A rant that doesn't matterSo, I've been thumbing through the latest EGM for awhile now, slowly absorbing the content via my short trips to the restroom. And I came to a realization.
I'm really beginning wish I hadn't signed up for another six months free of EGM.
Normally, I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. A Free, crappy magazine is still free, after all, but it's to the point where giving this bilge away for free isn't enough incentive to curse my household with EGM's lame ramblings.
For those who don't know the back story: Sometime about a year, maybe a year and a half ago, EGM restructured itself. The magazine underwent a transformation - before, EGM was perhaps the thickest gaming magazine in print, going well over 300 pages - sometimes even 400 during the holiday seasons. EGM and it's staff felt like just another group of gamers to me. I respected their opinions and I enjoyed reading their magazine. It was perhaps the only print magazine I knew I could trust.
The change happened during a time when I did not have a subscription anymore. Truthfully? I've never actually paid a dime for an issue of EGM in my entire life. Well; maybe a couple of times, but I was young and confused. Anyway, my free subscription ran out and, while sad, there was nothing I could do about it. It would be nine months before I'd find another free subscription deal.
Imagine that a young man leaves the warm confines of his home town. He returns 10 years later to find the city in shambles - his neighborhood is now part of the slums, his house is now a meth lab. Hookers and hobos are on every street corner and he can hear the faint crackles of gunfire in the distance everywhere he goes.
That is how I felt upon returning to EGM. The magazine was thinner - a lot thinner - like it had aquired a bad case of annorexia; or worse, it had started doing cocaine. What was once a heafty, well-rounded 300+ page magazine was now less than 130 pages. Many columns and sections were circumsized - the "Previews" section was compressed into a single page - calendar style; with one sentence and a tiny screenshot devoted to each game. In depth articles, such as the monthly column that interviewed game developers on their thoughts and comments on a game they had just released, were lobotomized and missing. Hsu & Chan, a comic series that got it's start in EGM and moved it's way into a monthly comic series, was now resigned to the last page of the magazine, where stale and unfunny jokes prevailed (undoubtedly, the writer was saving the good content for the monthly book).
More content was shunned in favor of laughable "Celebrity Interviews", where the EGM staff would catch up with some hollywood celebrity and ask them questions about videogames - for no particular reason other than to get their take on the industry. Reviews, too, where squashed down to fit the new, smaller format, with a page dedicated to "Reviews they didn't have enough space for". Photoshop contests and tasteless jokes dominated their letters section. The cover story of the first issue I received involved the glorification of Movie Licensed games - 95% of which don't deserve any praise and would undoubtedly be at the bottom of the bargain bin in only a couple of months.
The whole thing reeked of something worse than mainstream - it smelled like a dirty geek dressed up to fit in with the popular kids. Under all that hair gel, those trendy clothes, was some loser who was trying to to act "cool" just he could fit in with the jocks and the cheerleaders. This was a magazine I trusted, and loved, and they spit in my face by becoming the very thing I hated: a stupid poser.
And that brings us to this month's EGM. On the cover is Soul Calibur 3's Raphael, off-center, creating one of the least visually pleasing covers I think I've ever seen in a game magazine outside of GamePro. We get to their letters section, and, oh! Look what we're met with.
"When my wife was pregnant, I put headphones to her belly and played videogame music. Sonic Adventure, Chrono Cross, even a little Killer Instinct. The song the baby most liked was the theme from Final Fantasy VII. [...] I played the song for the baby to when my wife' s Labor pains stopped. As soon as I did, the baby was ready to go."
EGM's response: "Please visit plannedparenthood.org to find a contraceptive that's right for you."
They speak with celebrity gamers "The Beastie Boys". It's great that there are celebrity gamers, but I don't care. You could waste the same amount of space on random forum users and it would be the same thing - it's just celebrities are more well-known. Doesn't mean I give any more of a crap about them, though. They do a segment on under-the-radar games, most of which aren't actually under-the-radar.
Dragon Quest 8, for example. I haven't met a gamer out there who doesn't know what Dragon Quest (AKA Dragon Warrior) is. Shadow of the Colossus isn't under-the-radar either.
But perhaps the part that pisses me off the most is a trend that has emerged in just this issue - we all remember the "Nintendo is kiddie" phase, right? It was based off a statement a Microsoft Public Relations goon made, andit was a major sticking point for the industry for awhile. EGM revisits the old classic with a new, much more horrible spin. The trend I am speaking of is their habit of calling certain games "for babies".
In their "Under the Radar" segment, they mention a game called Popolocrois, a Playstation 1/Playstation 2 RPG series that, up until now, was Japan-only. The series is finally coming to the states (in the form of a PSP port of the first two PS1 titles). The worst part comes during the last paragraph of their description:
"Ordinarily, we'd expect a game like this (cutesy, old school, kind of for babies) to reach only the hardest of hardcore RPG crowd. On the other hand, new software for the PSP is at a premium, and thousands of game starved early adopters could make this an inexplicable hit. We'll see what Americans make of the series once it's released next month."
"For babies"? Who talks like this anymore? 12 year olds? Is EGM being written by 12 year olds now? Hardcore gamers are babies? Oldschool games are for babies? What exactly are they saying, here? I tell you one thing: Any way you look at it, it's insulting to somebody who's been playing games all of his life. The phrase rears it's ugly head in Shane's Pac'N Roll review, as well:
"Don't be scared away by it's baby-game look: the complexity and difficult of later levels strikes a stark contrast to the cornball story that unfolds in a series of picture-book cutscenes (...)"
They round out the issue with a lovely section from Seanbaby, who, true to form, proceeds to insult pretty much every single nerd archtype on the planet in order to make himself look "hardcore". "Haha, it's funny, get it, because they're nerds! Let's all laugh at the nerds because they're nerdy! Ahaha, you all suck, nerds!"
It's not so much I am offended by EGM, I am just embarassed to think that these are the kinds of people folks will think of when they think of what a gamer is - juvenile, loud, abrasive, and insulting. I only wonder how long it will be before EGM starts playing the tired, "We suck, and we're referencing to the fact we suck, and that's funny!" cliche like Xplay does.
It's times like these I pray Hardcore Gamer Magazine gains some steam, as it's a publication that respects it's audience and actively pays it's dues to the hardcore and the old school. It knows it's roots and embraces them full-force. Just needs some better page layouts....
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