PC Gamer physical edition is good, actually

I spend a lot of time in front of a computer or a phone, even now that I have a kid. Hey - she needs to sleep, and I have some time to kill. Many of my hobbies revolve around a screen too - like playing video games, tinkering with stuff, or writing.

It’s unsurprising that I’ve been wanting to take a step away from the screen and find a way to engage with physical media more. I used to read a lot of books - I don’t anymore. I listen to audiobooks sometimes, but it’s been a good year or two since I last sat down and read a book cover to cover. That’s fine - life ebbs and flows, and even though sitting down and reading books used to be a huge part of my life - they aren’t today, and that’s okay.

But it’s nice to put down devices and just hold something in your hand.

I worked around this limitation though and decided to get more into magazines. Yeah, print media is still alive and kicking. We have two physical publication in our household this year - The New Yorker, and PC Gamer. Two very different magazines, and you can probably tell which subscription appealed to my wife - and which one to me.

I’ve been reading both, although I’ll admit that PC Gamer has received more of my attention. Hey - unlike The New Yorker, which oppressively sends you a new issue each week, PC Gamer has been sending me issues monthly. And I don’t need to tell you that The New Yorker is a great publication - it’s got hell of a reputation, and for a good reason. It’s quality journalism, and peak writing, or so I’m told, but it certainly reads that way despite my limited knowledge on the subject.

But I do know a thing or two about video games, and one thing I know is that gaming journalism from major publications - PC Gamer included has been steadily declining in quality over the past decade. Between corporate relationships, out of touch and burnt out reviewers, and sanitized, often generic pieces - I have been avoiding mainstream gaming media. There are lots of small independent reviewers who do a wonderful job covering the titles I care about, and I trust those a lot more.

I’ve read somewhere that the print edition of PC Gamer is somewhat different. You still have the same people working on the issue, but the time pressure’s different, articles can’t be updated once they go live, and there’s much more fun and creative writing. I’m sure all of that’s available offline too, but I don’t think I would’ve read any of that if the magazine wasn’t already in my hands.

Reading editions of PC Gamer feels like stepping a time capsule, in big part due to fairly substantial retro game coverage - you can’t exactly publish breaking news in a monthly print, so the focus is much more on having interesting things to say. Chronicles of Oblivion in-character playthroughs, developer interviews, quirky reviews - there’s lots to love.

I’ve heard Edge Magazine is well known for high quality writing and timeless game critique. I think I’ll check that out too - here, I just subscribed.