Game magazines

[lforos]

I would like to ask a question … What video game magazines do you usually read? I buy Micromanía magazine every month and, the two issues published so far, of the Spanish edition of RetroGamer. Although it is heavily criticized, I like Micromanía (I have always liked it). I have my doubts about its continuity (fewer and fewer pages, the game giveaway that I fear makes it unprofitable,...) although I hope I am wrong.

The thing is that I buy other magazines occasionally to have some variety (and because on trips it is a very important element) and the few that exist are quite lamentable. The only one that I see as more generalist and with significant weight of PC is Marca Player, but it has such absurd language (they seem like forty-year-olds trying to talk like teenagers and dropping a swear word occasionally so that it doesn't seem like they have a certain intellectual level), so little content of interest and so many inaccuracies of content and form (it is easy to find at least one spelling error on each page) that even at 2 euros it seems expensive to me. Moreover, considering that the typical gamer is usually a man of about 30 years old with studies, making a magazine that seems childish even to 12-year-old kids seems a bit stupid to me.

It is clear that the trend is towards electronic magazines like Meristation, Vandal, etc., but while we don't have internet connection on airplanes it is not an alternative.

[Bm4n]

I haven't bought anything for a loooong time, they usually are a waste of time and money, in general today it's hard to find good reads. And when I'm on the outbound plane I read what's there and on the return trip abroad I go for things like T3 (I've known it for years, very entertaining although slightly informative) so even though I don't understand the language I entertain myself with the "illustrations" :chuckles:

[Nemo]

What two roosters am I going to give you Bm4n!! :facepalm: look at that saying that magazines are a waste of time…:osvaisacagar:

Íforos, the thing with Micromanía magazine, as you say, fewer and fewer pages and smaller in format, is due to a standardization that affects all the magazines in that editorial group.
By making a common size for all, the production costs are optimized.
It may seem like a trifle, but they are millions of euros in paper that guarantee the continuity of mythical magazines like that. I used to read it when it started to be published, along with Microhobby... years ago.

Best regards

[Tecnho]

Even though Nemo beats me, I think the same as Bm4n XD although I sometimes buy something, but they are all games or console ones or as you say, the PC ones are a mess, for now I prefer to read virtually and if it's for flights then I download it in pdf or read another type of reading.

[Sylver]

I don't currently read many related magazines, but of the ones I've followed in the past, I stick with Micromanía, and it has contributed a lot, really.
Come on Nemo, shoot these anti-magazines while I cover you :ugly: xD

Best regards!

[Nemo]

In a way you're right. I'll qualify.
Magazines are made for a specific audience (gamers, computer enthusiasts, photography enthusiasts, etc.) and then they try to cover all levels of experience, from those who don't know how to turn on a computer to those who more or less master the subject.

The thing is that if you're a machine, like the colleagues here Bm4n or Tecnho, they can hardly contribute anything to you.
Even so, I recognize that as a magazine reader, I can say that I always find something curious or they make me discover something that, simply because I had not thought to look, I didn't know.

In general, people are lazy and don't like to search for the solution to a problem (we know this well here) if you give it to them more entertaining and on top of that with photos... they read it and they like it.;D

@Sylver, it won't be necessary to shoot at them, I respect them a lot... but a couple of virtual slaps will do ;D;D.

Best regards

[Franziskaner]

newspapers? apart from Hola, the El Maruja interviews, the boring and gossipy ones, well, I don't know...
the last one I stopped buying was the personal computer &internet mainly because they put a lot of advertising in it. I think I remember Micromania from when it was published in XXL format (like a newspaper) but I never really liked it. I think I bought this Aquellas revistas de antaño: INPUT

[incrediboy]

I used to buy micromania until they downsized it, after that I stopped buying it regularly. Now I might buy one if I go on vacation or something similar, but no more than 1 or 2 magazines a year.

I find it a moderately entertaining read to pass the time, but nothing new comes out that I don't already know.

[Bm4n]

Before Nemo finds my address, I'm going to clarify :risitas:

I say that video game magazines are a waste of time because I don't know any really good ones, at least ones that could interest me (that discover things, good dialectic, independent games, quality of editing, etc.), maybe abroad if there are any but Spanish ones?…

And about magazines in general, sporadically if I can buy the national geographic, T3, some PC or mobile ones if it brings a specific topic that could interest me, cars, etc. Never anything from MARCA, and I sometimes read the newspaper, but as for informative quality... :troll:

The problem in Spain is that there are many generalist magazines as Nemo rightly says, and few specialized magazines and the ones that exist are really tedious to read. And on the other hand on the internet you have opinions from specialists and users on websites with very good "editing" and photography and of course extremely up to date so that the first thing brands do now is send samples to the main websites. Even many times they do it with images of products that are in development...

But well as I say a long time ago, but my father and I used to buy every month computer magazines (and occasionally games) from the stands that informed very well and brought you a lot of software (and games) that back then were not very available on the internet and downloading with 56kbps was complicated. The last one I remember buying a few issues was Computer Hoy, already when the CD was disappearing from these magazines, which was lighter, easier to read and more or less entertaining. Too bad the criteria they use to compare products are somewhat questionable and today they can bring us little novelty.

Today the top gear of computing today is on the internet, and in games the same. For me IGN is my reference to find out about games, I also don't know anything similar in Spanish. And Nemo you know how bad the magazine sector is, perhaps it's the tail wagging the dog: there's no money, no investment, no improvement, no sales, no money.

[Sylver]

That is indeed true, nowadays it is much more profitable to get informed about new developments or specific things through online magazines or articles posted on trusted websites, which, as you rightly say, have more information, better editing in general, better illustrations and deal with deeper aspects than those dealt with in physical magazines aimed at a more general public among which there are knowledgeable people and not so knowledgeable about the subject. That is irrefutable.

[cobito]

My first magazine was a PCManía in 1996. I liked it for the CDs that for me were like the Internet of the time: I liked to explore them and discover the thousands of shareware programs and playable demos that were on them. In fact, I spent a few years surviving on playable demos and trial programs for which I had to change the time of the PC so that they would believe that 30 days had not passed. As for the magazines, I didn't pay much attention to them to be honest.

At this time, a Micromanía would occasionally fall into my hands because their CDs were only of playable demos! The thing is that with the 20 duros that my parents gave me a week, there was no possibility but to buy one every x months and choose the right one: the one with the CD cover that was the most colorful and pretty, whether it was PCManía or Micromanía :ugly:

A little later I moved to PCActual, of which I have a pretty good collection, and these I read almost from top to bottom. I bought it every month from 1999 to 2002 (I think). From there on, I bought one every few months until I stopped doing so.

In my house we had the Internet for the first time in 2000 and over time I learned to handle it, finding information and programs not in trial version but complete ones, and the magazines began to cease to be interesting to me (and Hardlimit has a great deal of guilt in that).

Today it has been many years since I bought any magazine and I don't plan to do so. Occasionally, one or another has fallen, but not much.

By the way, I have all the CDs saved and the truth is that when I see them I get melancholic. The magazines of PCManía and Micromanía have all disappeared and it is something that I would have liked to preserve because they are almost historical documents of the field of computer science. It is entertaining to occasionally take a look at some article about the revolution that SLOT 1 represents, how AMD has broken the psychological barrier of GHz, how they screw Windows Me, or how with 32 lines RDSI one can achieve the whopping 2 Mbps, but that is a speed so high that it is not useful to anyone…

[Bm4n]

I have also read those, apart from the software they provided, it must be acknowledged that computing was much more complicated back then. These 200-page magazines taught you a lot of things that were impossible to deduce or discover because the software used to be much less intuitive.

[Tecnho]

Current PCs were pretty good back in the day too, and I still have quite a few issues and some more from the AxelSpringer publishing house, which were the magazines I read until I could connect to the internet from 6 pm XDD, because if you didn't, they'd cut you off at 15.
Mostly, what I bought were electronic music magazines that came with a bunch of trial software to try out.
But as for games, I like Foros micromania as you say, and I don't know what's on the market now.

[lforos]

Entertaining debate … The truth is that I buy Micromanía out of a certain romanticism. I had all of the first era (which I lost miserably for reasons that don't matter ¬¬) and I got hooked again in the fourth era because it still has a certain charm to open the new magazine, see the images and the excited descriptions of the new games.

The structure of the information with the different sections is interesting for a complete reading, which you don't generally find on internet sites. There is no doubt that for looking up information on a specific game, the Internet is much better, but as a "general" reading, I still like to browse a magazine.

I usually take books to read on trips (and with the kindle now you can imagine), but when you get up early to be in Barcelona at 8:00, you spend the day working and return at eight in the evening, you don't feel like a serious reading and magazines in that case are great alternatives.

Apart from Micromanía, I regularly consume Muy Interesante and La Aventura de la Historia, but I was looking for something more.

I share what is edited by Marca... the more I read, the more I get the feeling that, either they are written for short people or for short people or both... and I beg that their regular readers don't take offense, but it's just that, really...

[Nemo]

I agree with Iforos that the magazine format is (or at least if it is of quality, it must be) an entertaining read to pass the time, not a treatise on quantum physics.

As I said before, I think the magazine that I have been buying for the longest time was MicroHobby. In those times, when I was young and healthy and I was addicted to my Spectrum that made my senses spin :ugly:
The magazine came with a cassette :ffu: with playable demos of the most cutting-edge games.
As cobito says, this custom still remains and there are magazines that include the programs they talk about. Which are usually, at the very least, curious to take a look at.

Call me optimistic, but when I read a magazine, it is true that most of its content sounds familiar to me or seems basic. But in all of them I discover some detail that is new to me. It is a bit like when Packo changes something on the forum and invites us to look for the change :wall: suddenly you discover new things, from a forum that you enter every day.

regards

[Fassou]

Well, for me to get informed, nothing beats the Great Web, but I understand that many magazines of all kinds are sold, because they have to leave us something in the waiting rooms of so many professionals (workshops, lawyers, dentists, …), that the batteries of our mobile phones and portable consoles have a limit ;D

Cheers!

[Kernel1.0]

Man if you want to read about games and stuff, now you can download wikipedia :troll:

[lforos]

Well, having turned out to be somewhat prescient, Axel Springer has indeed gotten rid of Micromanía. They have announced that they will create an independent publishing house to publish it again in September, but for now it has not been published and there is no news about it.

Such a shame...

[Yorus]

It reminds me of when they stopped publishing what was then their sister magazine Micro Hobby. I still have that last issue, and in its editorial they talked about trying to revive it by looking for other options, such as quarterly editions or similar things, but it was more wishful thinking than reality, since the Spectrum was becoming an outdated machine.

The case of Micro Manía is not very different, since the PC is still a current and very valid platform although some want to destroy it, but the network prevails over written media and they will not be able to change that.