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RIP CGW 55

Posted by Zonk from the new-boss-same-as-the-old-boss dept.
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."
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RIP CGW More

RIP CGW

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  • RIP CGW ... I didn't even no you were ill :-(

  • Sucks, but (Score:5, Funny)

    by flanksteak ( 69032 ) * on Friday August 04, 2006 @07:49PM (#15849683) Homepage
    Ziff Davis noted that the magazine will carry with it much of Computer Gaming World's editorial style and tone. Because of this, the organization confirmed that it has decided to no longer publish Computer Gaming World. The new magazine and web initiative will carry on the editorial, production and art staff of Computer Gaming World.
    The official MS shilling aside, it sounds like it's going to be the same magazine. Even though it was "Computer" GW, it's not like there were other platforms that have enough games to warrant a monthly magazine. Games for MacOS and/or Games for Linux would just be a pamphlet with the same headline over and over: "Inside this issue! Halo, and this month's newest 75 variants of GPL'd Solitaire!"

    Sayeth I, who no longer loses large amounts of time to big games now that I'm using Linux.

    • Re:Sucks, but (Score:4, Insightful)

      by secolactico ( 519805 ) on Friday August 04, 2006 @09:27PM (#15850058) Journal
      "Inside this issue! Halo, and this month's newest 75 variants of GPL'd Solitaire!"

      Don't forget Tux Racer. For some reason, whenever someone brings up the "games for linux" theme, Tux Racer is always mentioned. And Nethack.
      • Yeah! And Neverwinter Nights! And Return to Castle Wolfenstein! And Tribes 2! And UT! And Quake! And Frozen Bubble! Too bad so many of the professionally produced ones are unavailable or discontinued now... for a time, it was good.
        • UT2004? Quake 4?

          You're right, there aren't that many, but old games can still be good, and Quake 4 is pretty recent. So is Doom 3.

          I mean, I have a Windows partition, but if you're going to FUD, at least make sure you aren't missing something obvious. Stick to the gray areas.
          • You and I know that old games can be good, but to a magazine, everything is

            BUY BUY BUY!
            NEW NEW NEW!
            EVERYTHING WE SAID LAST ISSUE IS BS! Go spend $500 again this month, let use tell you what our advertisers want you to buy.

            I actually hit Slashdot's lameness filter on that one, had to take out some capital letters. See, Slash code agrees with me.
            • I can only play a really good game, once through, in single player. I recently picked up X3 and Hegemonia which had been out for a good long time, but I generally buy new games. Old games may have been fun, but updates to them, are always good.
              • I seem to be busy enough that I can afford to stay behind the curve. This gives me the benefit of only playing the games that actually turned out to be good, and getting to play them on my favorite OS. I still play just as many games as I would anyway, they're just a bit older.

                Well, not always. Quake 4 was Linux from just about day 1.

          • <rant>

            Eh? FUD? I never claimed that any of the games I mentioned (including Q4 and UT'04) were the discontinued ones. No, I'm talking like all the awesome Sid Meier games that Loki ported, for example (well, *I* liked them). Remember Descent? IIRC, Descent 4 played natively on gnu/linux. That series was discontinued! Remember Tribes 2? Tribes: Vengeance *can't* be ported because of the physics engine they chose to use. I played America's Army for a while, and icculus has to let go of that one beca

        • Neverwinter Nights just had a patch recently. The community is still active and will remain so till NWN2 comes out in September, at which point the Mac and Linux NWN community will probably die.
        • And, of course, World of Warcraft.

          One game to rule them all, and in the darkness camp them.

          (and the universal patch 1.9 came out what, like 3 weeks after the first MBPs?)

  • Good Riddance (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Biovital ( 845860 ) on Friday August 04, 2006 @07:53PM (#15849703)
    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.

    • Re:Good Riddance (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Cadallin ( 863437 ) on Sunday August 06, 2006 @10:23PM (#15857167)
      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.

  • GGW? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I really thought the article was "RIP GGW" for a minute. That would be a real tragedy.

  • Games for windows (Score:5, Funny)

    by CrazyJim1 ( 809850 ) on Friday August 04, 2006 @07:56PM (#15849716) Journal
    Lets play,"How long will my server stay up before it crashes."
    Lets play a game of chance,"Will you let me update my computer or is something wrong with WGA"
    Lets play,"Give all my personal information to Microsoft Passport because I can trust Microsoft and that it won't get hacked again."
    Lets download Vista and play with the voice recognition software.
    Lets play upgrade to a new version of Windows only to find out that the software only works with a new computer(ahem empty harddrive)
    Lets play hide and seek to find out where in the registry the IE overflow virus is hiding.
    Lets play dungeons and drivers to find out where to locate the last usable driver was located at, luckily the internet helps.

    I admit I use windows because I'm too lazy to learn a new OS, but not too lazy to complain on Slashdot.

  • ouch (Score:2)

    by mackil ( 668039 )
    That sucks, I just renewed my subscription...

  • Fare well (Score:2, Interesting)

    by BackwardHatClub ( 763903 )
    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.
    • I think the problems started when they changed editors. The old guy (Johnny something?) retired, and there were at least two successive replacements that I remember. Bear in mind, this was quite a while ago, so my memory is fuzzy, but it was about ~1-2 years after that that I finally gave up and cancled my subscription. By then, they were well on their way downhill, with smaller and smaller magazines, and less good writing in between the ever increasing number of ads.

      I'm not overly surprised it took this

  • Oh no! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by HoneyBunchesOfGoats ( 619017 )
    What will become of my free subscription? :(

    • What will become of my free subscription? :(

      Don't worry, I'm sure Microsoft can spring for a free subscription with a drop of all that money it's hemmoraging from its Xbox division.

    • When my subscription to Talk magazine [wikipedia.org] ended when the company went out of business in 2001, I was offered a subscription to TIME. I threw the offer in the trash. My thinking is that CGW's publishers will do the same by offering you a subscription to a comparable magazine.

  • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Jumping the shark (Score:4, Interesting)

    by JoeCommodore ( 567479 ) <larry@portcommodore.com> on Friday August 04, 2006 @09:07PM (#15849992) Homepage
    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. . . (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Blinocac200sx ( 955087 )
    I subscribe to Game Informer, and with my subscription I get a discount at Gamestop. In other words, I won't miss CGW.

  • The writing was on the wall when ... (Score:5, Informative)

    by unsigned integer ( 721338 ) on Friday August 04, 2006 @10:19PM (#15850264)
    They canned Scorpia. And then they started giving ratings to games
    instead of making you read the review and actually make an informed
    opinion. You can see the steady decline once they sold themselves(?)
    to Ziff-Davis.

    This was THE best gaming mag when I was growing up - and then they
    fucked it up with tons of new changes under the new management, and
    you can watch the gradual fleeing of the staff as month after month
    you'd read a little intro of "someone new joining the team" and
    someone else departing. I was a heavy reader once I got into gaming ..
    I guess that was around '85 ... and then I read until the early 90s.

    • Yup. It really died about 10 years ago.

      I guess Ziff Davis really nailed it to the perch well.

    • Re:The writing was on the wall when ... (Score:5, Informative)

      by jesup ( 8690 ) * <(randellslashdot) (at) (jesup.org)> on Saturday August 05, 2006 @02:25AM (#15851062) Homepage
      Giving in to the "ratings" pressure was the first big step down the slippery slope, and the other was selling to ZD. I've subscribed (and/or bought off the newstand) since the mid-1980's; I stuck with it as it slowly declined over the last decade especially.

      I remember when it was fat, covered DOS, (680x0) Mac, Amiga, and ST games, and there was NO console coverage. That was a LONG time ago. I miss it. I also miss the old "Hall of Fame".

      I don't plan to renew my subscription to whatever this new magazine is (even if almost all the games I play nowadays are Windows (plus Nethack, Angband and a few others on Linux).
    • 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]
    • 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 audien

    • In my opinion, (Score:3, Informative)

      by Cadallin ( 863437 )
      The Escapist does a significant part of CGW used to do, at least as far as editorial content goes. If The Escapist were to grow to include reviews and some additional content (Hire Scorpia! I know she's still out there, somewhere, I've found interviews with her around the net from time to time) I imagine it would pretty much be what CGW was.

  • how absolutley....uninspired (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Danathar ( 267989 ) on Saturday August 05, 2006 @12:38AM (#15850774) Journal
    Somehow the announcement of another magazine geared towards windows gaming seems a bit anti-climatic. Kinda like the grand opening of another McDonalds..

  • Phew (Score:3, Funny)

    by KDR_11k ( 778916 ) on Saturday August 05, 2006 @01:13AM (#15850871)
    Almost thought that read GCW. I was already worried where I could get my noCD patches then.
  • All through college I read this mag. To be honest, I haven't bought it in quite a while, but wow...to see it go is like seeing one of my childhood actors die. I still remember reading about how a shareware game called 'Doom' was available, and then reading about some strange game called 'System Shock'. It was at that time I thought...Hmm...maybe I shouldn' buy an Amiga 4000. Luckily Comodor went broke, and I got a P90. RIP! Great mem!
  • "Print is dead."
                  - Egon Spengler
  • More like "World of Warcraft Weekly," AMIRITE?

    Nathan
  • Recently CGW dropped their review ratings. Personally, I like them though. The reviews in the latest issue arn't even reviews but rehashing what some online reviewers said of a game.

    Oh well. There is always the UK edition of PC Gamer and Computer Games Magazine (very underrated mag).

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