people who subscribe to the thick edition of CGM? That's what I'd be most interested in seeing.

Why would you even care? You trying to be some sort of 1337 insider?

By the way, the "thick" edition has about 8-16 pages more then the "non-thick" edition nowadays, and will eventually go away entirely. The regular editions get about 60-65 editorial pages, which gives them about the same as the competition (for this time of year). In other words, the distinction is quickly becoming meaningless.

Steve pointed to where you can find it online (you have to log in, but I don't know if you have to do anything special to make an account).

Typically, people who have a really legitimate need for the audit (more than just "I'm curious"), simply contact Alan Brush, our circulation director. That's why he's here (well, it's one of the many reasons, anyway).

The point of having anything (ciculation, net traffic, viewership, whatever) publicly audited by a 3rd party is just precisely to keep that information from being closely guarded by only a privelaged few who can spin it however they want.

">>What are the numbers on the people who subscribe to the thick edition of CGM? That's what I'd be most interested in seeing.

Why would you even care? You trying to be some sort of 1337 insider?"

I am so un-l337 that I don't even know what l337 stands for. I care for the same reason that bothered to listen to the CNET quarterly financial report webcast -- I've been affected by all this and I find the ongoing events interesting.

Why do I care about Snowball.com? I don't have stock and I don't do any work for IGN anymore. I'm just interested in what's happening and what will happen.

"By the way, the "thick" edition has about 8-16 pages more then the "non-thick" edition nowadays, and will eventually go away entirely."

Interesting. So the bonus pages are disappearing? You don't have to answer, but since you brought it up, I thought I'd ask. At one time weren't there an extra 40 pages in the CD version?

One thing I'd like to see are non-CD versions of the mags on the newstands. I simply will not pay $7 for a magazine. If I could buy PC Gamer for $4, I probably would from time to time -- I know, I should subscribe.

>>Interesting. So the bonus pages are disappearing? You don't have to answer, but since you brought it up, I thought I'd ask. At one time weren't there an extra 40 pages in the CD version?
How coy. "You don't have to answer..." Of course if one doesn't answer, one is ducking a question or has something to hide, right?

Nothing is disappearing, nothing is being taken away. Having one issue is easier to deal with from a production standpoint.

>>One thing I'd like to see are non-CD versions of the mags on the newstands.

Yeah, we would too, but it's practically like putting out another publication. The CGW and PC Gamer guys would have more data to back this up, but I assume that given the choice (and that's key), people are more likely to would buy the CD edition then one without. (PC Gamer is still available, at least at the local Borders, without a CD for $4.99.)

Having two editions really only helps people who buy multiple game magazines, as they're likely to want at least one of the CDs. But after spending $8, are they that much more likely to buy another one for $5?

"Why would you even care? You trying to be some sort of 1337 insider?"

What a curmudgeon. Desslock shouldn't express caring because he works for other related publications and may be tainted. Mark gets the Gestapo treatment because he has simply becaome interested in this topic after watching you and Desslock sparring for the past week. For the love of God, Bauman. Make up your mind. The way you flop between (paraphrasing) "Editorial staff is seperate from the numbers (aka business and marketing people)" to your recent breaking down of the numbers, ah. You're making the page so blurry that I can barely read it.

>The point of having anything (ciculation, net traffic, viewership, whatever) publicly audited by a 3rd party is just precisely to keep that information from being closely guarded by only a privelaged few who can spin it however they want

Let's be clear -- there's only one purpose to being publicly audited: it's to try to convince potential advertisers that the circulation numbers you provide them with in order to attract advertising have legitimacy. That's it. No business would intentionally disclose such information for any other purpose.

And regardless of what the writers for/editors of the magazine think (and certainly regardless of what schmoes like me think), all that matters is that your advertisers believe your circulation numbers are credible, and valuable. If you can convince advertisers that the circulation numbers you quote are meaningful, that's all that matters. Best of luck.

And I hope no one thinks that I posted the "anonymous" post regarding "when does cdmag...etc." As I've stated several times, I think the quality of the writing in CDmag is excellent (and I wouldn't be caught dead writing about "microjoules of brain energy".

Stefan

"The CGW and PC Gamer guys would have more data to back this up, but I assume that given the choice (and that's key), people are more likely to would buy the CD edition then one without. (PC Gamer is still available, at least at the local Borders, without a CD for $4.99.) "

Yup. That seems to be the case. I always argue for continuing newsstand sales of the non-CD versions--not only cuz it's cheaper, but because then readers can flip through the contents before buying. I hate if I have to buy a mag in shrink-wrap and can't see what's inside first--and I hate that that's how most people have to buy CGW.

Not only that, but I bet a quarter of the CDs get stolen anyway. I find tons of magazines on the stands with the CD missing.

"Why would you even care? You trying to be some sort of 1337 insider?"

I don't know what 1337 means either (is it a Rush album?) but Mark is curious. He's a tech writer with a honest-to-goodness nose for news. I've been to two Gen Cons with him... I go there and do what I was assigned to do - and then I leave because D&D people over 40 frighten the hell out of me. Mark goes there and talks to everybody. He gets his hands dirty. He bathes in the B.O.

There's a real journalist lurking in his ample St. Louis beer-town frame. It's probably my favorite thing about him.

-Andrew

I figured you guys were kidding about not knowing what 1337 means... but now I'm not so sure...

>>The way you flop between paraphrasing) "Editorial staff is seperate from the numbers (aka business and marketing people)" to your recent breaking down of the numbers, ah. You're making the page so blurry that I can barely read it.

Well, I am/was pretty much separate from the numbers and only found out about certain circulation issues because people here asked and I didn't actually have an anser. It's as simple as that. In my day-to-day job, these aren't issues I'm generally confronted with.

>>Let's be clear -- there's only one purpose to being publicly audited: it's to try to convince potential advertisers that the circulation numbers you provide them with in order to attract advertising have legitimacy. That's it.

It also works editorially. PR wants to reach eyeballs too.

>>And I hope no one thinks that I posted the "anonymous" post regarding "when does cdmag...etc."

Oh good lordy no. I certainly wouldn't think that. You're not shy about sharing your opinion under your own name...

You guys who don't know what 1337 means have just lost your 1337 status... you can't be game writers cuz you ain't 1337, I'm afraid.

I ph34r f0r j00. Erm, yeah!

Hey Steve,
How's your Esperonto?

-Andrew

>You're not shy about sharing your opinion under your own name...

Heh, that's right. "Desslock" is/was more of a marketing schtick than a "secret identity" to hide behind (other than from spam marketing). I've always made it very apparent that my actual name is Tom Chick.

"I've always made it very apparent that my actual name is Tom Chick."

Erik Wolpaw at Old Man Murray, god bless him, was being interviewed once by some woman from a mainstream-ish publication who was fascinating with the fact that he calls everyone 'fags'.

In the course of pulling her leg, he told her he writes under the pseudonym of "Tom Chick". I think he later came clean with her and that tidbit didn't make it into the published interview. But I would have loved for that particular urban legend to have circulated.

-Erik

-I mean, Tom

Tom Ohle, someone once told me what l33t means. I've since forgotten. I know it's hacker slang, so I assume that it means you're a cool guy, hacker-wise.

Hax0r = hacker
pr0n = porn

Those I know, though I'm convinced now that hacker slang is anti-cool.

Hacker slang is way c001. :)
Andrew stated its meaning in one of the other threads... it means elite... "leet".... it's pretty weak.

"Those I know, though I'm convinced now that hacker slang is anti-cool."

n0 wAY iZ hack3r-SP3ak ant1-co0| mark! C'mon, evEn a 1337 guy LIk3 U HAz t0 Realize That! i m3An, which staTEMenT Iz tRu3:

a) MaRk Ash3R roX0Rz!

b) mark ash3R=n0oNch!

W3ll?

-sC00t-d@wG

"In the course of pulling her leg, he told her he writes under the pseudonym of "Tom Chick". I think he later came clean with her and that tidbit didn't make it into the published interview. But I would have loved for that particular urban legend to have circulated."

The interview was eventually pared down to about two sentences, mostly dealing with how I wish I was Batman. She cut the Tom Chick pseudonym part along with a detailed alternate history of OMM, gaming, and The United States of America that would have made Harry Turtledove proud.

What I find particularly facinating about the h4x0r sp34k is that all the bozos using it now have totally missed the point.

It was used waaaayyy back in the BBS days as a way to defeat language filters and keyword searches. Substituting a 4 for an A did't look so different in the old DOS ASCII character days, and it screwed up primitive word-searching scripts. So it was kind of a security measure for hackers/crackers.

Of course, it's utterly useless now. It's so common that everyone knows about it, and it doesn't defeat the worms and stuff today (not the ones a hacker would want to hide from) because they're much more sophisticated.

Using l33t sp34k now is like screaming out "I'm a wannabe!"

Has anyone translated Hamlet into h4x0r sp34k? I think that's the line it has to cross to truly become tiresome.

As for why people like Mark and I aren't fluent... well, we learned to program in BASIC. So if it doesn't have an A$ and GOTO in it, we're clueless.

-Andrew

Ahhh...Basic. There's a trip down memory lane.

They still teach it in computer courses at some colleges. I can't imagine anything more useless to today's youngsters.

I'm not a CompSci major (I'm Aerospace Engineering), but I have some CompSci friends who say they have to take COBOL. Would that be more useless?

I was required to take FORTRAN for my programming language, though I also took the intro to computer science class (learning to program in C++), just to be familiar with it.

No, COBOL is still used a lot of places. No one WANTS to use it. But if you enjoy being pigeonholed in a dead end job, you can program COBOL. We have a bunch of people where I work that do only that. Mainframes are ubiquitous these days in a lot of companies and COBOL is still the language of choice in a lot of them. There's a shift toward Java in the works being pushed by IBM, but it's going to take a long time for that to be reality.

When I was working on my degree in Comp Sci./Mathematics, we learned how to program using Pascal and then I had some LISP and C stuff closer to the end. I also used ISETL which was probably the most useless language I ever dealt with. Hearing that a lot of Abuse was programmed in LISP left me pretty well speechless.

--Dave

I learned some Basic in elementary school.

I took a class in graphic design using CorelDraw and whatnot.

All this computer work made me realize that, except for typing crap out, I wasn't cut out for any of the traditional computing jobs (databasing, graphic arts, programming).

Hence the fact that Scoot is neither an EECS major nor a webmaster of some sort.

-Thierry

I have programmed in Basic(QBasic/GWBasic, etc.), Pascal, Fortran, VB (including Access), Powerbuilder, Paradox, ASP, HTML, PL/SQL (Oracle), and T-SQL (SQL Server).

There may be a few I forgot along the way. :)

Bub wrote:

---

Quote:

They still teach it in computer courses at some colleges. I can't imagine anything more useless to today's youngsters.

---

Mark, I can't believe they are still teaching COBOL. Dave is correct in that it is still used in some areas and it is a dead end.

I too had to take Fortran back in my year as an EE major so I have been through that. :)

My advice would be to go for the C++ class as that is a decent language and is comparable to Java in many ways (Java is very hot right now).

I have found in general though, if you are a good programmer in one language it is not terribly difficult to carry it over to another language and have success. Each language has it's quirks but the basic structures tend to be the same.

Damn this post is all over the place. Oh well. I hope it is of some use.

-- Xaroc

"All this computer work made me realize that, except for typing crap out, I wasn't cut out for any of the traditional computing jobs (databasing, graphic arts, programming)."

Heh -- no kidding. I could probably learn to program, but I don't think I'd ever be that great at it. I'm better at other things, like goofing off.

I used to type in programs on a TRS-80 a loooong time ago. I also took BASIC in high school.

I program for a living. Of course, it helps that I started programming in middle school and got a CS degree in college. If you're interested in learning to program, I'd recommend the following in order (reason listed in parentheses).

BASIC (scalar variables, loops, and branches)
PERL (array variables, references)
C (pointers, memory management, struct variables)
JAVA (object oriented concepts)
C++ (combination of everything)

Oh, and get some good reference books. (I like the O'Reilly series.) Nobody in their right mind memorizes all of the syntax.

- Alan

"I don't know what 1337 means either (is it a Rush album?) but Mark is curious."

That's "2112." Sheesh.

;)

Heh heh - (Pulls pants up to his chest in his best old man imitation) - I had to take Fortran in college, and programmed the damned thing with punch cards.

In 1979 I started teaching myself assembler, assuming that learning 6502 assembly would make me a better person.

Years later I tried to learn C++, and realized that I just didn't have what it takes to think that way.

- Jeff

"That's "2112." Sheesh."

Thanks for getting that joke Ben. I knew a Tolkien D&D grognard like you would get it.
;)

2112 - most pretentious and silly album ever made. But it do rock.

-Andrew

Don't be puttin' down Rush on MY message board...

Oh, wait. This isn't my message board. But still!


-Ben (who was once one of the priests of the Temple of Syrinx... or something like that)

---

Quote:

I program for a living. Of course, it helps that I started programming in middle school and got a CS degree in college. If you're interested in learning to program, I'd recommend the following in order (reason listed in parentheses).

BASIC (scalar variables, loops, and branches)
PERL (array variables, references)
C (pointers, memory management, struct variables)
JAVA (object oriented concepts)
C++ (combination of everything)

Oh, and get some good reference books. (I like the O'Reilly series.) Nobody in their right mind memorizes all of the syntax.

---

I doubt C or C++ are going to be marginalized for a long, long time. Some variant of C with garbage collection may popup, but bytecode interpreter languages just aren't going anywhere for solutions shipped outside your company developing them.

"I doubt C or C++ are going to be marginalized for a long, long time. Some variant of C with garbage collection may popup, but bytecode interpreter languages just aren't going anywhere for solutions shipped outside your company developing them."

I strongly disagree. It's already happening; just look around you.

Here's my point-- computers get faster every day. Programmers don't. The math is actually quite easy to follow on this one.

That's why we need smarter languages. That's also why nobody programs in assembler any more, and fewer and fewer people program in the mid-level C and C++ every day. I'm not saying they will go away any more than COBOL or FORTRAN have gone away; more of a pyramid structure that is increasing in slope... a slow but inevitable realization of the above axiom.

It's only a matter of time, my friend. Mark my words! It will happen within the next 20 years. Heck, maybe even within the next 10.

wumpus http://www.gamebasement.com

---

Quote:

Here's my point-- computers get faster every day. Programmers don't. The math is actually quite easy to follow on this one.

---

---

Quote:

It's only a matter of time, my friend. Mark my words! It will happen within the next 20 years. heck, maybe even within the next 10.

---

"I agree that programmer time is becoming a bottleneck, but there will always be the grognards who are willing to do the low-level coding tricks to squeeze out a few more frames per second. That's how the industry advances. Just talk to any of the console programmers."

Yeah, but the number of situations where that actually _matters_ will increasingly become smaller and smaller.

Heck, even in high-level scripting languages like ASP or PHP the difference in performance between the "I thought about it for a few minutes and benchmarked a couple different approaches" version and the "I just wrote the first thing that popped into my head" version can be 3-5 times faster. And that's hardly assembly language.

In the end, it's generally cheaper to throw hardware money at the problem (in the form of more CPUs/memory) than it is to throw expensive programmer man hours at it. Note that I said "GENERALLY"! Clearly a console gaming system (and gaming itself) is a fairly narrow exception to this rule; it's more of a special purpose system than a general computing platform.

"So wumpus, where's my flying car and my holographic television set? ;)"

If you had a brain and memory upgrade, you'd be smart enough to develop those yourself by now.. ;)

wumpus http://www.gamebasement.com

Oh, I forgot to add in the "legacy" factor. You've got veteran game programmers who have been using C and C++ for years. Old habits die hard, and I doubt they'll throw out those languages within the next 10 years. Then again, I really suck at this whole "predict the future" thing.

- Alan

"Then again, I really suck at this whole "predict the future" thing."

I'm not really predicting the future so much as extrapolating from the past. How many guys do you know that write assembler code today for any reason?

And of course it depends on the task; the number of tasks that justify using low or mid level languages for performance will get smaller and smaller every day.

Gaming is one of the very few exceptions.. but heck, even 2D games can be written in Java today.. have you seen that Java emulator that runs old arcade games like MAME does? Take that, then imagine what it'll be like in 10 years.

wumpus http://www.gamebasement.com

You guys might find this interesting. I was surprised to see this today, after reading this conversation!

Click here!

Hope you enjoy.

"Okay, taking my own quote and then using it against me from a third person perspective is a
tad wacky, Mr Mayer (the "Mayor" - please adjust your bookmarks accordingly). "

Um, Stefan, I'm a bit baffled how you could construe my comments as being used against you. I was merely pointing out that for the past several years Steve hasn't had much to do with the website, other than that much of the basic content was shared with the print magazine. Captions are written by the authors, usually, not the editors--and editing the web stuff was my task anyhow. I also don't claim any witty captions for my own--I'm far to lazy to be witty.

I would have thought my comment that Steve was busy thinking up ways to annoy you would be a tip off to the jocular nature of the post. No matter.

I'm perfectly content to sit back and watch the catfight from my perch. I confess to not knowing that much about the inner workings of the magazine business from a financial standpoint.

>Um, Stefan, I'm a bit baffled how you could construe my comments as being used against you.

What's baffling you? I made a statement that you responded to, and in your response you were both addressing me and referring to "Desslock" as a third person, which seemed pretty wacky. And you used a statement that I made which couldn't reasonably have been construed as insulting to CGO folk (quite the contrary) to belatedly state (as two previously posters had), "in a humourous and jocular manner", that Steve's actions were motivated solely to annoy me. That's funny because it's not the truth. Ho ho!

Why are you bringing this stuff up again, a week later, especially when the nature of the paragraph that your initial retort was directed at? Back to sleep.

Desslock, pal, love your articles always, but you need to lighten up. :)

Just noticed IGN's Premium Pay-Only Content links of late. I guess it was mentioned here but I hadn't stumbled into Premium Pay-Only Content links until today. Well that sucks, I guess I won't be visiting their Premium Pay-Only Content links anymore, which is a shame, because I often enjoyed their stuff but I don't enjoy or need the information enough to want to read their Premium Pay-Only Content links. And I guess they forgot that most gamers, while they are hopelessly money wasting maniacs who spend hundreds of dollars a year (if not a thousand) on games many of which they play for maybe 5 days tops, will still fume and fester over $44.99 vs. $39.99 price differences and probably over the idea of paying so much as a nickel to view Premium Pay-Only Content links.

Which leads me back to the title of this thread, and my theory that sites that add JustForMen sections (whether or not it's called that), along with Premium Pay-Only Content links, are usually doomed. Ba-da-bing, ba-da-boom. :)

Um, Stefan, you do indeed have a true attitude problem. I plead guilty to not always being funny, but failed joke attempts are nothing new on these forums. "Defensive" doesn't begin to describe your behavior, though "troll" certainly comes close.

So, bite me, nicely of course.

"Um, Stefan, you do indeed have a true attitude problem."

Stefan will be the first to tell you he has an attitude problem. He somehow thinks it's endearing. :)


We need to get you two into a Celebrity Deathmatch ring at E3:

"Mayer crushes Desslock's head with a crate of unsold Daikatana boxes!"

>"Defensive" doesn't begin to describe your behavior, though "troll" certainly comes close.

Heh, I agree with Son of Desslock - I shouldn't be so defensive. It's boring, for one thing. But I wrote, in an effort to end this thread:

>This thread has gotten a bit out of control, and I do want to apologize if I've been insensitive to those folk here, including yourself, by going on and on about a topic (the ongoing viability of The Globe) that could have a significant impact on a number of people reading or posting here.

... and YOU attacked that statement, and yet call me guilty of trolling. Right.
Pot. Kettle. Black.

>So, bite me, nicely of course.

Droll, troll. Careful, "the Bosses" will comment on your professionalism.

Stefan

Well, my first draft included a suggestion that you perform a function that is physically impossible, but luckily I restrained myself. I'd be the first to admit I'm probably as guilty as anyone of getting too worked up about some of this crap.

Enough said I suppose.

>I'd be the first to admit I'm probably as guilty as anyone of getting too worked up about some of this crap. Enough said I suppose.

Gah. I agree -- obviously like having discussions (even heated ones) about gaming - debating points and arguing positions - but I don't think it's cool to hurl personal insults, so my apologies for my part in degenerating the discussion. It's not cool, it's boring, and I regret it.

Stefan

Wow. A wonderful display of maturity on the part of both of you. I commend you.

Damn, guys. Now what am I going to read for entertainment.

Party poopers.

Yeah, c'mon... I liked the Daikatana boxes bit. I was hoping we'd be able to get more great Celebrity Deathmatch inspired mayhem to eat popcorn while watching! :)

BTW, I found CD to be a work of sheer genius at times. You just never knew where it would go next!

--Dave

Well crap. I enjoy watching two people with whom I've dealt and respect going at each other. Unfortunately, such folks are usually mature enough to pull back and act like adults, as Robert and Stefan have done, and that just ruins the fun.

Hmmm. Hey Robert - I think I heard Desslock say that History majors should get a life.

Hey Stefan - I think I heard Bob say that Canadian lawyers should stick to RPGs because historical wargames are beyond their mental capabilities.

(skulks back into the shadows...) ;)

Jeff

>Hey Robert - I think I heard Desslock say that History majors should get a life.

Heh, that's what my undergraduate degree is in. It's true, we should get a life!

Stefan,

You're a lawyer too? That's just what this board needs: another goddamn lawyer.

--Jason Levine, J.D.

I often thought I should have gone to law school instead of getting degrees in history and foreign affairs...it might have been more lucrative, though apparently there's no shortage of lawyers these days. Besides, I don't look good enough to be in LA Law, and I couldn't take the heat of Law & Order ;-)

My wife has a MA in Computer Science at least, so we're not completely tweed jacketed out :-).

Heh, I've never owned a tweed jacket. Three-piece suits on the other hand...

Way, way back, Alan said:

---

Quote:

So wumpus, where's my flying car and my holographic television set? ;)

---

Forget the Skycar. I'd rather just have a Harrier. ;)

- Alan

Yeah, but you can't park that in your garage, and then just back out and take off when you're ready to go!

Bub asked:

>>Has anyone translated Hamlet into h4x0r sp34k? I think that's the line it has to cross to truly become tiresome.

It isn't Hamlet, but someone has made a version of Romeo and Juliet in chat-room speak. Be careful if you are at work, the link opens right into the movie, and it has a soundtrack.

http://www.angelfire.com/indie/christx/tftl.html