GameGO! was founded not so many years ago by two visionary idiots who decided to throw caution to the wind and develop a product that was geared towards what was then called the "hardcore" audience -- which is now a subjective term applied to everyone that owns more than 3 games and plays anything other than Madden 2003.
We were after the grizzled veterans; the GameFan aficionados; the off-the-beaten-path game player. Hell, I owned a videogame shop and was teaming up with the ex-Editor in Chief of GameFan. How hard could it be?
Between the two of us, we had exposure to thousands of people, who either bought imports and software at Video Game Depot or used to read GameFan, which was brought to a quick demise by a company that had no concept of how to run a magazine at that level. We were set to conquer the gaming world and deliver a product of uncompromised reviews and features that would set the gaming world on its arse.
Reviews without scores? Unconscionable! Features on focusing on RGB tech? Ludicrous! Had it been properly financed, it might have worked.
GameGO! had a decent first issue. People complained that it was a bit short (which it was), but it was also very different. It was distributed by Electronics Boutique and was also available via subscription.
It was full color, on quality paper, and featured a cover by the renowned artist Patrick Spaziante. It was chock full of minor mistakes that somehow escaped our tiny staff and eked onto our pages. We did so much with so little - it all turned out to be a crash course in magazine publishing which made me richer for the experience, but far poorer in pocketbook.
GameGO! was financed by Video Game Depot and by subscriptions from people who believed in what the magazine could ultimately be. After the first issue, we didn’t have nearly the subscriptions that we thought we could muster.
We waited for the results from the newsstand (Electronics Boutique) and began to work on the second issue. We had preview stuff from Sega (Alien Front Online, Ooga Booga, and Bomberman Online) and had strong import games to cover (Final Fantasy X).
The book was amazing. Stunning, really. It was mid-August and our advertising for the next issue looked fairly good. The October issue, however, was looking very bleak. Everyone was crying the blues about the economy and even getting a paltry five hundred dollars was akin to climbing Mount Everest.
We waited. And then it came. The results from Electronics Boutique were much worse then even our lowest estimates. GameGO! was dead. There was no financing, no interested sponsors, no lifeline that could be thrown to save us.
It was difficult for all of us - emotionally and financially. Our dream was lost, but what a dream it was.
The audience that GameGO! reached was among the most supportive people that I’ve ever had the pleasure of being associated with. The question remains, though, were there enough of them to support a commercial magazine that catered to the fringe crowd with balls-on journalism and unabashed criticism of games that didn’t work?
There weren’t enough to support our admittedly poor business model. Our delusions of grandeur sorely conflicted with reality.
There are enough out there, however, to support that type of journalism. To what extent remains to be seen.
The real question here, though, isn’t really about GameGO!; it’s more about whether or not unbiased print media, such as GameGO!, about video games, can truly exist anymore. The answer, on a grand scale, is undoubtedly no.
See, GameGO! would’ve had a much better shot at being successful in 1995 than in 2001. The imports and the games that we covered would’ve been new to the reader and the information would not have been so easy to attain elsewhere.
If the odd passerby were to have seen Stretch Panic and Sakura Wars in GameGO!, they might have been more inclined to pick it up if information weren’t available throughout the world wide web.
GameGO! could exist as a media entity on the web, but it remains doubtful that it could be a successful commercial venture in any regard, in these instant-news/instant-gratification times that we live in.
Which brings us to the truly larger issue -- is unbiased commercial media coverage dead? Is video game journalism dead?
Commercially, in large part, it is. Most print magazines read like a big advertisement for Brand X. Media outlets have to play The Game. There are so many outlets for publicity, that publishers don’t feel the need to work with anyone who might recently have slammed one of their other releases.
Regardless of what anyone might tell you, there are countless hidden pressures that are either expressed or implied by whatever you might be covering for a particular company. Being independent, critical, or negative about a big feature or upcoming release is hardly rewarded by those providing the software.
Think about it. If you were a publisher, would you give your game to reviewer A, who glowingly praised your last pile of dung, or to reviewer B, who told it as it was and trashed your trashy software?
Answer: A, every time.
That leaves us with the last bastion of light in an otherwise very dark corner of the universe known as video game media -- the fan site.
Some of these suffer from the very same afflictions that plague the larger commercial entities. However, what remains are the "true" fan sites that buy all the games that they review and cover them, good or bad, without giving thought to either the publisher or the developer.
Simply put, they are writing about their experience for themselves and anyone who feels like reading it. You’re left, in many cases, with journalism that can hardly be considered a Shakespearean experience -- but which is all that much more rewarding because it’s truthful.
The truth. Who would’ve thought that with the advent of a system whereby all information can be made available to all people, that the truth would be so difficult to find?
Sometimes I give thought to reviving the GameGO! magazine web site, to further champion the cause of the truth. It’s still worth it, even if it can’t pay the bills.
Tom Keller
will show you the way, if you'll follow
[Next: Chapter 11: I Coulda Been A Game-Mag Rockstar.]
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