I have to admit, I don't think I'd buy it. The only videogame mooks I've ever considered are ones dedicated to a single game, and which go into exacting detail.

GameStoat however sounds fairly vague in theme. Most of the sections sound like things I wouldn't care about. I doubt I'd care what Trent Reznor had to say, and Penn Jillette's greatest gaming contribution was the desert bus driving game. Editorial roundtables often seem more like filler than a real article.

Unless the quality of research and reporting is *much* higher than the current industry standards, enormous retrospectives might be almost painful in the number of mistakes and omissions they would likely contain. (At least it is something 1Up, IGN, Gamespot, and most others cannot manage, sometimes to laughable degrees.)

The pricing might be an issue as well, as it is different from magazines with CD/DVD inserts. The inserts are seen as extras (though increasing availability to high speed internet is weakening the value) outside the written text. And those magazines often have decent discounts for subscriptions. (GameStoat sounds like something that couldn't afford reduced subscription rates.) The news stand purchases are for people that only see an issue or two a year as worth buying.

Well, that's OK; I wouldn't expect everyone to buy it just because (to borrow one of Edge's more pretentious intro lines) it's not meant for everyone. ;)

If this hypothetical magazine had a theme, it would be about people living within video games, making it a part of their lifestyle, whether that means running Tecmo leagues or buying every new RPG that cames out and never breaking them out. The sort of people that would enjoy reading about games more than actually playing them, almost. It is kind of a nebulous theme, and I would have to work on it if I was in any position to push it, but I think it can also be summed up as "a magazine about playing games past and present".

This would also naturally not be a magazine I would attempt without massive connections. This creates the Catch-22 of having to hire lots of people with industry connections, but getting them to write in a different style from any other game mag/site in order to get that feel I have in mind.

I know that mags in the past have tried so called "celebrity columns" (Electronic Entertainment for one). Why would this mag's be different? Well, partly because I don't care if they don't write about games all the time. Instead, the absolute must for any text in this mag is that it's interesting to read for 25-50 male gamers, not that it's timely or directly related to games. And I don't mean I want coverage of wrestling or DVDs or hip-hop music or whatever potential advertisers would like -- I just mean it has to be interesting in the same way that any given New Yorker article might be interesting. In fact, I think it'd be great to have, like, Richard Garriott write a column about his new castle and all the rooms he wants to put in it instead of writing about how he designed Ultima IV yet again.

As for the research quality of the retrospectives, I'm not going for the Retro Gamer sort of approach to this. These retrospectives aren't meant to be historical primary sources or even particularly groundbreaking; again, they must be fun to read first, and whatever it takes to do that (whacked-out descriptions, the editors tracking down someone involved with the old age that no one has bothered tracking down in the past) takes priority over ensuring that I have every release date right.

Make has discounted subscriptions and I don't see why GameStoat wouldn't.

Sounds incredible. As a frequent reader of CONTINUE, I would love to see a mag that covers similar ground in English.
I'd pay up to $30 per issue if it was half as good as what you describe.

"I'd pay up to $30 per issue if it was half as good as what you describe."

No you wouldn't. You probably wouldn't even spend $4.99.

It doesn't matter how strongly the magazines communicate that they're different; no one's listening, and no one cares. As long as free alternatives exist, the pay version has to be impossibly better. People constantly bitch and whine about how crappy all the various magazines are within trying them and they'll bitch and whine about how crappy all the websites are while still clicking on the links, thereby giving them no reason to improve their editorial.

While I'd like to think a magazine like this could succeed, I'm not even sure it would in a more mature entertainment form. There's no music or movie or even TV equivalent with that level of readership. Why would it work for games, which have an even smaller audience and which are considerably less interesting in a cultural sense?

It's possible that game fans--and geeks in general--are more obsessive than most other fans of entertainment, and therefore more likely to want publications that dig into something with a similar level of obsessiveness. But it's my experience that they're really only interested in extreme detail about a very narrow range of topics. So, they may want that Castlevania article or one about Nintendo, but you can forget the ones about any other systems/games.

The problem with the idea of "a magazine about playing games" is that... well, why would I read about playing games when I can actually play games?

Look at how ESPN The Magazine is successful despite ESPN.com. The website covers the news and the delivers the scores, but the magazine covers the context and details what it's like to play the sports.

The big difference is that I'll never take the field at Fenway or throw a pass to Terrel Owens. Why would I want to read about Tecmo Bowl when I could be playing it?

Virtual Bo Jackson FTW, as the kids say.

I think it sounds like a great idea. I would personally buy it. I get all my reviews the day the games come out, I get my news the moment it drops.

But I would dig a cool magazine that is about the culture, the scenes, and full of articles that are not stale in a week. Aiming for a Upscale style to it sounds great, and maybe please a title without the word "game" in it.

I also want good fucking covers. I want covers that are not cheesy like ALL game mag covers are. I want a magazine that would look at home in some hipster cafe. Maybe covers that are minimalistic with a slight hint to what the magazine is about, maybe a minimalistic upside down T to represent a joystick. But a magazine with some class and able to stick with the upscale magazines would be cool.

Steve, you're wrong that no-one cares. You need to qualify that. No-one IN AMERICA cares. Elsewhere? I have one word for you:

Edge

Christ, enough people care about buying Edge that even booksellers in TAIWAN import it - and their compilation series File - every single issue. And not just one or two copies either - two of the three biggest bookstores in Taipei (and probably Taiwan) regularly get half a dozen to a dozen copies. And this isn't even an native-English-speaking country.

Sigh. That's the kind of mag we've been trying to make with PC Gamer in the UK for a couple of years. It's really hard. And no-one cares.

Sigh. Again.

"Steve, you're wrong that no-one cares. You need to qualify that. No-one IN AMERICA cares. Elsewhere? I have one word for you:

Edge"

Edge makes my point. It has a tiny number of readers relative to most magazines, and considerably less than the theoretical one being discussed here (last I heard, Edge had something like 20-40K circ). It's a tiny niche publication that I'm guessing more people talk about liking than actually buy it. And I could be totally wrong--and the economics of magazines in England are totally different than ones in the US--but I suspect it's only kept around as a prestige publication for its publisher, not because it's operating at a profit.

As TimE there says, no one really cares about this kind of magazine, and the evidence is out there--magazines that incorporate its elements are less successful than ones that just focus on hype. And the websites that just pump out tons of illiterate content first--like IGN and its ilk--are way more successful than more thoughtful, and therefore later, ones.

Oh, people will talk on message boards and blogs about how much they want this kind of publication. But when push comes to shove, when it's time to fork over a few bucks, the same people that say they want this kind of publication will figure out reasons not to pay money for it. And they'll click on the first link that pops up about something, regardless of the quality of the source.

It's like someone said here: I get reviews the day the game comes out. Yeah, you get shitty reviews that first day, ones based on the least amount of play and with the least amount of insight or critical thought. Websites have to balance timeliness and quality, and generally are rewarded more by the former than the latter.

I only wish such a magazine actually existed. sigh.

I would pay $20 for this. You have summed up my dreams and now I want this magazine to exist :(

Actually another fantastic post and such a lovely utopia...

The fact that a few of us are reading this means that we DO care -- but whether or not we would pay real $$ is a very valid question.

I subscribe to EDGE because it's (finally) a decent deal to do so now that they're exporting it to the USA properly. There's nothing that comes even remotely close to it for quality on our shelves, except for the sister import Games TM.

Retro Gamer is terrific, but it's impossibly expensive in the USA. I was subscribing for a while, but it's very difficult to justify that kind of money when Racketboy is doing an almost-as-good job for free on his blog. I bitched about it a little bit in their official forums -- UK readers can subscribe for next-to-nothing but USA readers can't. The general consensus was "it's about time *something* was more expensive in USA than Europe!" Heheheheh.

I would subscribe to the Stoat if it were everything suggested here. And then I'd be disappointed when it folded, just like all the other cool startups before it. If Next Generation (USA's EDGE attempt) can't make money, what can?

I don't want to break out the Edge comparisons because I don't have any aspirations of making this magazine into The Voice of the Video Game Industry, but I do find myself largely agreeing with its tone of voice -- very knowledgeable about games, but not "hardcore" in the GameFan definition of the term. I suppose I wouldn't mind if GameStoat was seen as Edge minus reviews and [most] previews. And also less pretentious.

Getting to Steve's point, certainly pessimism about magazines is all the rage industry-wide, not just with game titles. I do not have any dreams of the stoat breaking 100k copies, and it is not going to be an advertising magnet. That's why it'd be quarterly and $15, after all.

However, think about what happens when the current style of game mags -- heavily reliant on exclusives and reviews, a 30-40% ad ratio -- crumbles when the advertisers drop magazines even further. It's that sales environment I'm primarily thinking about here, because I think everyone's in agreement that that will happen eventually, probably some years from now. When that happens, I think the [i]only[/i] kind of game mag that would sell is something like GameStoat -- something stylish, something fun (and fascinating) to read, and something useful to have on the shelf. That's the most likely scenario for the launch of a mag like that, because by that point, game mags will not rake in millions in ad revenue anyway -- why not try something new for a change?

(PS. I can't speak for Edge, but back when Highbury was publishing it, GamesTM was 100% "prestige" and every UK editor I met told me so.)

"Steve, you're wrong that no-one cares. You need to qualify that. No-one IN AMERICA cares. Elsewhere? I have one word for you:

Edge

Christ, enough people care about buying Edge that even booksellers in TAIWAN import it "

You say this but Edge's sales figures are still lower than virtually anything that survives in the US and less than 10% of what the UK's Official Playstation magazine sold at its height.

Edge sells more now than ever, but it's still comfortably outsold by just about all its sister magazines. If not for the sheer power of Future behind it I'm not sure it would have survived till now.

"That's the most likely scenario for the launch of a mag like that, because by that point, game mags will not rake in millions in ad revenue anyway -- why not try something new for a change?"

Everything you say makes sense, but having to front print costs makes this an expensive proposition. Why not just launch it as a website?

For me, the simple issue is that I'm not that convinced people really want or care about quality game editorial. Or to be more specific, I'm not sure people are willing to pay a premium for it. Right now, they're unwilling to spend less than $15 for a year's worth of issues of most magazines--even the better ones--so I find it somewhat dubious they'll pay $15 for a single issue, regardless of its quality.

I'm not even sure movie, music, or book fans would pay that much, and those are much more mature art forms with audiences even more disposed toward "deep thinking" about their place in culture.

But-but-but .... websites are so ephemeral! MOOKS are nice and tangible.

Maybe a good compromise would be a decent web-based archive of all the EDGE and Next Gen mags that have come before. Put it on a DVD if you must, but give it to us.

I agree that one of the main aims here is to produce a magazine that its readers will want to keep for a very long time. That's part of the reason why up-to-the-moment previews/reviews are de-emphasized; that sort of content doesn't exploit any of print media's advantages and makes all its weaknesses brutally obvious.

As for the price, I'd like to point to Make as a magazine that has found its audience and is self-supporting, despite a high list price and no bonus gimmicks besides nice paper. My own magazine, Newtype USA, is almost as expensive but is also successful. Both of these magazines work as print because they have found their exact audiences and play to them perfectly.

That'd be the challenge with this mag, and I think there is a market of video-game fans who like to read about video games but are turned off by most traditional game mags, or their idea of what traditional game mags are. There'd need to be some research to prove this (otherwise we're just playing dueling anecdotes), but I think it's there.

"But-but-but .... websites are so ephemeral! MOOKS are nice and tangible."

I wonder if there is a viable idea here... What if you were to take an approach similar to the more successful web comics?

Start with a high quality web site. Put your very detailed articles and the like on this web site.

Then collect the best of the web-site material and publish it in mook form for collectors and the general market. Add a few extras as a reward for those that support the mook, but not so much that you anger those that don't.

A possible benefit of this is that the initial web presence can weed out errors and oversights, which can lead to stronger mook material. (At least if the GameStoat staffers are good at checking both their own comments forums as well as the forums of other sites.)

Perhaps you could end up with a mook that rivaled or surpassed printed books about gaming (which haven't always been that great when it comes to fact-checking themselves.)

i don't have much to add except that i'd LOVE to see this magazine, and i WOULD buy it.

one can dream...

I was with you right up until the no reviews. Then I was going, "No reviews? Are you crazy? I like reading reviews so I can go, God this magazine is in the pocket of such and such a game company" or snigger with disgust at the glowing reviews of a tired platforming series (a la Play Magazine). But then I thought about it a little bit. My favorite games magazine (ever?) is the UK's RetroGamer. Man that is a great magazine. It is very close to what you describe. Interesting "How Tos" and excellent retrospectives. All with a great editorial voice and excellent writing...but I never read the reviews. I don't care about them. Maybe you're right...maybe I don't care about reviews.

I'm a bit late to this but your idea sounds cool. I worked on Future games mags in the UK for 7 years (Nintendo stuff mostly - Super Play, N64 etc.) and although I'm now on the games dev side I still daydream about my fantasy mag (and yes, it too would be a mook), justifing it by thinking that if I could cut down all the overheads, just use freelancers and sell about 15-20k it could survive.

I have a fantasy Ninty mag that covers all Nitnendo and concentrates on the fan community and the Nintendo-related stuff they do along with retrospectives on old games etc.
My other dream is what I like to call my 'odd Jap import' mag that covers all the weird stuff that never really sees the light of day in the West. All systems - all ages - very niche and loads of artwork.

Surely with a nice website and reasonable worldwide shipping there are enough fans that would make mags like this feasable? Every time I go into Borders I see racks of modern 'art' mags with fantastic production values and, I imagine' tiny readerships.

Cool column. My new best read.