Why I Hate Gaming Magazines

I recently got a renewal form for the Official Dreamcast Magazine. "Your last issue!" the pamphlet said. "Don't be left behind!"

The only thing I plan on leaving behind are the trees that would have made those OCDMs for me. I'm not renewing. In fact, I am planning on letting all of my gaming mag subscriptions (with the exception of Next Generation) run out.

I am sick of gaming magazines. They are all inherently flawed and show no signs of ever changing. I have two major problems with today's gaming magazines.

1) All the magazines are biased.

They all claim to be unbiased and impartial; they all lie. Whether an "official" magazine or not, every videogame magazine on the market today has its allegiances. These may be to a particular console, to a certain company, or even to a gameplay genre. Sometimes you have to look fairly deep for such tendencies, but most of the time they are so blatant that their claims of impartiality are laughable.

Let's look first at PSM. I used to really like PSM, but they have fallen so far off track it's not even funny. Even for a Playstation only magazine, they are so biased that it is sickening. In their most recent issue, they explain how "PS2 will DESTROY Dreamcast, X-Box, and Dolphin". Ummm.ok. They explain that the recent E3 was dominated by PS2 (which according to all accounts was Sega's show). They explain that Sega has tried rebates, price drops, and other things to sell Dreamcasts, but that none of those things are working.

Now maybe I missed something, but as of today, there has been no price drop on the Dreamcast. The rebates just started too, probably right as PSM's piece was being written. Then they claim that Dreamcast is looking just like Saturn, which is absolutely ludicrous if you look at sales figures and the overall quality (and quantity) of games being released.

They also compared NFL2K and Madden PS2 with shots that were so uncomparable as to be laughable, with one close up shot of Madden vs. a wide angle shot of NFL2K. "Look how much more detail Madden has!" they proclaimed! They'r right - you really can't see the eyes of the quarterback on NFL2K. Of course, that might be because the shot looks like it was taken from the other endzone! Naturally, they completely ignored the fact that NFL2K will be playable online and that Madden won't. I don't know about any of you, but I'll take online play over slightly prettier graphics any day of the week.

Then there's the less blatant biases, like in Next Generation. As a rule, I like Next Gen. They have a lot of problems, but I find them to be the most unbiased magazine on the market. But they do have their biases, with the most obvious being their preference for the latest and greatest game systems. That's why they always rate PC games so high - if you have the money, you can buy a PC with graphics that are superior to today's consoles. NG claims that money shouldn't be an object when it comes to gaming.

Which means, I suppose, that we should all go out and buy huge houses, so we can collect the latest stand up coin-op machines. After all, arcade machines tend to have better graphics than any home system, PC or otherwise.

2) NEVER use magazines as a deciding factor in your gaming buying decisions.

There are several things I hate about every video game magazine on the market today, and the first would be the criminal overexposure of previews. Next Generation is most guilty of this, offering page upon page of previews, with unreleased games getting multiple pages per game. There are always lots of pretty screenshots, and claims of how Game X will be better than anything else on the market. Lots of times they are called a "(Insert Popular Game Here) Killer". They hype games for YEARS in advance. Look at the PS2 version of Metal Gear. It's due out, when, the end of 2001? Yet already PSM has run HUGE stories on it in consecutive issues!

But when it comes time to judge games that you and I can, you know, ACTUALLY BUY, they generally offer up an eighth of a page. What sense does that make? Let's say you are going to the movies, and are unsure which to see. What do you do? You pick up the local newspaper, and check out the movie section. And what's in the movie section? Ads, showtimes, and REVIEWS OF CURRENT MOVIES! What a concept!

Game magazines are afraid to say too much negative about any game, so they dwarf their reviews section, save for big name games that they dedicate a bit more space to. It is obvious why so little space is dedicated to reviews - fear. Fear that a) the game company will refuse any requests for new information or more critically b) the game magazine will pull advertising from the magazine.

So the magazines shill as best they can and make every game under the sun sound great.