Last year, after portions of 1up Network were acquired by the Hearst Corporation, Electronic Gaming Monthly (a part of the 1up Network), or EGM for short, was discontinued. This was very upsetting for many fans of the 20-year old publication, myself included. Shortly after it’s discontinuation, however, the founder of the magazine, Steve Harris, acquired the publishing rights for a re-launch of the magazine. For nearly a year, many have waited for the re-launch to finally come into fruition, but as of April 29th, the wait is finally over. But was it worth it?
The first thing that any previous reader of EGM will notice is that the magazine has been completely redesigned. The look of the magazine is more clean, organized, and futuristic. The order in which the magazine’s stories are put in has changed slightly, with the “Review Crew” section coming before the cover story, instead of vice versa. The paper used in the magazine is slightly weightier, has more sheen, and overall feels more professional. The font size is no longer uniform throughout the entire magazine, with some pages having smaller text than others (particularly page 21). Oh, and the page number is now on the top of the page, among other things. Though it doesn’t have the same personality as it used to, I approve of the new look.
The big new feature of the new EGM is EGMi, the online magazine. EGMi uses ScreenPaper technology, though what that is, however, is beyond my understanding. They claim that it will make “stories come alive inside an immersive platform” (immersive platform referring to the internet). Guess that’s a fancy way of saying that they put videos in there. Anyway, there are two versions of EGMi, the free version, and the premium version that requires an iPASS to access. Four-issue iPASSes are included in every print issue of EGM, and if you subscribe you get one iPASS for the length of your subscription. They release one issue of EGMi on a weekly basis, giving gamers plenty of reading material.
To access EGMi, you must also create an account on egmnow.com, which is a simple enough process. I don’t particularly like the look of the website, it seems a bit unfinished, but they have plenty of time to improve on it. The digital magazine however, is very nice looking, and uses the internet “medium” to expand on what a magazine can do. For example, you can’t watch videos in the physical magazine, because it’s on paper, but in the online magazine, they can have video and audio embedded onto the page. The pages also have a good deal of interactivity to them, which I hope they continue to use in interesting ways. Loading appears to be an issue, albeit a minor one that could be improved.
The online magazine itself appears to contain a mixture of content from the magazine, and new, web-exclusive content. Although some of the content can be viewed for free with your egmnow account, a good portion of the content can only be viewed if you have an iPass. For example, the current issue of EGMi’s “Cover Story”, about the history and future of Final Fantasy, can only be viewed with an iPass.
Despite all of the new stuff, the magazine itself is still very much the same magazine it always was. Thankfully, some of the original staff has been brought over to the new magazine, including Dan “Shoe” Hsu, and Seanbaby, who are still just as great as ever. The writing is the same informative and occasionally funny style readers are used to, and the reviews are still very honest. The reviews themselves, however, have changed too. Instead of multi-man reviews, it’s just one reviewer, and is usually accompanied with a “second opinion” mini-review. But thankfully, they returned to the old scoring system, 1.0 – 10.0 in increments of .5, as apposed to the lettered scoring system. I’ve always hated those.
Whether or not you think that the new magazine was worth the wait is a matter of opinion, but at the very least it looks incredibly promising. The innovative online integration of the magazine is very well done, and is something that I hope to see more in magazines. And it smells good, too.
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After reading more of the magazine, I can safely say that it's a mixed bag in terms of quality. Some of the writers are not all that good, and think they're way smarter than they actually are. These writers sometimes write articles claiming ties between things that are in no way related. These writers are more than likely the ones brought over from BitMob, which is similarly a mixed bag.