COLUMN: 'Game Mag Weaseling': PC Gamer UK's Redesign
['Game Mag Weaseling' is a weekly column by Kevin Gifford which documents the history of video game magazines, from their birth in the early '80s to the current day.]
After I lamented in this column that I can't find the UK edition of PC Gamer anywhere nearby (even though PC Zone is oddly not a problem), deputy editor Tim Edwards kindly came to my rescue and sent me the June and July issues. My thanks go out to him. I'm going to be sending him meat and a novelty hat shortly.
I wanted a recent look PCG UK because they undertook a large redesign back with issue 201 in June, one where apparently everything from the front-cover logo to the main text font was reworked. It was apparently a substantial change of pace, because even though I don't get to read the UK PCG all that often, I still got emails asking me what was up with the redesign, about how weird it was to see Britain's best-selling print PC mag in this shape and form.
And it's all a bit surprising to me, because what may seem like a remarkable transformation to the Empire's eyes looks a lot like...well, US mags of past and present.
Like any US mag, the UK PCG is mainly about previews and reviews, with the remaining space devoted to news, one or two features, and the "Extra Life" section in the back. Extra Life itself has existed for a while; it covers aspects of the scene ranging from MMORPG updates and free online games to "Now Playing," a look back at games from the past couple years that the editors are playing.
I've had the impression that in the UK, PC Gamer was the "serious" computer game mag and PC Zone was the "funny" computer game mag, even though the art design for both titles wasn't all that different from each other. This redesign seems to be a bid to separate the two titles visually a bit more and reinforce PCG's authoritative-ness with a "slightly more grown-up look," as EIC Ross Atherton put it.
And grown-up it is -- primarily white, fancy serifed font, very few extraneous sidebars. At least one or two pages are entirely text, something unheard of in game mags since the old Computer Gaming World days, albeit with large pull quotes or some other visual feature to avert boredom.
The changes are interesting to me because the two PC Gamers seem to be going in opposite directions mission-wise. The US one, with Gary Steinman running it, has gotten remarkably loose and free-form over the past half-year, experimenting with a lot of unique features and boasting extremely innovative and experimental art designs for its features.
The UK edition, meanwhile, features an extremely standardized look across the entirety of the mag. Other than a very cool feature in Issue 201 devoted to Wurm Online called "I'm Bleeding to Death," nearly every page looks the same visually -- a bit of an issue, because at a glance you have trouble telling the difference between a preview and a review if you're just thumbing around.
I like PCE UK's new style -- it's a unique approach, and the art guys were extremely thorough in their design and implementation. However, is it dangerous for a print mag to be seen as...dare I say it...boring? I subscribed to Computer Gaming World in the early '90s, a pioneering and important but visually ugly publication, and compared to its boring double-columned text, tiny screenshots, and bare acknowledgement of first-person shooters, PC Gamer's colorful, vibrant debut issues were a revolution to my eyes in 1994. Now I can't help but wonder if PC Gamer US is trying to find a future for print game mags while PC Gamer UK is simultaneously going back to the past.
[Kevin Gifford breeds ferrets and runs Magweasel, a really cool weblog about games and Japan and "the industry" and things. In his spare time he does writing and translation for lots and lots of publishers and game companies.]
