demodulated

That’d be Computer Gaming World magazine, aka Games For Windows magazine this past year and a half. I haven’t read the magazine in perhaps 8 years but I still feel awful to see its demise.

A spectacular cover of the then-quarterly Computer Gaming World

Up until a few years ago I had 2 pride-and-joy collections stowed away in my parents’ garage - my boxes of old computer and video games magazines and a huge garbage bag full of Toronto rave fliers. The latter collection mysteriously vanished one day, thanks in no small part to the efforts of my indifferent parents, I’m sure. My boxes of magazines, however, I check on regularly.

Before moving out of my parents house I used to read magazines all the time. I’d usually have a small stack of old PC Gamer magazines on the floor next to my bed for easy access every evening, with my shelf of about one third my back-issues at the foot of the bed, standing ready for bedtime reading replenishment. Since moving in with my girlfriend and getting married I haven’t made the time for magazines and have allowed all my subscriptions to lapse.

I’ve had a lifelong infatuation with the English language and with computers, so these magazines epitomized my passions. I read for the content but I also studied the phrasing, the layouts, the neverending variety of ways an inferior product could be lambasted. I found particular columns and columnists I enjoyed reading and found myself unable to tear myself away from reviews of products I had no interest in just to see what, for example, Andy Mahood had to say about them. Most of all, I took solace the feeling that successful professionals based their careers around the hobby in which my parents saw little value (and now I work in IT, so neener neener).

The first computer games magazine I bought religiously (though never thought to save money by subscribing) was Computer Gaming World. This was a magazine geared toward a great variety of audiences, from gamers to store owners to investors to play-by-mail strategy enthusiasts. Never again was there a single publication that gave so many games-related audiences a glimpse into eachothers’ oeuvre.

I read CGW from the early to late-90’s and, as far as I know, have proudly squirreled away every single ish. The magazine was renowned for paying lip service by means of a single paragraph synopsis to no fewer than 70 or 80 games every single month, followed by insider editorials, game strategies, and company profiles.

The pièce de résistance of CGW was its authoritative top-100 list, replete with breakdowns per-category, reflecting reader poll opinions. This is the page I turned to first, usually before even leaving the store. This was my personal monthly Oscar. Would Lucasarts’ new adventure game beat out Sierra’s? How many Maxis games would make the cut this month? Would Wing Commander and its sequel hog twin top-10 spots yet again, or would that sneaky X-Wing steal their thunder?

A large scan of the dual-page CGW Top 100. Can you guess the year?

Back in the early-to-mid 90s, during the veritable golden age of PC games, there was a glut of magazines dedicated to the hobby and specific platform. I bought and collected as much as I could afford, from the short-lived PC Games and Computer Entertainment (which later came bundled with a second magazine for CD-ROM “multimedia” gaming) to the free InterAction magazine published by Sierra (which was perhaps the only publication to speak favourably of the company’s flopped RTS Outpost). My funds limited my choices later on so I said what would apparently be my final goodbye to Computer Gaming World in favour of PC Gamer magazine whose more playful and review-centric editorial voice I’d grown to identify with.

CGW continued on without me for many years, coming to an end in 2006 when it was rebranded “Games For Windows” (ouch). I picked up a single issue of GFW and only liked about half of it - much content seemed to me like a “Swimsuit Edition” of testosterone-pandering pap - but the reviews and editorials were as astute and cutting as I’d ever read.

Parent company Ziff Davis filed for Chapter 11 recently, vowing to restructure to recoup losses and that it would remain a profitable company. Lo, after a good 27 years, the printed magazine is now kaput. Nearly all the staff (minus the layout designers) will remain with 1UP, which is a brand I respect. In truth I will surely read much more of this team’s work now that it’s available for free online on the soon-to-be-redesigned 1UP PC portal. I wish the chaps at the former CGW/GFW absolutely nothing but the best.

The good news is that all is not lost. An incredible legacy of hard work, passionate writing, gorgeous designs, and mind boggling cover art is all available, free of charge and ads, at the CGW Museum website.
I recently donated $20 to the site who kindly sent me a DVD of as many issues as they’d scanned at the time - spanning from the first issue to about 1993. It seems they’ve now filled out the archive to include every issue until the CGW name was retired. The scans are immaculate and OCRed which makes them fully searchable. It’s a popular site and each issue is around 60MB so if you’ve enjoyed the magazine as much as I have you should consider flipping them a few bucks for a DVD to save time and bandwidth.

In closing, here’s a quote from former Editor-in-Chief Jeff Green in his now famous blog posting immediately following Ziff Davis’ announcement to can GFW:

For me personally, the closing of Games for Windows: The Official Magazine is not just a business decision (though, obviously it’s exactly that in reality), but feels more akin, in fact, to the passing of a loved one. Drama much? Well, you can scoff if you want, but the fact of the matter is that I have poured my heart and soul into this magazine, month after month after month, for over 10 years now. Every four weeks for 10 years I have done my best to get a quality magazine out the door, and the fact that I don’t have that deadline now is not in any way, despite the temptation to go for gallows humor, a source of relief. It feels like a giant gaping hole in my life.

For more CGW/GFW resources check out:

The CGW Museum - http://cgw.vintagegaming.org/

GFW Radio, the weekly podcast - http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3148397

Former GFW EIC Jeff Green’s blog - http://www.1up.com/do/my1Up?publicUserId=5380367&pager.offset=3

This is a blog. It’s compulsory that I post a lolcat at some point. Let’s just do this thing and get it over with.

Special thanks to Chrystal for being a character, and to icanhascheezburger for their awesome lolcat generator applet.

The heyday of cutesy internet personality tests has come and gone, but I still enjoy taking The Political Compass test every few months. Normally I take such a test once and stick a fork in it, but for the most part I’m politically naive, and my wife is a politics junkie with me cursed as her closest pair of ears so my various political opinions and motivations change rapidly as she challenges me.

My scores, determined yesterday, are as follows:

Economic Left/Right: -5.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.46

To my surprise I am just as libertarian as ever before, but have edged significantly closer to centre since my last test (which put me at about -7.50 to the left as I recall). This classifies me as politically compatible with the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela, though I’m even further southwest than those radical luminaries.

I have a love/hate relationship with the Political Compass test. Every time I take the test I become more aware of how ambiguously phrased the questions are, and find a new excuse to answer a question in a completely new way based on an unspecified exception. This is quite brilliant because, I suppose, the means classify your political slant more than the ends do.

For example, one question is phrased “mothers may have careers, but their first duty is to be homemakers.” I answered this question with “Agree”, and my wife answered it “Strongly Disagree”. We both disagree with the phrasing assuming it is exhaustive - we both disagree that a woman’s place is in the home, barefoot and pregnant. However, I don’t see the phrasing as exhaustive and I believe a husband’s first duty is to his home and family which is why I answered the way I did. We’re both correct, yes?

I urge one and all to take this test to see a summary of your political position based on your opinions of specific scenarios and morals. You might be surprised with the outcome.

Though our cat, Chrystal, is ours, we occasionally share custody with my wife’s dad. This involves packing up Chrystal’s litter box, kitty condo, food, and toys, and shoving our poor cat into her travel cage. She hates the thing. She resists fervently, laments audibly, and sobs continuously once we’ve finally got her in there. We pity her but we need to keep her under out control while we walk nextdoor to her dad’s building.

My wife found an inexpensive harness and leash which she purchased this week, and we’ve been trying to train her to keep in step with us. She’s a stubborn old cat and I’m sure she knows what we’re trying to encourage, but she’s stubborn and resists us by flopping over when we beckon her to follow.

We’ve been training her in the hallway of our apartment building in preparation for when the weather turns warmer and we can take her outside. This has worked pretty well these past few days, but last night there was an altercation.

A woman, returning home and opening her door, let her 2 excited dogs out into the hallway while Chrystal accompanied my wife on a walk. Through our closed front door I heard barking, yowling, “Chrystal, NO!”, and some exasperated apologies from both parties. My girls then returned to the apartment and my wife explained that Chrystal was startled and aggressively attached herself to one of the dogs’ bums.

Having been rescued from a shelter and exerting dominance over fellow pets over the past 15 years she’s been in my wife’s family, Chrystal has learned the law of the jungle and is affirmed by the fact that while other pets have come and gone, she remains. This seems to be her tireless attitude. We agreed to watch a friend’s kitten one afternoon and my wife sacrificed a good quantity of skin to keep Chrystal from tearing its mischievous little head off. She had to lock Chrystal in our bedroom for the remainder of the day, and when I saw my wife’s leg when I got home from work that day I scolded Chrystal thoroughly.

So when Chrystal returned to the apartment last night I was disappointed in her. When she came back in she didn’t even wait for her leash to be removed before perching on her kitty condo and turning her head away. I rolled my chair up to her and with a disapproving tone I said her name and exclaimed my reproach. She wouldn’t look at me. I gently but firmly held my finger under her chin and tried to turn her head to look her in the eyes but she proudly resisted. I clicked my tongue and let her me. She then hid for some time and didn’t respond to our calls.

Chrystal is an old girl, 15 or 16 years old, and has lived with humans pretty much all her life. Ordinarily she’s unbelievably sweet and affectionate, sometimes moody or clingy or finnickey. She’s a little vocal, oblivious to TV, is sometimes scared when I play video games with shooting, and she likes it when I sneak her a slice of pepperoni from my pizza. Her eyes never betray her mood, and 9 times out of 10 if you wink at her she’ll wink back.

I love this cat and I’m amazed at what a complex person she is. I don’t hesitate to use the term “person”. She is unique, communicative, and smart. Feeling this way about my pet makes me glad I don’t have to look my hamburger in the eye. It’s weird how reflection on a 60-second occurrence can evoke such philosophical contemplation. Meow.

Check out Chrystal’s web page for more on our kitty.