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Once upon a time, dinosaurs walked the Earth:
lumbering beasts called magazines. Forged in printing presses,
these paper tyrants ruled the world of journalism with a pulpy fist,
helping humans understand video games with famous tropes
such as "96%", "Best Game Ever"
and "10 out of 10 for gameplay!". But what the magazines did not know
was that a cataclysm was coming: the Internet. The world changed rapidly:
journalism was everywhere, it was fast and it was free.
New species evolved to fill niches in the ecosystem -
web sites, blogs, angry people talking on YouTube - and the magazines soon became powerless.
While some grew hard aluminium shells to survive this harsh new climate,
or had their DNA mutated into websites similar only in name,
most faced inevitable extinction.
In this world of free, instant, abundant content, who would be foolish enough
to release a new paid magazine into the wilderness?
In September 2012 I was at the Eurogamer Expo in London with my best
friend Craig,
who you may know as the Scottish half of Split Screen. We sat down for a break from the
noise belching demo pods
and the queues of malodorous nerds snaking around the Call of Duty booth. "I'm gonna make my own
magazine!' I said
revealing my secret project. "We're gonna sell it for actual money!"
I took out my iPad and excitedly showed him my crude design mockups.
Craig turned to me and said...
"And who do you think is going to buy that?"
And I said, "Uhhhh..."
I grew up in the era of classic games magazines.
I couldn't afford to buy all the games, but I sure could read about them.
My favourites were Mean Machines, Sega Saturn Magazine, PC Gamer...
I'd read them over and over until the pages fell apart. All traditional media have
suffered as a result of online incursions
but games media have suffered more than most. It's a natural consequence of an already
digital medium,
one that has a more tech-savvy audience and a whole generation of readers
to whom the Internet is just second nature. Yet despite the wealth of
exceptional content you can find online, I still love magazines!
Maybe it's the tactility, the feel of the print in your hand.
The serenity of curling up on the sofa with an iPad and a mug of coffee.
Maybe it's just unjustifiable romanticism.
Maybe I'm just an old Luddite that needs to get with the times.
But even if that is the case,
that's not much to base a talk on, so instead I'm going to discuss three reasons
why I think magazines aren't just relevant in the online era,
but are actually better the alternatives.
Websites are pretty rigid.
No matter how many animated GIFs you cram into the page, it's still a relatively
static layout.
While there are a couple of notable exceptions, such as the New York Times'
'Snow Fall' feature in 2012, creating such features is labour-intensive.
Magazines, on the other hand, are malleable, they're flexible.
The design always supports the feature, and never the other way around.
If someone wants to draw a comic that can be read from start to finish,
but when you print it out it turns into a maze - you can't do that on Tumblr.
But creativity is about more than making something look good.
As writers and editors, we are the arbiters of criticism.
We are curators. We are always deciding what to include and what not to include,
even though the decision may be unconscious. We promote and retweet,
and we mute and filter.
The advantage of a regular periodical is that you don't have to chase for hits
or resort the sensationalism. We don't have to print junk food
to support some occasional fine dining. This makes it easier to support
marginalised and minority voices because the magazine is served to you
in a set dish. You're not forced to read the whole thing
but assuming that you paid for it, and you actually enjoy reading
you will read all of it. Which brings me on to my next point.
Magazines allow us
to discover new content. Whenever I read a magazine,
it's not something that I saved to Instapaper, or was linked to through someone
whose tweets I actively subscribe to.
That means that I get to read pieces that I wouldn't normally have thought of reading
and I find that element of discovery tremendously exciting. But online journalism, with its
emphasis on
viral sensations and social sharing, has killed this.
It sounds counter-intuitive: how can something that allows me to access
anything be more constricting than a pay-walled publication? Allow me to explain.
The Pareto Principle, a.k.a. the 80/20 rule, states that for many events,
eighty percent of the effects come from twenty percent of the causes.
In statistics, this is known as a power law distribution. It's not always clear-cut:
for example, the top twenty percent of web sites get about two thirds of all web hits.
Here's a nice public domain graph that I found on Wikipedia.
The green bar represents the top twenty percent, and the yellow bit
is the 'long tail'. If you're watching this video, chances are that you are part
of the long tail. So it follows that the distribution of online media is
lopsided too,
as in the revenue. The big players in online media
are well established and they attract significantly more advertising revenue
This makes it really difficult for smaller sites to establish themselves,
we end up fighting with each other for traffic. Think about how many links you see
on Facebook pointing to the Guardian compared to a niche blog like Stumbling and Mumbling.
I bet you haven't even heard of Stumbling and Mumbling!
Well, in the context of a blog. What we think of as choice
is really a product of algorithms. Google search, Facebook and Twitter -
these are not objective tools.
Speaking of revenue, let's talk about Patreon.
In general, I think it's a great idea and it makes a lot of sense for a website such
as Critical Distance, one that wouldn't be able to survive off traditional advertising.
It's just like giving a donation to a museum that doesn't charge for entry.
But supporting the work of individual journalists,
as their own islands of content, with their own branding and fan bases,
is a very different thing. Instead of paying for one or two publications that
your favourite writers frequent,
you need to subscribe individually. And that means that individual authors need to work
much harder to gain traffic,
unless they're already well-established personalities. There is a value
in having a united banner such as a magazine. Having a system that's based on
visibility and promotion
is one where the rich get richer; or in the case of journalism,
where the slightly less poor get slightly less poorer, faster than the remaining poor.
I'm all for people getting paid for their writing, but a winner-takes-all system
seems like a short term solution for a wider problem with the diminishing value
of journalism. And to to survive it,
we need to join together and not grow apart.
What is the point in making your own magazine? Your tiny victories often feel
Pyrrhic, as you shave off another layer of your soul
To release something only a couple hundred people care about. You'll not make
enough to earn a living wage.
It takes over your free time. It takes over your life.
Creating your own zine seems ludicrous on the face in it,
but we often choose to walk the path that others have established
without considering the alternatives and making a path of our own.
The point is the joy of creation. Magazines remove the
endless grind of blogs, where you write piece after piece
in the hope that one of them will take off. Every month or two,
You produce this beautiful finished product and you release it into the world.
And it's gone! And you can go have a drink! And you can do it
over and over again!
You shave off a layer of your soul and it resonates with people. It enriches their lives.
It upends our way of thinking. What I want in a Five out of Ten pitch
is something makes me say "Holy ***, I wish
I had thought of that!"
Confession time: I don't find videogames that interesting any more.
I don't care about resolutions and frame rates,
scores and Metacritic scores, the endless hyperbole and
non-news. I care about the experiences
of people playing and making games. I care about their lives.
Those experiences are worth documenting and sharing
with the other few people who do care. And if you don't like that sort of thing,
you can *** off and read something else. Making a magazine
is a constant battle, but we fight the good fight simply because we can.
When I read publications like Memory Insufficient, the Arcade Review,
It's Just A Game, Scroll, Heart Container - to see those creators express themselves
in the pages,
that deeply personal, compartmentalised art is so moving,
it's so much better than a bit of HTML and CSS.
And I feel a connection with the author and I think: "Someone meet this for me".
Even if dinosaurs could evolve
we would not want them to. Instead,
we can strap a jetpack to their back and let them soar.