GameFan Issue 01 (April 2010)

In 2010 Fusion Publishing filed for bankruptcy which meant the closure of Play Magazine (US). Dave Halverson was the man behind the original GameFan, Gamers' Republic, and Play, and was the editor-in-chief on all of them. He began work on a rework of GameFan and this is the 2010 relaunch. Halverson brought a few key staffers from Play along with Rob Duenas as the new art director. Unfortunately, this mag was doomed from the start for a few reasons. One, would be problems with advertising revenue. The first five issues of the magazine were released on a consistent bi-monthly schedule. But the revenue problems occurred with the magazine's development after that. Issue 7 was assembled by only three people, and two of those left shortly after. Rob Duenas was working 20 hours a day for two weeks, and it was becoming way too much of a workload. He never had anything negative to say about Halverson or the magazine, and was willing to do covers or artwork, but just couldn't maintain those work hours. Issue 9 was made by two people, and issues 8 and 9 were released digitally only. Only 11 issues were created, over the course of 5 years!

The Second problem was that Alexander Lucard had actually bought the rights to Diehard GameFan back in 2006. They started it back up in 2007 as a website with Halverson’s blessing and it lasted 10 years with some of the original staff joining in on occasion. Halverson never contacted Lucard about the rights, but he knew he had them from the beginning. Lucard said he was on good terms with Halverson, but he was one of the last to know about the relaunch. Lucard ran his Diehard GameFan 2.0 website as a not-for-profit, so nobody got paid for their work -- it was all volunteer work done for the love of games. He has stated that he would happily have given Halverson his blessing and not have asked for any percentage for himself, if only Dave would have contacted him. But he never did. Once Lucard mentioned that he was unaware of the situation, this started a "poop show" (in his words) and the new magazine died quickly after that.

Dave Halverson opens the first issue with a comment on printed media, "The more we're told it's a dying medium the more driven we are to prove its more alive than ever." Apparently, they were having revenue problems way before Lucard got involved, which shows you really need money and some good connections to run a successful videogame magazine nowadays. This Issue #1 looks good -- nice layouts, colorful art, no more avatar names for reviews. It's a good read for those that want to go down memory lane for a little while. Here's hoping we see more of these issues come here:)

Very interesting!