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The Media Entertainment Games

Next Generation Magazine Returns 35

Posted by Zonk from the like-a-phoenix dept.
The Video Game Ombudsman has word that Next Generation magazine will be returning as a website. The site will apparently be focused on the business and development sides of the industry, and avoid a pure consumer focus. From the article: "The official announcement will come in a press release any day now, but the Web site reveals a lot of information about the new incarnation. The site will be managed by editor-in-chief Colin Campbell and consultant editor Christian Svensson, who co-created the Next Generation Online site back in 1995, and published by Future USA. Besides the two editors, most of the content will come from freelance contributors, which the site is actively seeking. The site says it's looking for writers that "have strong opinions" and are 'stylish, original and witty.'"
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Next Generation Magazine Returns More

Next Generation Magazine Returns

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  • Can't take them on the train and can't take them into the bathroom or at the breakfast table. Can't read them easily in bed.
    • Let's say you a have a laptop with a wlan card built in or whatever. You have a wireless network in your home. That gives you access on the bathroom, at the breakfast and even in bed.
      I'm not sure about the trains though but wherever there's WiFi, you can access onlinr magazines.
      • Those laptops get hot and I really don't like taking stuff into the bathroom that I intend to keep for a long time. See here [stanthecaddy.com]. You can get wifi on some networks here but again, battery life, harder on the eyes, etc. I will always read a print mag first.

        Yes, I suppose I could print them. I hope they make the format so that it comes out of the printer nice and neat.

  • Raise your hand... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by EnronHaliburton2004 ( 815366 ) * on Monday May 09, 2005 @03:32PM (#12480267) Homepage Journal
    Raise your hand if you have been laid off, or know someone who has been laid off, by the publishers of Next Gen magazine. (It was Imagine Publishing, then Imagine Media, and now parts have been spun off or renamed to be "Future USA").

    Those people were like the EA of the gaming magazine world. It wasn't at all unusal to see 50 people (out of 200 employees) laid off one day, and 50 people hired the next day to work on some new magazine, only to get laid off one year later, with 50 people hired the next week to work on some new-new magazine.

  • Ads.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by turtled ( 845180 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @03:34PM (#12480291)
    And, I bet this site will be more ads then content... just like the old mag. It's hard to read real magazines, there's no Ad-Block for paper mags.
    • and the fact that you pay for the privilege of reading a "magazine" full of ads , which are supposed to pay for the magazine...

  • Excellent News (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm glad to hear NextGen will be back in some form. I was upset when NextGen kicked the bucket, I had subscribed for much of its lifetime. It seems NextGen was the only gaming mag that recognized that people over 12 play video games (maybe that's still true today). The writing was good, and most issues were absent of the dick and fart jokes you see in every issue of all the other gaming mags. Its sister website DailyRadar was decent, though it lacked some of the maturity of NextGen.

    Best of luck to the new s

    • I agree. NG was by far one of my favorite gaming mags. The original glossy cover sold me. I was so easy then (bring back a glossy cover print, I'll bring back my easy).
      • It wasn't glossy. It was a plastic matte that you could actually peel off to reveal he glossy paper underneath. At the time Next Gen came out, it was the only US magazine that had that kind of cover (although you saw it more frequently in Japan),and there was only one machine in the country (or so the production manager claimed) that could actually apply that matte finish. It was pretty rad to be in a meeting and see people just stroking the magazines cover because it was so neat. (Yes, I used to work there
      • You might try looking at Play magazine. It is in a glossy format. It is done by the same guy that was in charge of Gamefan magazine. The writing and overall tone of the magazine is more oriented towards the adult gamer.

    • Re:Excellent News (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ghostlibrary ( 450718 )
      > It seems NextGen was the only gaming mag that recognized that people over 12 play video games

      "Computer Gaming" took up the mantle. They specifically talk about how hard it is to not just give in to payola reviews, fart jokes, and cheap humor.

      They also have the best parody ads I've seen. They do a good job, check 'em out at the newsstand.
      • At one time I had 6 videogame magazine evaluations going on concurrently.... GamePro, GameInformer, Electronic Gaming Monthly, Computer Gaming, Nintendo Power, NextGen. Each magazine had its flaws. Today, I only subscribe to GameInformer.

        As I remembered, the biggest flaw of NextGen...
        1.) NextGen was hardcore in a non-entertaining sense.

        2.) You'd read about interviews from developers after developers after developers. Boring.

        3.) Typical hardware console articles down to the brutal IEEE standards deta

    • Re:Excellent News (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Lewisham ( 239493 )
      May I suggest you start importing fellow Future publication Edge from the UK? The commentary seems to describe almost word for word what Edge does. It seems like Future USA are simply using this site as a toe in the water for a full-blown launch of an Edge-style magazine. If it's successful, they'll spin it into paper format.

      Otherwise it'll be canned within the year.

      Future have been very bad at treating their web sites. The other staff treat the journalists like any other, but the suits see the medium as
    • Id agree as well, I subscribed to NG for a while, I was sad to see them go. They had some of the nicest covers (almost like a plastic type of cover), and most of the magazine was worth reading.
  • [i]"have strong opinions"[/i]

    There's all of /. for you. Well, probably not actually, they might also wants facts to back up their opinions, god forbid.

    [i]and are 'stylish, original and witty.'"[/i]

    Nothing like overlords, Korea,a nd "free as in beer" to get those stylish and witty nerds to start writing for them!
  • ...but this could be a problem. Do "strong opinions" mean people who will string together a paragraph of profanity when you make a negative comment about their favorite game (they're usually in the forums, saying something like "HL2 is b3tt3r th4n Doom3, and Doom3 luv3rz suX!"), or can they back it up their claims with proof? Now if it's one of those artsy types of mags whose articles are just stories about the "one time when I was playing Eve Online and ripped off 3 million credits", I'll probably enjoy
  • Can we throw in some 'edgy', I hear that sells.
  • Don't forget the NextGen editorial guidelines:

    1. Any game that involves shooting things in 3D, and which only exists as slideware, should be praised as if it's the Second Coming.

    2. Any game that doesn't involve shooting things in 3D should be quietly ignored.

    3. Any game that has actually shipped should be derided as boring, bug-ridden and disappointing. This applies even if it was previously hyped in NextGen as the Second Coming (see 1).

    4. When Bill Gates says "Kneel", you kneel, bitch.
    • Remember the time their cover screamed "How can Saturn keep up when Playstation games look THIS GOOD?", and then they had a non-realtime-rendered image that you were supposed to think was a screen-shot of the as-yet unreleased Playstation. Now *that* was a shining example of journalistic integrity.
      • Yeah... Those tools! Remember how Saturn beat the PlayStation, Sega went on to buy Nintendo, and Sony exited the game industry with its tail between it's legs?

        Oh wait, that didn't happen. Compared to Saturn games, PlayStation games *did* look as good as a rendered shot of WipeOut... Bitch all you want about Sony, but in 1995 the PlayStation was the most revolutionary piece of gaming hardware released since the 2600.

        • No, playstation games *did not* look like pre-renedered photos, they looked like playstation games. When you hold up a picture and say a game "looks like" this, the picture should be from the game, not something rendered in Softimage for marketing purposes.

          Since the PS hadn't been released, it was impossible for John Q to detect the lie in their cover, and for all the public knew of 3d that really was what the PS was capable of rendering in realtime.

          I suppose since PS did win, you think its okay to lie i
          • I think anyone who made life or purchase decisions based on one magazine's cover lines, without looking inside the magazine to see the screen shots, was probably not acting rationally. I think that anyone who picked up the magazine would then get to see screens comparing Saturn with PlayStation and make an informed decision. I think that holding a grudge about it 10 years later is not rational. I think the editorial intent of the coverline was backed up by the editorial inside the magazine, and in fact that
    • I have to disagree with your assessment. For me, Next Generation always stood out for three reasons:

      - The magazine was written for adults.

      Of course, NOT in the sense that Maxim is written for adults! I simply mean the literary style was devoid of the silliness of most mags, and certainly lacking the sophmoric Beavis-and-Butthead style antics often found in the current crop.

      - The game reviewers were extraordinarily tough.

      My rule of thumb was that if a game scored at least a 7 in Next Gen, I would love it
  • Who ?
    The guy that got next-gen old address and turned it into a casino affilate site...
  • Their magazines were nice. And I'm not referring to the content, but rather the physical quality of the things. I'm certain that I've never seen another magazine that came close.

    I like to keep mags, because it can be VERY interesting to, every five years or so, look back at old issues. It's incredible how things change, isn't it? Anyway, I have a good number of old mags, and most of the time anything over two or three years old is in shambles. That's to be expected, really, I keep them but not wrapped in p

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