EGMi screenshot.
Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM to its millions of readers) led games journalism from amateurish rants to professional critiques. It not only legitimized video games as an art and form of entertainment worth writing about, but in doing so helped shuffle games further into the mainstream.
In January 2009 it was shuttered by Hearst Corporation, the company that acquired EGM and the 1UP network as part of a package of properties sold off by struggling publisher Ziff Davis Media. That should have been it for the long running rag; after all, we're living in an age when print publications are dying, not being reborn. And yet EGM seems to be an exception. Original founder Steve Harris acquired rights to the name last summer and, according to his website, the first issue of the re-launched publication is slated to hit shelves any time now.
But that's not really what interests me. I still think launching (or re-launching) a print magazine-especially one that covers an interactive media-in 2010 is folly. More curious is EGMi, an electronic version of the magazine that will be available online.
I spent some time this weekend playing around with the recently released test issue of EGMi. It's composed primarily of content that was originally supposed to appear in the unprinted final edition of EGM in February 2009 reorganized and reformatted to be read on a display rather than a page. Its orientation is horizontal, but it still has the basic look of a magazine: multiple fonts, unpredictable typesetting, and splashy images. But it's the digital features that warrant strongest scrutiny.
Readers navigate by clicking on section icons lining the top of the screen or a page turner in the top right corner. There is no scrolling; all pages are shown in a single rectangular box that expands or contracts to fit your monitor or window. A news bar sits at the bottom of the page, looping through what one assumes will eventually be the latest big news in the games industry, and there are links to Twitter, Facebook, and game websites on the right. We can flick through screenshots, but they're pretty low-res and didn't look great on my 23-inch desktop monitor. Multimedia hasn't been embedded in any of the stories, though it looks like game movies and a few other premium features, including ringtones, videocasts, and podcasts, will be available to iPass members (magazine subscribers) in a special section simply called Media Player.
This is a test issue and there are still some wrinkles that need to be ironed out (pages take a long time to load, certain things that ought to be clickable aren't), so one doesn't want to be too harsh. Still, I can't imagine much of a future for the magazine in this form. Depending on what you're looking at, it feels like either an interactive PDF or an oddly designed web page.
Plus, leaning forward to consume this kind of content on a computer just feels wrong. Reading a magazine-even a digital one-is a sit back and relax kind of activity.
Part of the problem may be that I was hoping for something similar to Wired magazine's ballyhooed app for Apple's newly launched iPad, which, among other things, is designed to facilitate consumption on a couch. I've yet to try it myself, but I've watched videos and read experts' takes on it, and it seems to be just the sort of thing that could make a digital magazine work. Users flip and scroll through pages using intuitive gestures, search through other pages without leaving the page they're currently viewing, and experience rich multimedia and product 360s right on the page rather than heading to some other section of the magazine. It looks to be fast, highly accessible, and completely beautiful.
I know it's unfair to expect an independent publication to compete with the resources of a Conde Naste-backed magazine. Still, if I'm going to pay for digital content, I want it to be fun and exciting, something I can't get from a print magazine or the Internet. Based on this test issue, EGMi is not that.
I wish the best of luck to Mr. Harris and his crew-which, according to a letter from publisher, includes plenty of talented journalists, including former EGM staffers Dan Hsu, Demien Linn, and Michael Donahoe. They're smart, insightful, and unfazed by the industry. I've always enjoyed their editorial content. I'm just not sure EGMi will be a viable platform for its delivery.
Follow me on Twitter @ chadsapieha