Could PC Zone make a print comeback?

Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow (because it's Sunday), but soon?

Today marks 13 joyless years since PC Zone officially closed, when the UK’s first and best PC games mag appeared on newsstands and subscribers’ doormats for the final time. Yeah, it still bothers me, but you know what? Dennis selling the magazine to Future was the first nail in the coffin, before its death by a thousand cuts.

… Another time perhaps. I’m not here to dwell on the demise of PC Zone, but whether it could one day be reborn. Not just as a slapdash podcast supplemented by the odd newsletter, but as a magazine you hold in your hands and read without your eyes leaking precious bodily fluids. Like in the olden times, before your hand became a claw with all that scrolling through… er, ads.

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There are a few of them still about. Magazines, that is. Retro Gamer, Edge, PC G**** of course. Speaking of which, have you picked up a copy of Future’s flagship PC games mag recently?

I was in my local Big Tesco the other day, mooching along the magazine aisle, when I eventually found a copy of last month’s Gamer hiding behind a motorhome magazine. It had the demeanor of a publication that had seen… things. Terrible things, like the kind of abuse usually delivered upon Cbeebies magazines with Bluey toys taped to the cover. I quickly realised that the magazine wasn’t quivering becuase it lived in fear of small children, but because its pages were so insubstantial that the aisle’s microclimate had them all aflutter.

Now I’ve worked in magazines for a long time. I work on one now and I know that paper prices are pretty high, but I really had no idea that paper could be made so thin.

A recent tissue of PC Gamer. Ho-ho.

When he was PC Zone‘s news editor, the great Paul Mallinson used to thumb through a new issue of Gamer and say, in his salty northern accent, “I wouldn’t wipe my arse with it”. He was referring of course to the quality of content. These days however you couldn’t dual-use the mag even if you needed to. Your fingers would go right through before making contact.   

Thankfully other games magazines are available, all with less pages, granted, but with weighter paper. Weirdly they’re mostly for platforms that haven’t been mass produced for decades. There’s a Sega magazine (Sega Powered), two for the Amiga (Zzap! Amiga and Amiga Addict), then there are the resurrected titles for the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC which you will no doubt recall from your youth as Crash, Zzap! 64 and Amtix.

All three brands were, like PC Zone, acquired by Future and quietly closed when they were deemed no longer viable. But then a few years ago a guy called Chris Wilkins (who ran his own boutique retro mag called Fusion) went to Future and signed a deal to bring them back, first as annuals, then as regular magazines. They are of course smaller, thinner, less frequent and more expensive than they were in the 1980s, but they retain the spirit and even some of the writers from the original publications, which is what matters. Because of that they’ve enjoyed moderate success and you can even find them in selected branches of WHSmith – as you can with Amiga Addict and Pixel Addict, in fact. 

The lastest Pixel Addict has a bit about PC Zone in it. Just a bit, mind

All of which begs the question, would Future consider a similar proposition for PC Zone? I’ve long thought about reaching out to someone at the company to find out, but there are two things holding me back. One is the fact that neither Crash, Zzap! or Amtix compete with anything Future publishes. Nor are Crash and Zzap! likely to be selling in the kinds of numbers to compel Future to take a direct interest. PC Zone probably wouldn’t either, but it would be hard to convince the suits that a resurrected PC Zone, regardless of how it was pitched, would not be a threat to PC Gamer, which has in the years since Zone closed has become a massive global brand.

The other thing is that there are still people at Future that maintain a seething hatred for PC Zone. One of the aforementioned suits is filled by someone who, during his last issue as the editor of PC Gamer, had his legacy soiled by losing out to PC Zone on the biggest exclusive of his reign, that of breaking Half-Life 2 to the masses. I doubt he’s let that one go.

As an aside, I went for an interview at Future some years ago (for the PC Gamer editor position, as it happens – hey, I needed a job!) and one of the guys interrogating me (whose comedy name I won’t repeat), took great pride in explaining his part in cutting PC Zone’s budget to the bone and eventually having the magazine closed. Had it not been for the other guy (whose name I don’t recall), being more interested in my suitability rather than endlessly gloating, I would have got up and left. It was no surprise to me later on that I didn’t get the job. A good thing for Gamer, as after that performance I would have enjoyed enacting some small measure of reputational revenge before inevitably being sacked.

So, yeah, PC Zone’s print restoration seems unlikely at best.

Which bothers me, not just because Zone was and could again be great (in a Crash-esque, non-PC Gamer-threatening way), but because gaming websites have evolved to become so tiresome these past few years. Even on the decent sites like Eurogamer, the ads that would in the past nag at your periphery are now front and centre, and the content when you eventually get to it just seems increasingly shallow to me; human-engineered (and increasingly AI-engineered) to chase today’s trending keywords and court the machine eye of search and social algorithms.

It has long been thus, but it seems to me that even the gaming sites that haven’t lost their voice to SEO-speak have become a chore to navigate and difficult to enjoy. Maybe I’m just getting old and nostalgic for print, but I’m starting to get to the stage when I’d much rather pay for quality gaming content that’s easy on the eye. And the arse, of course.

If there is a possibility of there being two PC gaming mags again, only a “spiritual successor” to PC Zone is ever going to be feasible, which is probably for the best. It would mean the people behind it would have the freedom to make something fresh and innovative, rather than try to recreate a publication whose best days are behind it. Who knows, maybe the likes of a PC Zine or Zero PC just needs someone to make it happen. If that someone is you, get in touch. I’d love to help out, even if it’s just by rearranging the shelves in Tesco.

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