The NEW REDESIGNED GameInformer

[Luke]

I almost feel like telling GameStop to just give me the discount card and forget the subscription.

I haven't heard about this, if you get an edge card you get a free subscription? Is it USA only?

Not sure if it's US only, but yeah free subscription with edge card.

Honestly people, if you don't or can't notice the changes throughout the entire magazine than you weren't reading or looking at the magazine before this month. Everything is different. The new layout is totally different to the point it looks like a brand new magazine.

Format from August

Letter from the editor
Feedback
Connect
Previews
Reviews
Classic GI
Game Over

Brand New Format from NEW issue:

Letter from the editor
Feedback
Connect
Previews
Reviews
Game Over

I don't see this brand new format.

[jmbarnes101]

I almost feel like telling GameStop to just give me the discount card and forget the subscription.

I haven't heard about this, if you get an edge card you get a free subscription? Is it USA only?

Not sure if it's US only, but yeah free subscription with edge card.

Honestly people, if you don't or can't notice the changes throughout the entire magazine than you weren't reading or looking at the magazine before this month. Everything is different. The new layout is totally different to the point it looks like a brand new magazine.

Format from August

Letter from the editor
Feedback
Connect
Previews
Reviews
Classic GI
Game Over

Brand New Format from NEW issue:

Letter from the editor
Feedback
Connect
Previews
Reviews
Game Over

I don't see this brand new format.

I'm not talking about the content. It's the same people doing the magazine. Some content will change some will be the same. I wish it had more retro gaming sections but the market isn't into retro. What we get I'm talking more about the look of it. The new crisp colors and layout are extremely different. It's now a more vibrant and colorful magazine than it was before and while I don't like the way they've set out some sections it's much more pleasant to read and look at. Reminds me more of EGM than Game Informer. It's just a much better reading experience.

[lordofduct]

Ummmm, I just found this magazine in discussion here, the Mickey one, on my roommates bathroom floor. I guess he has a subscription or something.

So anyways I flipped through it for a couple minutes as I remembered it from this thread.

And the "Classic GI" is still in there.

page 118->119 check the full page image for it on 118... it says "CLASSIC" vertically up the left hand side. And on the right it's an outline of Mickey in videogames starting from 1988's Mickey Mousecapade and ending with Kingdom Hearts on 02'. It just happened to have the "Mickey" theme to match the main article of the issue.

I don't know why they didn't list it in the forward, but it's still there.


Another note, both the cover story and the "classic gi" were written by editor Matt Miller, the lack of "classics gi" being in the TOC might have something to do with that. A mistake at print in the double naming or who freakin' knows... some whiny cunt complained his name was on the TOC to much. Which ever it is... I'm not to concerned.

Also I kind of side with jmbarnes101, the visual "look" has had an obvious rehaul. Article layout is roughly the same, but the visual design is pretty different. I don't know about glaringly different, if you really don't care about design or pay attention to it you probably won't notice. Kind of like those guys who don't notice when their girlfriend gets a haircut... it's not a bad thing, it's just the way their brain works.

I rarely if ever read the magazine (the last issue I read was a year ago), and yet I noticed the visual rehaul. But then again I'm in the business of design.

[Luke]

I rarely if ever read the magazine (the last issue I read was a year ago), and yet I noticed the visual rehaul. But then again I'm in the business of design.

The Classic GI is there, just scaled down, and not mentioned in the forward.

There is somewhat of a visual overhaul, but the previews and reviews don't look much different. Shit, the magazine doesn't look that different to me. I was expecting the NEW IMPROVED GI to have better, or even different, content. It's the same lousy magazine, same awful writers. I just don't think that moving some text around qualifies as a huge overhaul.

And who in their right mind would pay for these writers? When trying to find out differences in the old and new GI's, I randomly flipped to the previews, pages 84 and 85.

Page 84 top corner. Okay, I get that they talked about Cobain's likeness earlier in the issue, but seriously, who would find that caption funny? Seriously, look at the "Dad". There are so many jokes that could be made about him, and they attempt to make a Kurt Cobain joke. Fail. I can't believe more than one person in editing read this and found it funny.

Page 85, top left caption. Really? That's all they could come up with? Surely someone on their staff could have made a Nightcrawler reference that would be at least remotely funny.

So, in short, if an editor keeps promising "an entire new GameInformer", don't just barely change the graphical design of the magazine, change the fucking content. It's the same old shit.

[RadarScope1]

I almost feel like telling GameStop to just give me the discount card and forget the subscription.

I haven't heard about this, if you get an edge card you get a free subscription? Is it USA only?

Not sure if it's US only, but yeah free subscription with edge card.

Honestly people, if you don't or can't notice the changes throughout the entire magazine than you weren't reading or looking at the magazine before this month. Everything is different. The new layout is totally different to the point it looks like a brand new magazine.

Format from August

Letter from the editor
Feedback
Connect
Previews
Reviews
Classic GI
Game Over

Brand New Format from NEW issue:

Letter from the editor
Feedback
Connect
Previews
Reviews
Game Over

I don't see this brand new format.

A redesign usually has to do with the way things look. Typefaces, images, colors. It's the way the content is packaged. It's really funny because it drives people who work in print or the Web insane. Usually when you change something, the readers fall into two camps. The first camp calls you up or sends you e-mails ripping you a new one for changing things and making everything unreadable (when in reality the changes are often very subtle). The second camp doesn't notice a damn thing until you point it out to them, and then you're like "Tell me again why I'm spending so much time making all this content look so nice?" You can't win.

[RadarScope1]

I rarely if ever read the magazine (the last issue I read was a year ago), and yet I noticed the visual rehaul. But then again I'm in the business of design.

The Classic GI is there, just scaled down, and not mentioned in the forward.

There is somewhat of a visual overhaul, but the previews and reviews don't look much different. Shit, the magazine doesn't look that different to me. I was expecting the NEW IMPROVED GI to have better, or even different, content. It's the same lousy magazine, same awful writers. I just don't think that moving some text around qualifies as a huge overhaul.

And who in their right mind would pay for these writers? When trying to find out differences in the old and new GI's, I randomly flipped to the previews, pages 84 and 85.

Page 84 top corner. Okay, I get that they talked about Cobain's likeness earlier in the issue, but seriously, who would find that caption funny? Seriously, look at the "Dad". There are so many jokes that could be made about him, and they attempt to make a Kurt Cobain joke. Fail. I can't believe more than one person in editing read this and found it funny.

Page 85, top left caption. Really? That's all they could come up with? Surely someone on their staff could have made a Nightcrawler reference that would be at least remotely funny.

So, in short, if an editor keeps promising "an entire new GameInformer", don't just barely change the graphical design of the magazine, change the fucking content. It's the same old shit.

"New and Improved" does kind of imply that it's all different. But to be fair, a re-design is much more than "somewhat of a visual overhual." It's a huge undertaking for a print publication, especially a magazine moreso than a newspaper. (I used to work in newspapers so that's where I'm coming from here.) It may not seem like much but if you haven't worked in design you probably won't understand. Sometimes I think designers make too big a deal out of it. But people do notice - look at the outrage every time Facebook changes its design. It changed just a few days ago and there's already hundreds of thousands of people in a "change it back" group on FB. LOL - losers.

BTW, I don't read GI and I'm not defending anything, just trying to inform...

[Luke]

BTW, I don't read GI and I'm not defending anything, just trying to inform...

I agree with you.

It's just that they really promoted a lot of change. The changes I see are, instead of having the publisher/release date/system below a picture, they are now on the side of the picture.

One of my good friends is the beat writer for our college football team. I understand that it is difficult to change any format on a printed medium. GI took a step, but that doesn't mean they took a step forward; a different look doesn't count as immediate improvement. Change doesn't always equal progress.

[Betamax001]

I havent read GI in a long time, since about the time they stopped selling it at places other than gamestop. I used to skim the reviews and classic GI stuff at Jewel while we were grocery shopping so I didnt have to pay for it.

My friend brought a new issue of it to read in Study Hall and I thought it looked neat. Still more or less the same though, but nice.

[the7k]

I stopped reading Game Informer when I got a magazine that had some shitty Superman game that wasn't even close to finished on the front cover.

Unfortunately, my friends wouldn't stop reading it, and so I got to see even more things that would bring down their credibility, such as their infamous Resident Evil 5 review and articles that outlined "The Top 10 Greatest Fighters Of All Time", a list that consisted solely of characters like Akuma, Nightmare, Sentinel, and other obviously lacking-in-creative-design but loaded-with-cheese characters.

Then came the line from them that made it all clear - when they said something to the effect of "We rate games based on how much we feel out customers will like them."

If you want to know why everyone looks at Video Game Journalism with derision and disgust, look no further.

[jmbarnes101]

Then came the line from them that made it all clear - when they said something to the effect of "We rate games based on how much we feel out customers will like them."

If you want to know why everyone looks at Video Game Journalism with derision and disgust, look no further.

Can you or someone else provide a link or something in print that shows this exact statement?