PC game magazines

Alexander's Horse · June 14, 2003, 09:57

I'm picking up a huge amount of games via DVD's sold with PC game magazines.

Anyone else doing this? Its a great way to get a taste of a lot of games.

LTEC! · June 14, 2003, 09:58

Games? who has time for games?

Alexander's Horse · June 14, 2003, 10:03

males of any age for a start..........

Urban Ranger · June 14, 2003, 10:12

Gee, our PC game mags only come with CD-ROM's

Adagio · June 14, 2003, 10:23

... with the price of the PC game mags here, there's no way anybody can afford them...

...and with the little content in the mags, there's not much reason to buy them in the first place...

alva · June 14, 2003, 11:10

Used to buy loads of them, but as ADG says, ways to expensive (you get the same demo and such free on the internet, and no matter what they say, that CD/DVD is not free

)
The prices around 10-12 €/$ is too much IMO.

Urban Ranger · June 14, 2003, 11:15

Damn that's expensive.

alva · June 14, 2003, 11:36

Most of them are import, so it is understandable. Most ads loose there value and shipping costs are probably high (no idea on where they are printed though).
We do have local ones, but since their budget is nowwhere close to the international ones, the info is almost outdated by the time they are allowed to use the info/articles/interviews.

It is anyway, if you want to keep up-to-date better read forums

Traianvs · June 14, 2003, 11:52

alva, pcgameplay is the best computergame magazine in Belgium/holland.. costs about €5 if i recall correctly..

okay, the writers are not incredible, but it gives you quite a lot of info about new games and that's what it's all about of course. (it's pc only, no gh@y pstat etc

)

DinoDoc · June 14, 2003, 11:54

Quote:

Originally posted by alva
Most of them are import, so it is understandable.

What about the UK version of PC Gamer?

MRT144 · June 14, 2003, 12:08

i agree with LTEC!

JohnT · June 14, 2003, 13:18

My favorite CD was the PCGamer CD of a few years ago where they re-mastered about 12 old DOS games (X-com, Ultima Underworld, etc) to run in the Windows environment. That thing was a beauty...

Dis · June 15, 2003, 02:10

I think my subscription to computer gaming world is just about up. I probably won't renew. But I do like them better than PC lamer- I mean gamer.

Alexander's Horse · June 15, 2003, 09:38

I got 4.7gb of games from my current issue of an Australian mag called PC PowerPlay.

Skanky Burns · June 15, 2003, 09:50

Don't they just give demos?

Adagio · June 15, 2003, 10:32

Well... sometimes they also give full games... I remember I once bought a PC game mag, which included 2 full games (One racing game I never installed, and an adventure game, on 3 cd's... I loved that one

)... It was an German game mag, and the price was little above what game mags cost here, but it had tons of info... It was well worth the money...

alva · June 15, 2003, 12:06

Quote:

alva, pcgameplay is the best computergame magazine in Belgium/holland.. costs about €5 if i recall correctly..

okay, the writers are not incredible, but it gives you quite a lot of info about new games and that's what it's all about of course. (it's pc only, no gh@y pstat etc )

To be honest it has been awhile since I bought any PC magazine, but that one is/was pretty good, but it is basically a translated copy of the english one.
Ad that to the fact that is targeted at the lowest denominator and thinks just about every game is the best one ever (especially those released by the big gaming companies), and my interest will go down.

Quote:

What about the UK version of PC Gamer?

Import too I guess, not sure what you mean here.

JohnT · June 15, 2003, 12:42

:sigh:

I miss PC Accelerator.

Cruddy · June 15, 2003, 12:43

ELSPA (European Leisure Software Publishers Association, AKA "UK PC game Mafia") have big problems with magazines that run full games on their disks.

I'm not saying never... but it's a lot rarer than it used to be.

Given that ELSPA can organise mass boycotts of advertising space, it's easy to see why the mags toe the line.

FrustratedPoet · June 15, 2003, 17:30

Quote:

Originally posted by DinoDoc
What about the UK version of PC Gamer?

[self promotion]

Anyone who buys the UK edition of PC Gamer from this month (with Star Trek Elite Force 2 on the cover) or next month will have the tremendous pleasure of reading some of my witty and erudite prose between its glossy covers.
In this month's issues I wrote several news posts and did all the stuff about the Cover Disk: descriptions of the games, screenshots and captions, challenges etc.
Next month they'll print a 2-page preview I did of Northland (like The Settlers only worse) and maybe a review I wrote of a shitty tennis game (although they might cut that ... because the game sucks and nobody cares about it

).

[/self promotion]

alva · June 15, 2003, 18:19

Quote:

[self promotion]

Anyone who buys the UK edition of PC Gamer from this month (with Star Trek Elite Force 2 on the cover) or next month will have the tremendous pleasure of reading some of my witty and erudite prose between its glossy covers.
In this month's issues I wrote several news posts and did all the stuff about the Cover Disk: descriptions of the games, screenshots and captions, challenges etc.
Next month they'll print a 2-page preview I did of Northland (like The Settlers only worse) and maybe a review I wrote of a shitty tennis game (although they might cut that ... because the game sucks and nobody cares about it ).

[/self promotion]

Héy, you never mentioned you were actualy interesting !!

I'll see if can go to the shop tomorrow and pick-up a copy

Alexander's Horse · June 15, 2003, 18:21

Package of DVD full of games with it and I might buy it.

It would be nice to see the RoN demo

FrustratedPoet · June 15, 2003, 18:29

Quote:

Originally posted by alva
I'll see if can go to the shop tomorrow and pick-up a copy

Let me know if you get it and I'll send you an e-mail telling you exactly what I wrote in there.

Paul Hanson · June 15, 2003, 18:40

I was reading that today, but not knowing your real name I failed to realise that you'd written anything in it.

alva · June 15, 2003, 19:10

Is it any good??

Alexander's Horse · June 15, 2003, 20:32

FP, did you contribute freelance? Are they paying you? What name are you using?

I'll definitely pick up a copy to see a friend in print. Well done.

C0ckney · June 15, 2003, 20:34

yeah i got the issue, will most likely have another read of it to see what you wrote

FrustratedPoet · June 16, 2003, 04:48

Quote:

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse
FP, did you contribute freelance? Are they paying you? What name are you using?

I'll definitely pick up a copy to see a friend in print. Well done.

I was between contracts in my current job (which I hate) and decided to volunteer to do a couple of weeks work with PC Gamer. I've applied for a job there before, but was turned down so thought a good strategy would be to just do something there, anything, for free if necessary, so I could impress them with my amazing skill and winning personality.

So yeah, I wasn't paid. The 2 weeks didn't really cost me anything, though, since their offices are in the same town where my girlfriend goes to Uni so I just stayed with her.

Hopefully next time I apply for a job with PC Gamer or one of their many sister publications the experience I've gained and the contacts I've made will prove useful.

In this month's issue I don't have a byline anywhere in the main magazine, although my name is listed in the 'Contributors' section at the beginning (to the left of the "Note from the Editor"). I'm Stuart Goodwin, btw.

Next month I should be getting a proper byline for my Northland preview, which will be cool.

Since there seems to be some interest in this I'll post the page numbers of the stuff I wrote when I get home and have a copy in front of me.

AH: If you get the DVD version of the magazine then you'll get a demo of Civilization III - now isn't that exciting?

Skanky Burns · June 16, 2003, 06:53

I must say, well done FP!

FrustratedPoet · June 16, 2003, 10:00

What I did in the July issue of PC Gamer (UK):

* page 15 - Everquest 2 news item
* page 15 - Middle Earth Online news item (in blue sidebar)
* page 22 - Halo news item. Note that the spelling mistake in here isn't mine - the copy was originally a little long and when the editor re-phrased a sentence to make it shorter an error was made.
* All of pages 138 and 139 - Vietcong, CMR 3 and The Hulk demos. Taking good screenshot of real-time games is much harder than you might imagine. CMR is a good laugh, as always, but The Hulk really sucks.
* page 140 - The Star Trek Elite Force 2 bit. Yet another FPS game. Woohoo ... not.
* page 141 - Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 bit - note the Avril Lavigne reference in the strap line.

* page 142 - The Civ3:GOTY demo bit. The grab is from me playing as Egypt against the Aztecs on Deity. Witness my l33t skills in the shrunken screenshot.

* page 143 - I wrote the whole of the "James' Games" challenge section. No, that isn't my picture. The regular Disk Editor left to work on the Warhammer Online website so I ghosted for him this month. Let me know if you can beat my time on the Colin McRae demo.