The Truth About GamesMaster: Part 2
The first step we took before GamesMaster’s launch was to make sure potential retailers knew about the magazine. While the then editorial staff of two was scouring over UK copies, I took it upon myself to visit the most logical place to start spreading the news — Viramall.
Though the then “center of console gaming” is now only a shadow of its former self, the place was a microcosm of the local videogame industry. That same year, promotion of gaming as a sport was started through the Samsung World Cyber Games. There was never a better time to launch a videogame magazine.
And so in August 2003, a month before launch, 100,000 K-zone sized mock GamesMaster magazines were released. 80,000 were inserted in FHM, and the rest was dispersed in different strategic areas. GamesMaster had indeed arrived.
You can just imagine the number of staff applications we got a few days after the teaser issue was circulated. Working for a videogame magazine as you can imagine, was any gamer’s dream. Playing videogames as a day job? A most undestandable misconception. While the editorial staff was hard at work for the premiere issue, and all available consoles were at our disposal, there was hardly any time to play.
Most of the time was spent translating content from the UK edition to the local GamesMaster. It was clear from the very start that the ratio of foreign to local content was going to be in the 90/10 range. Articles weren’t just churned out. They are well thought of, researched, and executed. Even the staff’s photos were taken by professional photographers. We didn’t want our readers to feel that they were getting a compilation of content from the Internet.
When it came to the content, the magazine was able to include about two to three month-old reviews. Since we had not yet started discussions with gaming publishers about lending us reviewable copies of games, we had to use the ones we had from the UK. Quite understandable? To people who belonged and understood how fast publishing industry moves, yes. The local gaming public however, wasn’t as forgiving.
Next: Editorial Setbacks
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April 16th, 2008 at 6:34 pm
[...] Next: Part 2 [...]
April 22nd, 2008 at 9:39 pm
Unfortunately this is part of why publications such as gaming magazines can no longer exist as they used to. It’s no longer enough to provide up to date information on the latest games because the internets beat you to it every single time.
In the future perhaps we’ll have game magazines that are like the escapist.com, no longer just a tool to find out about the latest new releases, but a forum for intelligent writing about the games that we love, regardless of whether they were released yesterday or 10 years ago.