End of an Era

[andrewducker]

Dragon to cease publishing.

Alas.

Comments

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

Sad days for gaming geeks

[andrewducker]

I am, to be honest, sometimes amazed by the continued existence of magazines that rely on reviews and previews of upcoming TV/movies/games/media and only publish on a monthly basis. The lead time means you're frequently waiting 6-8 week to hear things you're long bored of...

[laserboy.livejournal.com]

Is SFX still around?

[andrewducker]

Yes. But DreamWatch folded last month...

[laserboy.livejournal.com]

Quelle surprise. Dreamwatch was always dreadful though. SFX went down the toilet years ago so it cant have long in the world (one hopes).

Now Arcane was a good roleplaying magazine. Lots of interesting articles and plenty of generic encounters, but I guess generic encounters didnt pay the bills.

(Firefox is really pissing me off and not letting me use apostrophes or forward slashes!!)

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

I stil like SFX. It will last cos its strength is its humour and irreverence, not reviews and regurgitated press clippings.

[despotliz.livejournal.com]

I went off SFX a while back and haven't really read it for a while, but I'm tempted to pick one up and see if it's got better, as I suspect it has. Apparently there's some other SF magazines launching shortly, so they must be doing ok.

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

Which is why many are moving to tutorials. Dragon, of course, was an excellent source of original gaming materials....

[andrewducker]

I only still read Edge because it has opinion and research pieces that I can't read anywhere else.The reviews I can take or leave, but good writing is hard to come by. I dropped my PC Zone subscription a few months ago because it wasn't worth it any more.

PC Pro is getting that way, but still has enough in-depth pieces to make it worthwhile.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

I will always think PC Pro is something you take to get you through exams.

Also: GEEK!

[andrewducker]

Of course I am. We're the chosen of God, don't you. Matthew 5:5 and all that...

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

why aren' you on IM anymore?

[andrewducker]

IM is _so_ last century.

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

Twitter, then?

[andrewducker]

:->

I'm still replicating Twitter using Facebook. Seems to be working well.

[helen-keeble.livejournal.com]

I've just ordered a back-copy of the Feb 2007 Dragon, which was devoted to a campaign-setting based on China Mieville's Bas-lag novels. Several lengthy articles, plus an interview with the man himself - a lot more than just reviews and previews!

To be fair, I originally dropped Dragon (ye kami, must have been close to ten years ago now) because they went from being a dense and crunchy source of articles to a lightweight magazine mainly devoted to WotC products. I gather that the magazine got better again with the move away from direct WotC-control, and has been of high quality for the past few years.

Still very glad I've got the official archive (on an enormous number of CD-ROMs - before the days of DVDs!) of Dragons 1-250. Excellent stuff in there.

I still harbour a great fondness for Ed Greenwood's (and later, others) "The Wizards Three" column, wherein - under the pretense of swapping spells and lore - Elminster would generally humiliate Dalamar whilst Mordenkainen rolled his eyes in the background. At the tender age of 13, I was mentally composing slashfic for those three, without ever realising there _was_ such a thing as slashfic.

There was the column where all three wizards stripped off to go swimming together, not to mention the column about Dalamar's startling third hand (hey! my first exposure to crackfic!)... ah, happy memories!

[andrewducker]

Congratulations - you just exposed me to a new word :->

And yeah, I agree entirely - publications that produce in-depth articles will survive. But they never had as big an audience as ones that produced light and fluffy stuff. Shame really.

[ninox.livejournal.com]

I had a lengthy conversation about this the other day.

The model of publishing journals and magazines is slowly pushing for online content. Multimedia publications at the very least will replace the old magazines etc if not fully replace with online content.

Not sure I fully approve, call me an old fart! I still like the tactile nature of print copy. There is business sense in it, and the demand is certainly on the increase.

Hmm on a sadder note I recently learned we stay fairly close to the site of "Crash Towers" (Crash being the old speccy game magazine) alas it is no more, but I was sad enough to look.

[helen-keeble.livejournal.com]

Someone needs to invent an internet-enabled ebook reader that can be perused in the bath!

[ninox.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't surprise me if it did! I found a double spa shower with in built telly and music system the other day. I'm sure it belonged in close encounters of the 3rd kind.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

I saw a computer screen built flat/horizontal into a kitchen cabinet-type surface today - v clever, it was in the vets so the animals could walk over it rather than knock it down while he typed in vaccination info ..

[nmg.livejournal.com]

I really, really need one of those...

[ninox.livejournal.com]

That kind of technology has been about for a while. I still remember playing a space invaders game inbedded in a table. But the size & touch screen technology of it makes the difference.

[sneakingyoda.livejournal.com]

*hangs head.* I'm running Savage Tide right now... geeze...


Well at least they will finish it...


I'm sad.