Funnily enough, there's a (slightly unnecessary) swipe at the 'long-defunct PC Zone' in a feature about Half-Life 2 in this month's Gamer.
For anyone who hasn't picked it up for a while, it's certainly a strange beast, with contributions from both UK and US writing teams, making it slightly tonally uneven. Perhaps that's what you have to do these days to keep things going.
(As for print, and PC Zone, I still love them both, so I'd back a revival, if anyone could make it happen!)
Looking at the opening page I see it's by Rick Lane - one of the good guys. (That's not to suggest anyone on Gamer is a bad guy. I actually enjoy everyone's writing on the site.) I don't really see it as a swipe either, but it could be that it originally said 'much-respected' and the editor is pre-disposed to change such things.
I will eventually get through my legacy copies of Zone whilst reading on the toilet, so I would like some new ones at some point. You'll be amused to hear that I cannot shift several years of Gamer (including discs) for £50/year + postage. Not one collection has gone. Might be better as firelighters.......
Ah, that never-ending salty rivalry between Zone and Gamer. It was The Empire (The Twat Factory) versus The Rebels (us), and we all know who the dirty, under-handed, bad faith tactics always came from...
About a printed PC Zone: I've dabbled a bit with small, limited run magazines over the past five or six years, and think that a small run might make some profit on issue sales. But really you'd need to be selling advertising space and sponsor slots to make a paper magazine worthwhile financially. And to sell advertising and sponsor slots you'd need a dedicated person acting as publisher.
Point of note: we produced an A5 mini issue of PC Zone for Hexen II, and the magazine looked great (and was still mostly readable), so Zone would work at half-size. I've noticed that most of the other retro gaming fanzines these days are A5 in size. And you'd be talking cover prices of anything from £1 to £5, depending on your print run and other costs, which would probably be acceptable to fans and collectors.
I'd also suggest not publishing too often. Twice a year (or even once a year) might be enough for a limited edition mini special type thing.
My last observation: almost all the retro gaming fanzines I've seen have amateurish design, so PC Zone could easily wipe the floor with them - in terms of aesthetics (and professionalism) with just the most basic of templates.
Gotta happen, =), <3.
Funnily enough, there's a (slightly unnecessary) swipe at the 'long-defunct PC Zone' in a feature about Half-Life 2 in this month's Gamer.
For anyone who hasn't picked it up for a while, it's certainly a strange beast, with contributions from both UK and US writing teams, making it slightly tonally uneven. Perhaps that's what you have to do these days to keep things going.
(As for print, and PC Zone, I still love them both, so I'd back a revival, if anyone could make it happen!)
Looking at the opening page I see it's by Rick Lane - one of the good guys. (That's not to suggest anyone on Gamer is a bad guy. I actually enjoy everyone's writing on the site.) I don't really see it as a swipe either, but it could be that it originally said 'much-respected' and the editor is pre-disposed to change such things.
Maybe I'll ask Rick one day.
It stuck out as slightly odd to me, but who knows.
Perhaps there's something in their editorial style guide which means that any reference to Zone must also include the phrase 'long-defunct'.
Or maybe they might be trying to bear in mind any readers who aren't old enough to know what PC Zone is/was...
I will eventually get through my legacy copies of Zone whilst reading on the toilet, so I would like some new ones at some point. You'll be amused to hear that I cannot shift several years of Gamer (including discs) for £50/year + postage. Not one collection has gone. Might be better as firelighters.......
Ah, that never-ending salty rivalry between Zone and Gamer. It was The Empire (The Twat Factory) versus The Rebels (us), and we all know who the dirty, under-handed, bad faith tactics always came from...
About a printed PC Zone: I've dabbled a bit with small, limited run magazines over the past five or six years, and think that a small run might make some profit on issue sales. But really you'd need to be selling advertising space and sponsor slots to make a paper magazine worthwhile financially. And to sell advertising and sponsor slots you'd need a dedicated person acting as publisher.
Point of note: we produced an A5 mini issue of PC Zone for Hexen II, and the magazine looked great (and was still mostly readable), so Zone would work at half-size. I've noticed that most of the other retro gaming fanzines these days are A5 in size. And you'd be talking cover prices of anything from £1 to £5, depending on your print run and other costs, which would probably be acceptable to fans and collectors.
I'd also suggest not publishing too often. Twice a year (or even once a year) might be enough for a limited edition mini special type thing.
My last observation: almost all the retro gaming fanzines I've seen have amateurish design, so PC Zone could easily wipe the floor with them - in terms of aesthetics (and professionalism) with just the most basic of templates.