Welcome to PC Zone Lives, again
PC ZONE LIVES
English - December 20, 2022 18:11Video Games Leisure Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
If you’ve never heard of PC Zone, you’re probably wondering what all this is about. If you have, you may be equally perplexed as to why it has appeared just now on a platform for newsletters, of all things. PC Zone is — or was — a magazine devoted to PC gaming. It may or may not have been the first of its kind in the world, but it certainly was the first of its kind in the UK, which means it is older than PC Gamer (which is what counts). It also remains the best PC games magazine ever published, which is both subjectively and objectively true. For a time (before PC Gamer turned up, at least) it was also the best selling.
If you’ve never heard of PC Zone, you’re probably wondering what all this is about. If you have, you may be equally perplexed as to why it exists on a platform for newsletters, of all things.
PC Zone is — or was — a print magazine devoted to PC gaming. It may or may not have been the first of its kind in the world, but in March 1993 it certainly was the first of its kind in the UK, which means it is older than PC Gamer (which is what counts). It also remains the best PC games magazine ever published, which is both subjectively and objectively true. For a time (before PC Gamer turned up, at least) it was also the best selling.
PC Zone never was, is, or every likely will be, a digital newsletter about PC gaming. PC Zone in its current incarnation on Substack (“PC Zone Lives+”) is a newsletter and podcast about PC Zone, a UK games mag that ceased publication in 2010.
For those that worked on PC Zone during it’s 17-year run, this whole endeavour is basically an excuse to reminisce and be a little embarrassed about a time when PC games were in the ascendancy and the people that wrote about them (predominantly white males) were better paid and had way more fun than the SEO-encumbered game journos of today. Too much fun, probably.
PC Zone Lives is PC Zone reborn a second time. It appeared first in 2021 as an unintentionally short-lived podcast, and returns in 2023 as an intentionally infrequent one supplemented by equally uncommon written articles. The podcasts will continue to focus on particular issues of the magazine and the people that put them together, while the articles could go anywhere. We hope you enjoy both, for as long as they last.