Game Over?
Canadian gamers forced to use foreign intel
By Kyle Baron
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Artwork by: Nicole Hambleton |
Newsstands have always been lonely places for Canadian gamers looking for representation.
That’s because there is currently only one Canadian gaming magazine on newsstands across Canada: Montreal-based Convergence, printed in French.
Many of the major gaming mags, such as Official Xbox Magazine, Playstation Magazine and Game Informer, show U.S. release dates, prices, and tournaments, and rarely, if ever, comment on what’s going to be different for their neighbours in Canada.
Total Gamer, a Toronto-based Canadian magazine addressed this issue from 2001 until it was discontinued in 2005. Aside from its usual coverage of larger gaming conventions such as the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), former editor-in-chief Andrew Moore-Crispin says the magazine focused on playing up the Canadian angle and featuring Canadian developers.
Total Gamer covered such Canadian-born classics as Jade Empire, developed by the award-winning Edmonton-based developer Bioware. The magazine was closely connected with Silicon Knights, a St. Catharines developer that produced the award winning Eternal Darkness for the Nintendo Gamecube and is now working on Too Human for the Xbox 360. The magazine didn’t play around when it came to games.
“We had a good run,” Moore-Crispin says. Total Gamer was available for free at Blockbuster, EB Games, and Microplay locations across Canada, but competing with American publications for advertising was the real challenge. Advertisers questioned why they should bother with a magazine with less penetration than the larger American gaming magazines, says Moore-Crispin. Initially, Total Gamer offered free ad space or 50 per cent off normal rates in order to attract advertisers.
Moore-Crispin isn’t sure now if anything could have been done differently. However, he adds, a Canadian gaming magazine isn’t a lost cause.
Gaming isn’t a niche market. NPD Group, formerly the National Product Diary, tracks and reports on consumer purchases. According to a report this year by the NPD Group and the Entertainment Software Association, more than $18 billion was made in video game console and PC gaming software sales in 2007 in the United States. alone, up 43 per cent from the $12.5 billion made in 2006.
Jerry Julien manages an EB Games retail store in Brampton, Ont., and is a longtime gamer. “There’s a new EB Games (store) opening up in Canada every week,” he says.
So games are selling, but who wants to read about them these days when you can just go online and get the information?
Gaming magazines are a popular read according to the Canadian Newsstand Box Score, compiled by Coast to Coast Newsstand Services Ltd., which tracks magazine sales and circulation in Canada. The Xbox Cheat Guide sits at spot 21 of 2,700, comfortably above Vogue, Men’s Health, and Chatelaine.
The small biweekly magazine grossed more than $3 million in newsstand sales in 2006. PC Gaming Hardware is sitting at spot 38. TIME Canada and Maclean’s sit at 43 and 44 respectively.
So why has the United States trumped Canada by cementing its place in gaming magazines before us? Charles Onyett, the Canadian-born editor of the PC gaming channel on IGN.com, the world’s biggest game news provider, speculates there’s no real explanation other than possible cultural divides and differences between how each country handles its news.
Based in Brisbane, Calif., IGN.com provides all its content online.
Onyett grew up in Aurora, Ont., and moved with his family to Cleveland, Ohio, at age 11. He freelanced after earning an English degree at Case Western Reserve University, and one of those jobs was freelancing for IGN.com at E3, which landed him an associate editor position.
Onyett points out that even The New York Times has reviews of video games. “There’s so much money flying around,” he says, “they can’t ignore it.”
He points out the status of gaming as a sport in places such as South Korea. “It’s not niche.” He says even if the current generation of mainstream journalists is reluctant to cover games, the younger, more game-savvy generation will some day take over.