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MDIAG! Staff Blog of SpotAnime

That Day Has Arrived

Spotanime.com has gone through various incarnations over the past few years, but recently and most consistently as a critical soundboard against the current state of videogame journalism. I’ve been outspoken against the popular industry enthusiast blogs, such as 1UP, Kotaku and Joystiq for years, and any consistent reader of my blog (God bless you) would say that is an understatement.

I admit I was wrong when I started my crusade over three years ago. The popular and vocal media outlets thought videogame journalism was merely reviews and game criticism, and judging from the evolution of my posts on the subject, even I lost focus. “Should reviews have scores?” “Should reviews be based solely on technical merit?” Those were the arguments of the day, and every once and a while someone would ask the obvious question, “Should it be called journalism or criticism, or merely writing?”

The obvious answer, is all of the above.

Back in July 2006 I wrote a post entitled, “The Lester Bangs of Video Games is Under Our Noses,” in response to an article by Esquire’s Chuck Klosterman. Klosterman compared videogame criticism to film criticism, and theorized why there was no equal.

Video games provide an opportunity to write about the cultural consequence of free will, a concept that has as much to do with the audience as it does with the art form. However, I can’t see how such an evolution could happen, mostly because there’s no one to develop into these “potentiality critics.” Video-game criticism can’t evolve because video-game criticism can’t get started.

In my post, which was part of the Carnival of Gamers and spotlighted on Joystiq, I disputed criticism did in fact get started, but the media was just looking to the wrong critics.

The game industry is different in that it has an ever-expanding group of outspoken innovators and creators who not only critique the work of their peers, but also try to advance their craft by educating and stimulating the gaming populous with their blogs and journals about what it really means to make and play video games. They are one of them, very literally.

But again, the focus was criticism. And criticism was not to be the savior of videogames journalism.

Since that time, and really only until recently, games journalism has been treated like a business that begs to be covered with maturity and experience.

Ben Fritz did just this as former writer for Variety’s The Cut Scene blog, now entertainment business reporter for the Los Angeles Times. As his blog indicates he is indeed a fan of videogames, but instead of approaching his interest as an enthusiast, as was the trend at the time; he did it as a reporter, covering such stories as Midway’s meltdown in 2008. The IGNs and 1UPs of the world argued journalism didn’t translate to page views and subscriptions, but to his benefit Variety had no interest in becoming a blog read by teens.

At the same time, Stephen Totilo emerged as games reporter for MTV News, and started the MTV Multiplayer blog where he stayed before moving on as deputy managing editor at Kotaku in 2009. He wrote about how his Master’s in journalism helped his game writing: “That degree was by no means essential, but it helped. It helped me take reporting seriously.” More importantly, that same Master’s helped Kotaku transform itself from an news aggregate with a knack for potty editorials to a respectable industry blog with a team of seasoned writers and reporters.

In the past week, Totilo protege Patrick Klepek captured the Activision/Infinity Ward feud as an event worthy of a front page bombshell. Klepek, once caught in the sophomoric Animal House antics at 1UP, left for the nurturing confines of Totilo’s MTV Multiplayer blog and now covers videogames at G4 with the same propensity as his mentor.

In 2009, GamePro appointed former EGM editorial director John Davidson as executive vice president of content for its magazine and website. Always a proponent of quality content coupled with a sharp business sense, Davidson has attempted to successfully blend the two into the first few issues of the relaunched GamePro Magazine by tapping notable internet videogame journalists for editorials and handpicking content which clearly speaks to a more mature and sophisticated reader, and packaging those into a book that can be sold to the masses at the newsstand.

Four examples of writers, reporters and editors who have treated the videogame industry not like a childish diversion but rather the $20 billion business it has become.

The answer is there is room for writing, criticism and journalism in videogames media, but the media itself could not grow without true journalism. Sites like Giant Bomb and Joystiq can continue their brand of writing and podcasts as infotainment without the burden of trying to be journalism. Or needing to be journalism.

The emergence of true journalism in once-enthusiast blogs and mainstream outlets brings the possibility to millions of daily readers that the “Lester Bangs of Videogames” argument may now be a distant memory.

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How I Would Have Made the Star Wars Franchise Better

I’ve been watching a lot of Star Wars lately, now that I’ve got my son involved to the point I wish I hadn’t. I’ve gone from a fan of the movies to a scholar of what worked and what didn’t. If I could go back in time, I’d slip Lucas this list of ten things that should have been done differently with the franchise.


1. Vader needed a better boss. He was best suited for middle management serving Grand Moff Tarkin. In Empire, he was a menacing villain out for revenge. But in Return of the Jedi, however, the Emperor he served under was a slug of a dark magician who kept Vader on a short leash, leaving him bloated and tame. Give us another Governor like Tarkin who could use Vader as his muscle.

2. Killing Darth Maul in Episode I. Maul was, dare I say an even better villain than maulVader himself? The duel at the end of Phantom Menace was one of the highlights across all six films, and represented the best Lucas could muster in the prequels. Maul kills Qui-Gon and sets off a course of events which lead to Hayden Christensen getting cast as the future Dark Lord, as well as making Lucas scramble for worthy opponents for the remaining two films. Dooku? Grievous? They paled in comparison to the vicious killer who was Maul. He should have survived as the Emperor’s main henchman throughout the prequels.

3. Natalie Portman. Watching A New Hope, Carrie Fisher played Leia as strong, smart, and very capable. Portman? Not so much. She was too short, too young, too brittle; especially when Lucas tried to play the “like mother, like daughter” card at the end of Episode I. Things took a turn for the worse in Attack of the Clones. If Megan Fox existed then as she is today, she would have been a worthy Mother to Leia.

4. Hayden Christensen. ‘Nuff said.

5. Tatooine. Using this planet to birth the One who would be Vader only to hide his children there later on is like me hiding my wife’s car keys by sticking them in the ignition. I guess, now that I put it that way, that would be the last place she would look for them… Well, keeping the same name as Skywalker makes it more obvious, like me hiding her car in the garage.

6. Making Stormtroopers clones. They aren’t clones, they are an army of the Empire. Hell, Biggs was going to go to the Empire but changed his allegiance to the Rebel Alliance. Biggs was not a clone. I hate those inconsistencies. Yes, the clones should have represented an army, but from another opponent…

7. Dooku and the Emperor. Okay, so the Emperor enlists Dooku to create an army of Droids so that he can create an army of clones, and the two create a conflict that turns the Senate into turmoil and into the hands of the Empire? Yeah, sounds like a lot of work. How about creating a secret army to overtake the Senate by military power, with a dissenter (Dooku) who creates his own army not to rescue the Senate, but to bring him power over the Emperor instead? This is a better conflict and a good reason why the Jedi Council would have intervened.

8. Leia should have never been Luke’s sister. Return of the Jedi is where things went wrong with the original films. Leia is royalty, Luke is a farmboy with a destiny. Please leave it at that. Instead Lucas had to create the galactic version of Kentucky.

9. The New Death Star. Vader goes to the doctor and says, “Hey Doc, it hurts when I do this!” The Doc says, “Don’t do this!” Build the new battlestation on something a little more difficult to blow up, say, ON Endor rather than orbiting it?

10. Anakin should have had a Dad. Not only would a lot of his issues been taken care of if he only had a father figure in his life, but it would have dispelled the whole notion of midi-chlorians and kept the Jedi practice as more of a religion rather than something scientific. Plus, Darth Tyranus = Dooku, Darth Sidious = Palpatine? Too confusing. How about Dooku is Dooku, Palpatine is the Emperor, and Sidious was…some mysterious Dark Jedi who impregnated Ms. Skywalker? That would have been cooler.

George, if I only knew ya back then…

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Dollar-Short Reviews: The Watchmen

The title was derived from the phrase, “a day late and a dollar short.” Between work and home life, blog life has been a distant memory. But at least now I can share my thoughts on The Watchmen to all of you who have decided not to see it based on the million other thoughts already published since last Friday. Lucky you!

Let me start by saying I’ve never read Alan Moore’s source material, and I think that allowed me to be a better judge of the film as a standalone piece of work. And what can I say about it? For the first two hours, I thought it was electrifying visually, but thematically it was about as subtile as a 2×4 to the forehead. And that last half hour? Read on…

Every review I’ve read makes mention of the opening credit sequence and the accompanying Bob Dylan tune. I hate that about reviews. Review 101 – explain in detail the first moments of a book, movie, album, to set the tone for the reader. Unfortunately, The Watchmen doesn’t work that way. It plays very much like a serial, and even without being familiar with the comics I could sense where the chapters would begin and end. All that was missing were the chapter cards. And each chapter has its own devices, its own theme, and if the movie followed the source material closely I could tell where over the course of time the comics seemed to have lost their way. So that opening sequence? It would have made a great music video, but by no means does it represent the film as a whole.

But about that music. Zack Snyder cleverly used music that we are familiar with as anti-war sentiments, and I think that on whole he made some good creative decisions with its use. Aside from “All Along The Watchtower”, that is,  which has been overused in pretty much every anti-war film ever made.

This was a world which takes place in 1985, and an alternative 1985 as well, in which I had trouble losing myself. See, in a world where superheroes existed since World War II, would we really have a Cold War? Would events have really played out as they did in our world? Would superheroes only exist in America? There wouldn’t be a Vietnam War, there wouldn’t be a Cold War with Russia. Nukes wouldn’t have existed, countries would have bred superheroes as their WMDs. Alan Moore’s alternate reality is implausible, and I don’t care if it was thematically anti-nuclear sentiment from the era when it was originally written. It is very difficult to digest that such an enormous butterfly wouldn’t have caused a bigger change in the course of the future.

Which brings me back to the music. I would have appreciated more anti-war music specific to the ’80s, like Frankie Goes To Hollywood, but again an alternate world would have had very different consequences, and most likely Frankie Goes To Hollywood would never have had the reason to exist – Wham! probably still would be around to ruin our lives, because they never had a reason to begin with. But anyway, my biggest beef is with the source material, of which I am probably in the minority.

And for all those special effects, why did Snyder use the worst makeup jobs in the history of film to convey historical figures? That guy was Nixon? Please. It would have been better if he opted for some Forrest Gump-type effects, using stock footage, voice impersonators and digital effects to create a more realistic and believable future.

Still, I was engaged for those first two hours with the film’s creative plot and representation of its characters. So what killed it for me? That last half hour, which completely squeezed every last bit of enjoyability out of the film for me. All I could think was, “I sat through two hours for this?” It was pure Scoobie nonsense and left favorite characters killed, issues unresolved, and a complete downer of an ending.

Maybe in 1999, that ending would have played a little better. Back then, people were richer, happier, they had jobs, career prospects. America was thriving, on top of the world, and enjoying life. They could afford to be shit on for a few hours knowing they would emerge unscathed and feel a little more thoughtful as individuals. Or at least they had the illusion of being thoughtful, which lasted about as long as a fart in the wind. But in 2009? No way. People are losing their jobs, their homes, their retirement. They are scared. They want their spirits to be elevated. They don’t want to get mind-fucked for three hours and sent out in a world that’s no better off than the one to which they escaped. We need an Iron Man, or another freakin’ Ghostbusters for cryin’ out loud. We didn’t need The Watchmen.

Am I glad I saw it? Yeah, kind of. I now know what The Watchmen is all about, and I’ve absorbed what probably is the most visually stimulating film since Fight Club. Would I recommend it? Hell, I can’t stop telling people how awful it was.

So there you have it. My review.

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Wow, It’s Really Happening?

I’ve built up a steady stream of lurkers over the past three-plus years as a blogger, and the site has had some definite peaks and valleys with a year-long blackout somewhere in the middle. So you might be wondering why the majority of posts lately have only been Twitter updates. Here’s why.

The birth of my children have had an obvious impact on my life, aside from the whole “responsible adult” thing. As a lifelong geek of technology, videogames, comics and movies, my first reaction was that I would have to give up those things and shelter my children from them, because society says those are not what makes an adult responsible. But then in 2007 on a warm late-summer day along the New Jersey shore boardwalk, I was inspired by a t-shirt which made me think I didn’t have to abandon those things at all, but celebrate them with my children and find a way where they could enhance and even benefit our daily lives.

Thus, My Dad Is A Geek! was born.

Since then, I’ve been preoccupied by my fulltime career and birth of my son, but the idea of MDIAG! was one that would just not leave me. Now that my kids, ages 2 and 1, are getting to an age where “freetime” is slowly sneaking back as a word in my vocabulary, I’ve decided to plunge headfirst into this project and grow it into the dream I’ve had in my head for the past 18 months.

Over the past two weeks I’ve posted more than 50 news stories, a couple of original articles, and am coming off the tail end of New York Comic Con coverage. Whew! And I hope to keep thinks rolling full steam ahead in the coming weeks and months (and hopefully years!). So you’ll see an obvious drop-off of posts here, aside from my daily Twitter digests, at least for a while. Most encouraging is, for the first time, my daily visits at MDIAG! have eclipsed my traffic here, so I gotta go with what the stats tell me. The readers have spoken!

In the meantime, you can always follow me on Twitter, and please check out MDIAG! (did I mention we need some help?).

Thanks,

Spot    ^_^

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Personality Test

I love it when I’m right.

On Area5’s first CO-OP episode, I saw the parade of ex-EGM/1UP employees marching up the stairs and thought, “Hey, James Mielke isn’t there. They must really hate the bastard.” After all, he was the last EIC at EGM, the one that was supposed to lead the magazine back to the promised land.

And you know what? Well, let’s just say I told ya so.

Being an outsider, and by that I mean someone outside of the games journalism circles, I can very specifically define the type of person James Mielke is. He craves attention, most likely stemming from personal issues regarding him being adopted as a young child. He was abandoned once, by the people who should have loved him most, and even though he was found by a seemingly wonderful family, he’ll always seek acceptance by anyone and everyone or risk being abandoned once more. Everything he did at 1UP wasn’t about how much he loved videogames, it was about how cool James Mielke was. Every interview was to show the world not that he was a fantastic journalist, it was to show off who he knew on a personal level. He didn’t DJ because he loved the music, it was so people would accept him for the music to which he listened.

His personal blog posts are an ego trip spewing details of his synergistic relationship with New York City, brushing aside the tens of millions of people who have called The Big Apple home. Coming from someone who did, I can certainly say no New Yorker would profess their love for the city by saying they love it more than the next guy. True New Yorkers brandish their time in the city like a tattoo – beneath layers of clothing, to show only when asked, and to keep the true story to themselves – yet it permeates their soul, defines their character. They don’t have to tell people, “Hey! I’m from New York!” because they are from New York. James does the complete opposite, and every self-respecting New Yorker wouldn’t give him the time of day because of it.

And I think that’s exactly what happened during the 1UP aftermath. 1UP folks banded together to create new business ventures, or to reflect on the past. But James was not found in any of it. He was cast out of the fraternity by its own brethren. Whether he was invited to that Area5 video or not, he wasn’t there. He previously worked for Gamespot, but when the Giant Bomb guys wanted to bring in someone to talk about the sale, it wasn’t him. And I’m sure if you ask anyone close to him, of the people whom he calls his friends, the feeling isn’t nearly as mutual.

Now he’s back at 1UP/UGO, but it wasn’t purely because he needed, or wanted, the job; nor was it because his relationship with Sam Kennedy. It was so that he could once again be in the spotlight, to stand on the world’s stage that is the Internet and speak to all who will listen.

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Kudos to Area5.tv

The entire world has already Dugg it, and thousands have seen it on YouTube, so it might sound like I’m a little late to the party, but I just wanted to congratulate Ryan O’Donnell and gang at Area5.tv for putting together the first episode of CO-OP, from the ashes of The 1UP Show.

Admittedly, I tuned out of The 1UP Show months ago because I was growing tired of the talking heads at 1UP. But the first episode of CO-OP, undoubtedly limited (but subconsciously benefited) by budget, gave me exactly what I want out of a show about videogames – passionate and intelligent conversation. It was a welcomed change from the fluff and ego which permeated the subtext of The 1UP Show, so I hope Area5 continues paving their own road creatively going forward.

The graphics, the editing, the music and the direction, which bled from every frame in that video, elevated the episode to a professional level of quality not seen from the majority of internet video productions. But what is most commendable is that technically those guys didn’t drop a beat from The 1UP Show, even without the financial backing from a company like Ziff Davis. In other words, these guys put together this show with their own equipment, from their own homes. That statement really makes it evident the level of talent the Area5 staff has, and exemplifies just how much of a missed opportunity this was for UGO, and Ziff Davis before them.

So thanks for bouncing back in a big way, boys. Here’s to a long and successful career!

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Page Flippin’ : January 22, 2009

Welcome one and all to the first Page Flippin’ of 2009. Only one more year to go until the spaceship Alexei Leonov reaches Saturn, but I digress…

I received the February 2009 issue of Game Informer yesterday. GI continues to impress me with its editorial decisions. Not one page in this magazine feels like filler. And for all the credit the EGM and 1UP staff gets got for its memorable personalities, GI trumps them all with their Gamercard-like bios on the “GI Staff” page (p. 2) and the “GI Spy” regular column, showing just a bunch of regular Minnesota folk working their asses off on one heck of a magazine. No attitudes, no fraternity. GI is all about gamers who love games. Period. Here are some more highlights from the issue:

  • “Afterwords” with Clint Hocking, Creative Director for Far Cry 2. The readers came up with the tough questions, but kudos to GI for actually letting them through. Questions like, “Why did you decide on such a wonky mission structure?” and, “Why did neither faction care that I was helping the other?” allow Clint to defend and explain such decisions, and gives great insight on the design process. Information like this is commonplace to Game Developer and Gamasutra, but seldom seen in a mass-market magazine.
  • The “Where Have You Been” feature focuses on announced titles which have been quiet for too long. Conspicuously absent: Alan Wake, and pretty much all of Microsoft’s and Sony’s 2009 lineup. Either they are all embargoed or 2009 is in for tough times (as expected).
  • “Loose Talk” says GTA V is expected in 2009; recent Internet buzz says otherwise. Who to believe?
  • “The Top 50 Games of 2008″ is a welcomed departure from the Game of the Year and top 10 lists everyone else publishes. GI has been doing this for years, and it’s a fair and balanced look at the past year, in order of release. The staff provides their top 10 lists at the end of the end of the article, but it’s nice to see such a wide range of mentionable games all on one stage. Some interesting statistics: November released the most games on the list at nine; would you expect to see February with five games? What are they? Read the article…
  • For all the credit 1UP and EGM get for their Japanese coverage, I haven’t seen them do anything as cool as the Actraiser feature in this month’s “Classic GI”, complete with an interview with Square Enix’s Shinji Futami on the story behind Actraiser 1 and 2. Sidebars include profiles on both games for newbies, and where to find the soundrack (hint: iTunes). This type of article is what made pre-Ziff Davis EGM so memorable, so it’s nice to see GI carry on the torch.
  • Honorable mention goes to the “Sound Check” and “Impulse” regular columns, but the “MMO Report” is conspicuously absent here. Hey Andy, where are all those new features for 2009 you were talking about?

The February 2009 issue checks in at 96 pages, a testament to the difficulties of finding adverising in this economy. Still, the editorial content rages on. Great job, boys!

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No Soliciting

I might sound a little selfish here, but is anyone as annoyed as I am at the alarming trend of ex-1UPpers panhandling their audiences lately? Sure, they just lost their jobs. I need to stay sympathetic, I keep telling myself.

So the folks at RebelFM get a free pass, because it was an immediate reaction from the community who wanted those guys to land on their feet. $12,000 though? Well, they got it, so more power to ‘em. Then TalkingOrange, or Area5 as they are known now (free link boys, and good job!), have enough donations to have PayPal question them. And now, those who voluntarily quit their jobs are looking for community bailout funds. That’s where I draw the line.

Dan “Shoe” Hsu posted on his Sore Thumbs blog that he has this great new idea for a website. It’s so great that he’s asking for money from his audience to fund his new venture. Not for a stake in it mind you, just some good old-fashioned free money. Forget videogames, he should go into a more profitable career in the banking or automotive industries. I think they really need his moxie right now!

The problem I have with these donations is in most cases these kids who would follow any former 1UP staffer blindly, are coughing up their hard earned cash without realizing that it’s pretty much like throwing their money away. They aren’t getting any software or services for it, they are only funding someone else’s project from which they will never see any reward other than being able to read a few blog posts a week about something that was probably not only written about on countless other websites, but aggregated to death across the Web. All for free. These are the same kids who probably got their EGM subscriptions over the past few years for free, too, by the way.

And the sick thing about all of this? These kids are pissing away not only their money, but their parents’ as well. And that money, especially in this economy, could go to things like food, education, mortgage. Oh, but Dan Hsu wants to build a website, let’s give him money. Did John Davison, after he voluntarily quit his job, ask his readers for donations so he could start What They Play? No, he created a business plan, peddled it to venture capitalists and investors – you know, the people with money who in return purchase a stake in a business venture. What would have happened if he couldn’t find someone to help back his business? He’d either have to dip into his own pockets or give up the dream.

What Hsu is doing here is reprehensible. He’s not selling a subscription, he’s stealing money from kids.

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Shall We Play A Game?

beakykojimaMy how the videogame industry has changed. Ten years ago, Japanese developers were untouchable. Rock stars. Now they have become a mockery of themselves. A mess of poor decisions, stubbornness, ego, and creative sludge; exemplified to the Western world through the Internet’s omniscient existence.

Take for example the recent trend of naming their games the most ridiculous title ever conceived by upright humans. Okay, Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories isn’t too bad, as long as no one realizes Re: is pretty standard nowadays for reply or regarding, not remake. But not to be outdone, two new chapters in the series – 358/2 Days and Birth by Sleep - are inconceivably bad.

This isn’t some Lost In Translation situation, this is all about Japanese developers thinking they are clever and creative to use the English language in a way it was never meant to be. How about the untouchable Hideo Kojima – you know, the guy who probably cost Konami millions of dollars by refusing to port Metal Gear Solid 4 to the Xbox 360? Smart man. That brain came up with Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance, which was titled because he likes Joy Division. It might not even sound that out of place, if it weren’t for Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence. So what do we get with Metal Gear Solid 4 - Substandard?

What about that tired trend of making every DS entry from a storied franchise have a subtitle that starts with the letters “D” and “S”? Dual of Sandwiches, anyone? And who could ever forget classics like Irritating Stick or Infinite Undiscovery? Japan is the land where shit is polished into Shinola, no doubt.

With some practice, I think I could make a pretty rich living in Japan coming up with names for games to reach Japanese audiences. Instead of Call of Duty, let’s call it WW3 .reload. Or instead of Halo, call it Ring of Space: Unavoidable Flood. Or Mass Effect could be called Space Jockey: Death by Talk. When anyone in Japan asks what’s for desert, are they told 4/1 Eat Prepare:  @Epilogue?

So let’s play a game, I’ll call it .Histerical Game. Take a normal game, say Gears of War 2, and give it a Japanese title, say Bandana of War re:Under/Ground. Post in the comments section or send me a Twitter with your creations. I’m looking forward to a good laugh!

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The New Print

Magazines are not dead, contrary to popular belief.

People think this because EGM died a tragic, horrible, unexpected death, but that’s just not the case. In fact, it was a sick old publication that had seen better days and suffered for years before the official, certified date from the coroner. It’s no secret I was never a fan of what Ziff Davis, or more like 1UP, did to the once great gaming rag, and indeed they ran it into the ground. Literally. Six feet under.

For all those NeoGAFers crying foul and marching downtown to UGO’s offices with torches in hand, just wait a second. 1UP might have had some entertaining podcasts and video shows, but do you really think the failure of our beloved EGM had any less to do with the people in San Francisco running it?

Over two years ago, when downloads of demos and game add-ons were first made available through Xbox Live, I suggested how Official Xbox Magazine could change their strategy to move away from providing said content to readers for a premium, and instead produce original video content in DVD format, much like the Japanese magazine Famitsu Wave.

Saying all of that, it seems like the OXM disc has become obsolete, but I have an idea of how it can be relevant again. Future needs to hire a production team to create exclusive programming and content for the disc, much in the same way Enterbrain does for Famitsu Wave. Start providing more making-of, documentary-style content and entertaining segments with OXM personalities – borrowing a bit from Ziff Davis’ own 1UP Show. And make it more enticing for Xbox owners to have the disc, aside from a couple of inconsequential gamer pictures. Avoid Xbox 360 content at all costs – Microsoft wants it all to themselves so they can sell on the Marketplace. Instead, make it DVD-based so they can watch not just on their Xbox, but on any DVD player they choose. This might even sway non-Xbox owners to pick up an interesting-looking issue to sample for themselves, and even push them toward buying an Xbox.

See anything interesting there? 1UP attracted a devoted fan base because of their original video and audio programming. They were on to something, and yet never capitalized on the popularity of their shows to benefit the ailing magazine. EGM needed a fresh new business plan, something along the lines of what I suggested for OXM. And they had all the parts, too – a video department cranking out weekly 30 minute episodes of The 1UP Show, along with all the side video projects like Not The 1UP Show; and a growing schedule of weekly podcasts covering a range of topics. The problem was they desperately needed a reboot, and management sat by idle and let the train wreck happen.

It probably didn’t help there was such turmoil going on in those offices for so long. The EGM staff were tasked to put out a monthly magazine with a revolving skeleton crew that was increasingly lacking in experience to do so, and obviously quality took a beatdown by the sinking morale that was infecting the eighth floor offices at 101 2nd Street. After enduring such a prolonged and public exodus, management just didn’t have any passion left. They just wanted the pain to end.

As tough as those last couple of years were for the magazine, nothing can erase the indelible mark it left on all of us gamers today. We grew up with the fond memories of EGM’s supersized, 300 page behemoth issues, the secrecy of Quarterman and Sushi-X, and all that awesome Japanese game coverage in an era where the web simply didn’t exist. It wasn’t a magazine, it was a toy; just as much as the game cartridges that frequently lay upon it on the coffee table. Some could argue it never successfully made the transition to the pivotal 32-bit era of gaming, which incidentally happened during the handover from Sendai to Ziff Davis, and only regained footing once Next Generation folded.

But I digress. This wasn’t meant to be a eulogy – that’s been done to death already. Rather, this is a painful example of how poor management and a lack of proper planning caused a gaming icon to disappear. The current economic climate is a tough one, but it alone is not to blame. With that said, not only to I expect to see my favorite magazines continue to exist for years to come, but I look forward to the day EGM rises from the ashes of its own doing and returns to the glory as we all remember it.

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