Death of Print

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that print media is quickly become an endangered species. This is especially true in the world of gamer magazines. It seems that the internet has made many print publications obsolete.

The first major magazine that I purchased on a regular basis that ceased publication was Wizards of the Coast’s the Duelist in 1999. This magazine focused on Magic the Gathering and was the first publication that I bought on a regular basis. Unfortunately, by 1999 the magazine had been made obsolete by the fast moving online Magic community. The next main gamer magazine to go under was the short lived Star Wars Gamer. This bi-monthly magazine actually only lasted for ten issues. It was filled with great content for the Star Wars role-playing and I collected them all (still have them actually).

September of 2007 was the month of death for magazines in the gaming world. Fist Dragon Magazine, the grand-daddy of the gamer magazine world, and Dungeon both went out of print. In my middle school and early high school days I would eagerly await the new issue of Dragon each month (a close friend of mine had a subscription) and it was sad to see it go. Both of these magazines are now “published” online. Personally I’m not sure that publishing online counts as continuing theses magazines but Wizards of the Coast claims that it is. It’s really sad that we will never actually see issue 400 in print. The Inquest, a general gamer magazine, also ceased publication in September of 2007. It had been years since I had bought an issue of Inquest (it was never really that great of a publication) but it was a little sad to see it go.

You may ask “what brought up this walk down memory lane”? Well, last weekend I discovered that Scrye was ceasing publication and moving to an online format. I should have seen this coming when the magazine began to use a cheaper paper a ceased color printing. Yet another of my precious magazines gone. Where will I ever get my restroom reading material?

This leaves only three gaming magazines that I ever read. Fist on my list is No Quarter, the Privateer Press publication. This is a great magazine is a great value if you love Warmachine (and I do). Next is White Dwarf. This is the most overpriced Magazine I know of. The last issue cost 9 dollars. This is a ridiculous price for a magazine that is effectively 120 pages of advertisement for Games Workshop. I could rationalize spending six bucks but not nine, especially when you consider the fact that I’m not currently playing any GW games (a 50% increase within a six month period…OK done buying this mag). The final magazine is really a comic, Knights of the Dinner Table. Simply put I read this publication for the 32 pages of comics and ignore the other half of the magazine. At 4 dollars it is still worth every penny and will likely be purchased by me for years to come (until it becomes an online publication).