RIP CGW

Heartless Gamer writes "Ziff Davis Shuts Down CGW, Opens Games For Windows. The Ziff Davis Game Group, which produces consumer game site 1UP and Electronic Gaming Monthly and Official PlayStation Magazine in North America, has announced that it is shutting down its US print magazine Computer Gaming World and replacing it with an officially Microsoft-branded 'Games For Windows' magazine and website."

Good Riddance

[Biovital]

Good, I wont miss this gaming rag at all. I have a free subscription for it, and its terrible. When I first read it 2 or 3 years ago, it seemed somewhat more mature than PCG had become, but like PCG it tries to be too funny and clever every chance it gets and it usually fails. The reviews (which were crap to begin with compared to other mags) became some silly editorial on the game rather than an actual review (for that you have to goto 1up.com). It just became too taken with itself and lost focus. So I wont miss the magazine at all.

Fare well

[BackwardHatClub]

I used to read CGW but it just seemed to go downhill a little bit, I couldn't really put my finger on it but I let my subscription lapse and haven't missed it terribly.

Oh no!

[HoneyBunchesOfGoats]

What will become of my free subscription? :(

Jumping the shark

[JoeCommodore]

Over the decades I've seen magazines get bought out and becomre narrow in ther scope only to eventually die off. I'm sure the new magazine will mainly play to the Microsoft partners and put blinders to the world that is not MS approved, then readers will look for something with more broad and callenging content instead of a glorified MS games catalog and it will die.

Eh. . .

[Blinocac200sx]

I subscribe to Game Informer, and with my subscription I get a discount at Gamestop. In other words, I won't miss CGW.

how absolutley....uninspired

[Danathar]

Somehow the announcement of another magazine geared towards windows gaming seems a bit anti-climatic. Kinda like the grand opening of another McDonalds..

Re:The writing was on the wall when ...

[Xian97]

I have to agree. When they dropped Scorpia, I dropped my CGW subscription. In the 80s, a CGW subscription was a must if you played Adventures or RPGs. I also used to follow Scorpia's roundtable on GEnie. She was always ready to help someone when they got stuck in an RPG, back when there were little else besides hintbooks or CGW to get that kind of information. I still read her reviews and insights at http://www.scorpia.com/ [scorpia.com]

Re:The writing was on the wall when ...

[WesternActor]

Bingo. For all of the 1980s and the first part of the 1990s, Computer Gaming World was an exceedingly literate, exciting publication. The articles that "reviewed" games were true criticism, often the way books or politics might be assessed in academic journals. Didn't one of the top editors (was it Russell Sipe or Johnny Wilson?) have a doctorate in philosophy? That kind of thing infused the entire magazine with an intelligent, adult mindset that was utterly crucial for guiding computer games and audiences through the earliest stages of their development. Scorpia had a vast amount of knowledge, played everything, knew even more, and responded personally to readers for a long time. (I had an ongoing dialogue with her for many years, the memories of which I still cherish.) Whether you were looking for technical information about a game, or whether you wanted it assessed in a larger entertainment or political context, or whether you just wanted to know whether you were likely to enjoy it, Computer Gaming World would tell you all these things, and more.

The Ziff-Davis takeover was disastrous, the firing of Scorpia boneheaded, and just about every other change for the visible worse. But it's quite possible that the real CGW couldn't survive in the market that had popped up, one being driven by children and adolescents--and a publishing company being run by people with hardly more sense--who couldn't be bothered to actually read, consider, and absorb more about a game than a five-star rating or a shilly examination of its graphics, sound, whatever. I was a faithful subscriber all throughout the 1990s, hoping that it would reclaim a bit of its former glory, but when my subscription lapsed in late 2000/early 2001, I don't think I even noticed. For me, and for countless of others who were raised on the thoughtful, brilliantly composed, and engrossingly informative pieces that typified CGW during its best years, the magazine had left many years before.

I won't waste the time or the money seeking out the last issue. But I'll continue to search for the first one--and as many in between as I need to complete my collection of the best gaming magazine when it and the industry were at their zenith. Rest in peace, Computer Gaming World.

Re:Good Riddance

[Cadallin]

Unfortunate that you only caught it so late. The time to be reading it was in the '80's and '90's. When the Editor in Chief was Russell Snipe (the founder) or Johnny Wilson. During those years, the writing was top notch, and the approach much more mature and sophistocated. Originally it was aimed at the over 25, educated game player. The point of view of the magazine was that it was covering an emerging Art Form. They didn't just whore out praise to the highest bidder. How did the game look? How did it sound? How did it play? How did it make the reviewer feel? How was the writing? How are emerging technologies going to affect the industry in the future? Both the review and the editorial content was superb. As long as they continued to focus on their near 30 demographic (who were always the magazine's primary readership) the magazine was good, and thrived. Ziff-Davis, on the other hand, wanted to grow the readership by targeting an increasingly younger audience, this resulted in reduced quality, and the readership plummeted.