The video game magazine business is not a healthy one. Nor is there much in the way of competition anymore. Nor is there anything like GameSpite, which has been announced as going to print quarterly.
1UP editor Jeremy "Toastyfrog" Parish announced that the former online-only magazine—annual print collection notwithstanding—will be changing formats, with new issues due every three months. Expect less of a focus on video game news and something more along the lines of the quarterly literary journal McSweeney's "but without as much ironic post-hipsterism."
Parish, who contributed to print publications like EGM and GMR, and continues to contribute to the Retronauts podcast and blog, writes on the GameSpite blog how the magazine came to be.
When I was first hired at 1UP, I was excited to have steady work, sure... but I was even more enthusiastic about the fact that I'd be working at the company responsible for the last few American game magazines worth reading. I'd always wanted to be a published author, and working with GMR, EGM, OPM et al. gave me that opportunity. Needless to say, I watched the magazines die one by one with grim disappointment, and when they finally pulled the plug on EGM I was crushed.
On the seemingly backwards evolution of online to print, Parish explains.
I miss the substance of physical media, and I miss single looming deadlines, and I miss pages of content without animated roadblock-style Flash ads bordering them. No one's going to make a profit publishing a game magazine, but I realized we can do it here without a loss, and that's good enough. I mean, I already make a living doing online game writing for a company that has no interest in taking us into print, and this site already has lots of great content that will eventually be bundled into collected print volumes. So we've decided to reverse the process a little and do print first: thus, GameSpite Quarterly, Issue 1.
Parish says that GameSpite Quarterly will be, in part, based on the format of the Japanese enthusiast mag Continue. Expect issues to be about 150 pages in length and run $10 (or a little more).
GameSpite Issue 14 has been cancelled [GameSpite]