FunEffect.com

Today's my first honest day off in a good couple weeks, so I'm kicking back and sharing in the general frustration across the Internet at NBC's Olympics coverage. (Seriously, why do I have to hunt down random Russian feeds in order to see the events I want live when I'm only two time zones away from them?)

Despite my attempts to relax, it's been a busy past couple weeks in game-mag-dom, for two big reasons:

- Play Magazine doesn't exist any longer...more or less. Fusion Publishing, the Dave Halverson-ran outfit that released the mag, hasn't printed anything since the January 2010 issue; their other publication, Geek Monthly, hasn't seen a print issue since early last fall. Geek Monthly's Facebook Page has reports that Fusion has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy (i.e. liquidation), but I haven't been able to confirm that for myself.

Meanwhile, Halverson has already announced his next project: a relaunch of GameFan, the famous game mag that he and Tim Lindquist first founded in 1992. The new GameFan will be large-format and have something of a dual personality -- video games on one side, movies and such on the other, making it a very literal "merging" of Play and Geek Monthly. (The only primary source on the net for this is a site I've never heard of before, but ex-Play staff have confirmed the news.)

GameFan is reported to be ready for a mid-March launch, although I don't know how it'll be distributed -- or, for that matter, who'll write for it, considering that most of the Play staff (including its editor-in-chief) has already moved on to other jobs. For that matter, I'm not sure what the point of a combo game-movie mag is. We, me and the staff at ADV, tried that with PiQ and it lasted four issues. The marketplace likes specialization, not jack-of-all-trades coverage.

I'd write a eulogy for Play, but it'd be the same as any eulogy written for GameFan or Gamers' Republic. Play was pretty and printed long industry interviews, but it was a magazine by Halverson, for Halverson, and of Halverson -- and your opinion of him sort of dictates your opinion of his publications. I know I won't miss having to purchase Girls of Gaming every years just to satisfy my completist urges.

- And what of Brady Fiechter, Play's EIC? He's joined the staff of the new Electronic Gaming Monthly, which is finally taking subscriptions. Steve Harris and team are launching with the April issue in print-land (which "will be printed in late March," according to my subscription acknowledgment) and it looks like they've got their act well together for for the big debut.

Harris's focus with the print edition appears to be squarely on quality, which is great. It means the newsstand price is $6.99, but I don't see a problem with that -- especially since the subscription prices are still pretty cheap. Harris is still a little coy about what the weekly digital edition will be like, but from a consumer's perspective, I'm definitely excited.

Between EGM, WOW: The Magazine, and what's happening over at GamePro, 2010 is looking like the "do-or-die" year for the print game-mag business -- the year that it proves, or fails to prove, that it's alive and worth keeping so. Which will it be?

[Kevin Gifford breeds ferrets and runs Magweasel, a really cool weblog about games and Japan and "the industry" and things. In his spare time he does writing and translation for lots and lots of publishers and game companies.]

['Game Mag Weaseling' is a weekly column by Kevin Gifford which documents the history of video game magazines, from their birth in the early '80s to the current day.]

I finally got around to obtaining a copy of Japanese entertainment (including video games) magazine Otona-Fami when I was in Chicago, so I thought I'd look into it in depth a bit -- especially because it's the sort of mag that we were aiming for with PiQ, although I wasn't aware of it at the time.

The name "Otona-Fami" is a blending of otona (Japanese for "adult") and "Famitsu," and that about sums it up, really. In contrast to Weekly Famitsu -- whose pages are still mainly devoted to previews and strategy features, although the amount of hard-nosed industry news has slowly expanded over the years -- Otona-Fami is almost entirely features, and even what straight-on previews/reviews they deal with are mixed up with the regular columns in the back sections.

Here is a very basic rundown of Otona-Fami's content for the issue I have:

- A large roundup of entertainment-industry rumors and the truth behind them, in fields ranging from movies to American TV dramas to anime and games
- A multi-page nostalgic look back at the history of Shogakukan's grade-divided educational kids' magazines -- the equivalent of a US mag doing a history of Boys' Life
- A long preview of Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth with a long sidebar that traces the history of the rest of the series
- A history of Kappa Ebisen and the Home Run Bar, two long-running Japanese snack foods that are celebrating their Nth birthday this year
- A generic sort of summer movie preview feature, covering stuff like Angels & Demons and Star Trek. Otona-Fami got interview access to all kinds of big-name folks for this feature, from Jackie Chan and Ewan MacGregor to Danny Boyle and Clint Eastwood
- A multi-page history of portable game systems

I haven't seen the latest August issue yet, but looking at the website, they have a feature which strikes me as a really neat idea: a list of top manga that's complete and under 10 volumes, suitable for buying up and plowing through over a spare weekend.

Running columns include:

- "Magic Factory Tour," basically a "How It's Made" for some food product
- A look at some uniquely Japanese shop that you can visit. This month they cover a store that sells nothing but book lights, metal bookmarks and other book accessories (and not books themselves)
- A good 20-page-long list of upcoming movies, games, DVDs and manga

Throughout the magazine are small one-page interviews with idols, movie directors, whatever, covering a product they're either shilling or otherwise really interested in.

What's all this content targeted toward? Well, looking at the list above, it doesn't take a sociologist to see: It's aimed mainly at men and women in their late 20s or 30s, people who grew up surrounded by '80s/'90s culture and still enjoy games and action flicks but have run out of time to follow any of their old hobbies in depth.

Otona-Fami does a great job at what it sets out to do, and it really is just like PiQ, assuming that PiQ had a dozen editors and that many contributors on top. But does this product really have an audience? That's the question. Enterbrain, the publisher, has run the magazine since 2004 and claims a printed circulation of 100,000, but like all Japanese circ figures, the relationship this numeral shares with reality is anyone's guess. (Weekly Famitsu has a claimed circ of half a million.)

While I'm not sure anybody is going to use Otona-Fami as a primary source of information, it does succeed in being interesting to read in many spots -- which is over half the battle these days, if you're going to ask people to pay for your content.

[Kevin Gifford breeds ferrets and runs Magweasel, a really cool weblog about games and Japan and "the industry" and things. In his spare time he does writing and translation for lots and lots of publishers and game companies.]