Good-bye “Game Informer”: My (apparently) annual ode to physical media

The final two issues of Game Informer magazine above old issues of Entertainment Weekly and The Sun.

I’m starting to write this a few days after it was announced that Game Informer magazine will cease publication.

As much as I love physical media, the nature of my previous day jobs in print news have complicated my relationship with short form, article-based issues of news papers in magazines.

So, I’ll start by saying this: As much as I would like to advocate for continuance of physical newspapers and magazines, I’ve typically seen management cling to physical media like an albatross. In my own personal experience, newspapers and magazines insisting on remaining physical have done so despite some combination of the following:

• Not being good at producing a physical product that is sufficiently variable from other options.

• Not being good at ensuring that physical product is physically delivered to the people who pay for it.

• Allowing the expense of that product (namely print and delivery) continue to pull funds away from the people making the contents of the product.

Now, I think there is an apatite for physical media. I certainly have one. Others have it to: Gen Z has seen to it that vinyl records are seeing their highest sales since the ‘90s. Gen Z and Millennials tend to prefer physical books when reading long form.

Admittedly, the examples of physical books and music — I speculate — are easier to attribute to a desire to not only enjoy their favorite art, but showcase it. Newspapers and magazines were always designed to be a bit more disposable than physical incarnations of music and books.

That said, I think there is, or at least could be, an interest in physical newspapers and magazines. (My own personal ax is mostly grinded by how those publications are managed.) I don’t think that interest can ever be as grand as it was back in the ‘80s and ‘90s, but I think there’s a modest readership there for a publication that’s willing to be niche.

I am, admittedly, less well versed with how publications like Game Informer or even things like Entertainment Weekly or Times sustain themselves. I really loved reading magazines in my childhood and teen years. I got back into them a bit during the COVID-19 pandemic, but have fallen off over the past two years for a variety of reasons. (Mostly storage, time, and cost.)

All of that is what I have to say about the market of print publication. I don’t know for a fact that miss management and lack of care is what led to the end of Game Informer, but (based largely on my own experience) I’d bet any amount of money that is one of the larger contributing factors; especially when one considers that management purged all of the online archives from the Game Informer website.

This is all you can see on the Game Informer website. 30 years of articles from one of the foremost publications of the video game industry, rendered inaccessible.

My original plan had been just to pick-up the final issue of Game Informer, but when I saw that the penultimate issue covered Hades II — a game from one of my favorite developers, and the sequel to one of my principal COVID-19 era gaming enjoyments — I decided to spring for the final two issues.

My intent had been to spend the rest of this post talking about these final issues of Game Informer after reading them front to back. However, the finite number of hours in the day reminded me one of the reasons why I have drifted away from magazines.

I did get through most of the penultimate issue and — dang — I do really need to tip my hat to some quality writing (such as how the latest edition of of Dungeons & Dragons is being) and diverse subject matter (there’s a nice piece about finding a so-few-of-them-they’re-almost-mythical Star Wars arcade game uncovered in Minnesota), alongside some great reviews of recent releases like Stellar Blade and comments from readers about the issue.

I will say that, something that stood out to me was the fact that so much of the issue — both in terms of reader comments and broader editorial focus — had concern regarding physical media. (This concern coming before anyone would have known the magazines days were numbered.) There’s a reader who writes in talking about how much they treasure and collect the physical issues of the magazine as well as another reader expresses concern about the release of physical video games. The issue itself has a large focus on the tactile aspect of Dungeons & Dragons in its coverage there and shouts out a number of bord games through its pages.

As I’ve said, print magazines and newspapers represent mediums I have complicated feelings toward. While I understand how and why they’re hard to sustain, I think poor management and audience understanding have contributed to their decline more than anything else.

It’s hard to feel genuine lamenting the passing of a thing that I only revisited as it died as, by my own admission, I couldn’t make time for it before hand. Yet I whole heartedly believe that Game Informer was important (at the very least within the world of video games) and that things in the game space are worse off with it gone.

So, fondly and sorrowfully, I say: Goodbye Game Informer.

***

The Wilderlands is available now for pre-order on Kindle here, on Nook here, on Kobo here, and on Apple here. More formats, digital and physical, will be available for purchase and pre-order soon. The Wilderlands is scheduled to release on Oct. 29, 2024.