EGM: Final issue
I recently heard that 1UP.COM had been purchased by UGO, who picked it up from Ziff Davis Publishing. Unfortunately the acquisition itself resulted in the closure of a number of content channels, such as video and audio podcasts. I’d recently started grabbing their podcasts, coinciding mysteriously with the launch of the 3g iPhone. They had a couple of items, such as the 1UP Show and Legendary Thread, that I was starting to follow heavily. In a strange way it wasn’t because they gave an in depth critique of the games they covered, like they were trying to create a video version of Wikipedia. In contrast the shows were more of a celebration of gaming, with those participating clearly showing a passion and enthusiasm for the games they talked about. I often found it ironic that it would almost be the polar opposite to The Escapist’s Zero Punctuation, another weekly videocast I’d been following regularly. Unlike Yahtzee’s witty but harsh monologues, they rarely interacted on camera with their unseen audience, instead choosing to treat the watcher as a welcome voyeur into the kind of gaming conversations that we have with our own friends. It conveyed an almost refreshing honesty about an industry that some of us in the older range of gamers had begun to look on with cynicism and contempt.
1UP’s own problems seem to be reflected elsewhere in the sphere of videogame journalism. Woody Hearn, the man behind GU Comics recently put original artwork up for sale after failing to get paid by his ad broker. With developers and publishers alike laying off staff, marketing budgets may well be seen as the next target by boardrooms. And without those precious ad dollars, content that has been traditionally been provided to the game playing public for free will either start to dry up or move to some kind of paid model. Even subscriptions are no certainty though – 1UP’s sister print magazine, Electronic Gaming Monthly, also closes this month. It may yet be that other institutions we’ve grown up with over the years either merge or collapse as their advertising wanes and subscriptions fall.
Is this diversion of funds a good budgetary choice? Although it seems so at first glance, it may be the start of a vicious cycle. Games that have mass-Market appeal and popular acclaim will still do well. Other, really dire will still be avoided like last weeks pizza. It’s the rest in the middle ground, those impulse buys or hidden gems, that will probably be the ones whose sales suffer. Without media to showcase these games and reveal their unique attributes, consumers are more likely to spend their limited cash on guaranteed hits picked from the top tiers of places like Metacritic, or shouted at them from the front of magazines left sitting in racks. While the gaming community tend to share information and opinion reasonably freely, we only have a handful of sites to go to for the real broad-brush discussions that would bring this up for us. If not for all-encompassing videogame media, all we would have is our own bespoke forums and messageboards, like small groups of scouts huddled around their own diminutive campfires and swapping stories with close friends.
The tale however is not without it’s silver lining. A day after the news that saw them leaving 1UP.COM, the team regrouped to form Rebel.fm. It almost feels like a proof of the axiom that it doesn’t matter what happens to a creative personality, they will always find a way to create. Once again, the air is lit with electric potential. Whether or not it stands the test of time remains to be seen, but in the meantime they deserve every chance to succeed. Not because the enthusiasm and passion they display reminds us why we play a particular videogame, but because they remind us why we play videogames at all.
[...] aside, one of my recent topics was about the recent closure of EGM and a chunk of 1UP.COM’s online content. The 1UP Show was [...]