Consume. Conform. Obey.

Over the last few months, as I have gained more and more knowledge of the gaming industry, one thing has really begun to annoy me. No, it's not the amount of FPS' that have filled the market, or that original and innovative titles don't get the respect they deserve (although those 2 have also been a source of anger for me), it's the people in the industry.

Actually, I should phrase that last line differently - the people who THINK that they are a part of the industry, like those that write in magazines, as 'Mags' are a source of endless frustration for me, and one which I will happily vent me anger for a number of hours to anybody who will listen (but don't hold me to that).

The state of our magazines is one which is, comparatively, worse than the industry it is supposed to be commenting on. As I scanned through magazines in my last visit to GAME (who are evil, but more on that later), I saw the same things over and over again, but with different screenshots and titles. The magazine would start off with a News section which'd be 2 weeks out of date, then gradually go into previews, then reviews, then a Letters section with a cheats section coming just before or after it, with competitions and a sales chart scattered amongst them, and it's been that way for a long time now - I can look back at the days when I used to get the Official Playstation magazine and clearly remember the format being identical.

Occasionally they'll have a 'new look', which'll be a change in colour scheme or a different mascot to try and grab more readers, and, more often than not, they'll advertise the 'GREATEST FREE GIFT IN THE WORLD', which will be a cheat book filled with the contents of the cheats sections of the last 5 issues, or a guide which you could get off gamefaqs. It all just screams conformity

All I want is a magazine to actually BE a magazine, and not just a review rag - I want insightful looks into the industry, facts and figures, information on things outside my grasp (like Japan), articles, interviews, and basically something different, and so far, on my travels, I've only been able to find one answer - Edge magazine.

In fact, this whole web site is modelled on a certain aspect of Edge, the columnist, Redeye. A veteran gamer who knows more about games than any of us could ever wish to and one who doesn't name drop obscure Japanese games to look hardcore. He's everything I want in my magazine - knowledgeable, thoughtful and original.

I just find it hypocritical that magazines which cry out for more originality in games actually follow set patterns and still sell in their thousands.

In the end it's all based towards to casual gamer - the one who just wants to see the graphics, look at what scores the game got and show off the latest releases without having to put in a lot of effort or time - the average person who buys a game on a Saturday afternoon doesn't want to know somebody's view on a game that what out 10 years ago compared to todays games. They don't want to know about the history of the PC engine, or what a student in Japan has done to his X-Box. They want the coolest stuff and they want it now.

Maybe I'm thinking I'm more of a gamer than I am, but I want some changes and I want them now.

Written by: Matthew Britton
Date: 15th August 2003
Email: matthew.tribute@ntlworld.com