End of an Era
When I was a kid and through my early teenage years, videogames meant playing a lot of games and keeping up with the newest games and news from the industry through gaming magazines. My first real job, working for a game store, came about through hanging out at the place until the manager asked me to buy some game mags for him and handed me $20. He didn't know me at all, but trusted me anyways. I still remember that I picked up an EGM and Next Generation with the money.
As time went on, the internet, obviously, came to become the place of choice for updated news. Some of the store's regulars would print up tons of gaming news from the net, staple them together and drop them off at the store for us to check out all together. We started selling game magazines ourselves and almost instantly noticed the drop in sales after a few months as more and more people became "plugged in."
It's been maybe almost 5 years since I last bought a gaming mag... and the ones I did buy around that time were bought solely for the PS2 demo discs included within the packaging.
Even still, last night's news of Electronic Gaming Monthly shutting down saddened me in an unexpected way. We've always known that print media would be fading out as time went on. Maybe I felt that way because it's one of the few constants that linked current gaming to past gaming. Everything else about gaming has pretty much changed radically. No more cartridges, no more wired controllers... no more magazines.
And then we also have 1up being sold and gutted. Ugh.
As time went on, the internet, obviously, came to become the place of choice for updated news. Some of the store's regulars would print up tons of gaming news from the net, staple them together and drop them off at the store for us to check out all together. We started selling game magazines ourselves and almost instantly noticed the drop in sales after a few months as more and more people became "plugged in."
It's been maybe almost 5 years since I last bought a gaming mag... and the ones I did buy around that time were bought solely for the PS2 demo discs included within the packaging.
Even still, last night's news of Electronic Gaming Monthly shutting down saddened me in an unexpected way. We've always known that print media would be fading out as time went on. Maybe I felt that way because it's one of the few constants that linked current gaming to past gaming. Everything else about gaming has pretty much changed radically. No more cartridges, no more wired controllers... no more magazines.
And then we also have 1up being sold and gutted. Ugh.