One of the UK’s top publishers of games journalism, Future, has declined the opportunity to announce its 6-monthly circulation figures. In a story featured yesterday in the games biz publication MCV, it was noted that the consumer magazine market has suffered considerably over the economic downturn of the past 18 months. The opt-out marks a change from the traditional announcement of figures in the month of August, and follows a long period of mixed fortune for the well-known media publisher.

I think its better not to wallow in the doom and gloom surrounding our current global recession. In a way, we end up perpetuating it the more we advocate the horror stories surrounding it. It’s popular knowledge that the games industry has fared better than other media industries over the past few months (though it has by no means been experiencing anything like a boom, with many companies reporting substantial losses). So the saying goes, games do well during a downturn because people opt for home comforts, including media; sales remain buoyant as consumers shirk holidays abroad and expensive gifts for the substantial return one can get from games, many hours of play for a relatively moderate cost.

The advertising industry has fared terribly, as brands spend less on promotion and marketing, and firms fail to adjust to the shifting scale of commercial production. As you might expect, advertising is the first aspect of a budget to be cut during a recession. Commerical promotion is considered part of the non-critical working budget, but this creates a catch 22 situation; without distinctive market presence, brands have to work harder in more basic ways to find their way to constituencies and consumers.

The gaming press, like all media journalism, is likewise caught in something of a bind that relates to advertising. Most obviously, games publications rely of the retailing of ad space, for games, college courses, software and events. As brands feel the pinch, magazines must work harder to fill their advertising space afforded by the publisher.

It is in the interest of magazines to promote games because they rely on our collective interest in games culture — who nowadays just goes into the game store and purchases a game without prior knowledge culled at the least from web, print and tv advertising and discussion? Reviews, be they good or bad, form a body of tacit advertising and marketing in their own right.

Games journalism asserts a value that is unique, like all criticism. Expert opinion plays a major role in our knowledge economy, particularly when it is derived from individuals who themselves constitute brands of sorts. Jonathan Ross asserts himself as a branded film critic and anime fan. Criticism has traditionally relied on the power of the individual commentary, be it tv personality, newspaper journalist or radio speaker. In magazine criticism, where the brand of the individual is subsumed into that of the magazine, the publication must assert the same strength of personality and distinction that we find in the other areas of criticism previously mentioned.

In an effort to be taken seriously, to date EDGE, the flagship gaming magazine at Future, has asserted a very distinctive style through its editorial. At the same time, the critics are not named, but rather incorporated together as ‘EDGE reviews’.

EDGE, like all other magazines, is not exempt from the need to draw in revenue from advertising, and so the editorial must always balance the judgement and objectivity of reviews against the commercial necessity of advertising. In a culture where named reviewers is passé, and a people associate critical style with publications rather than individuals, the associated value of criticism is compromised.

Print games journalism in its current guise is seen as marketing. As magazines diversified to speak to specific brands (Nintendo, PlayStation, XBOX, previously SEGA) they achieved success insofar as they tailored a greater amount of news to consumers of specific hardware, but consequently they also muddied the distinction between criticism/reportage and advertising.

In recent years, a number of stories concerning Publishers lobbying for positive scores and changes to review release dates have seriously compromised the public appeal of investment in print journal opinions. With the advent of internet journalism exerting substantial pressure from another angle, the future of print games journalism looks grim (though I’d like to emphasise only in its current form).

The advent of aggregated review scores on sites like metacritic.com completes the long narrative of anonymous review culture in games journalism, and as a consequence videogames are judged in broad swathes, more in terms of genre and trends than for their individual nuance, as the mean score of many separate critical appraisals becomes the standard against which consumers choose to invest. The internet only perpetuates print review culture insofar as sites are similarly reliant on advertising revenue.

As a broad consequence, games journalism is now perhaps more concerned with depicting trends and lifestyle adjustments than appraising games on their own terms. In this respect, games journalism becomes a symptom of an industry, rather than its consciousness. The discretionary choices of publishers to invest in ad revenue cause editors and magazine bosses to erratically shift their style to accomodate. Putting stories on covers that one might expect from other publications, leading with articles with different emphases; these changes inadvertently compromise the brand quality of the magazines themselves and the reputation they develop in their own right.

I dont think print it dead, as some have been claiming over the past few years. Rather, I think that critical print media, like games journalism, must necessarily rethink what their contribution to games culture is, and dare to be (productively) distant from the commercial engines of the developer and (game) publisher. This might mean that formats will have to change, that the market shrinks, but also, that named voices emerge, supported by publications that host their work with greater confidence.