Electronic Gaming Monthly is defunct, move to 10-year scanning timeline?

[Jayroddd]

First, I am a new member and I have to say I am impressed with the passion of this site, and the efforts put towards archiving an important part of history. There is a great degree of professionalism put on display by the scanners and curators, and I know that no one gets paid to do this. Myself, I subscribed to Electronic Gaming Monthly from the Dreamcast launch (Sept 1999) on to about 2005. I stopped following shortly after I went to college and stopped following console gaming (more of a PC gamer now). My magazine collection was lost over the years (like 99% of people) otherwise I would think to contribute to this site. I remember reading the news when EGM was cancelled in early 2009; a great shame but it was inevitable. I wasn't aware it was re-launched by the magazine's founder, Steve Harris, and that it eventually tapered off in 2015. Reading articles and listening to podcasts, it almost makes me want to do a mini-documentary about the rise and fall of EGM. I purchased a few other video game magazines in the 90s but I only ever subscribed to EGM. Tips & Tricks was one of them. I'm surprised that those are so hard to track down. I distinctly remember reading SNES-era content and I haven't been able to find anything at all from that era.

Which brings me to the topic title. I think we can all agree that Electronic Gaming Monthly is now defunct, according to RetroMags very own thread tracking the last few issues. The last publication was Special Issue #05 published in September 2015. I've done some research and I don't see any cite-able source from EGM saying that the magazine operations has been shut down. The Wikipedia article acts as though EGM is still in publication. This must be a deliberate act by the publisher, for it to not be officially cancelled and can come back at any time? Barring this, is it acceptable to move the scanning window to the 10-year timeline that RetroMags has for defunct magazines? That would put us through to the end of 2008, almost to the very end of the first run. I think the community would be in favor of catching up EGM, based on the topic where EGM is in the lead.

Again, I appreciate the site and the efforts of the community. I've been out of the loop on gaming for a long time, and I don't often sign up for any site, so that should say something. I admire the archivist mentality that a lot of you folks have. I've lost so many magazines, games (probably purchased the PSX Final Fantasy's 3 times each), and all of my various Game Boys somehow, that I don't live up to this mentality at all. 

[kitsunebi]

Welcome to Retromags!

I wasn't aware that EGM wasn't already in the 10-year cut-off bracket.

Try not to be too concerned if you see red "not allowed" flags on issues that should be allowed in the database.  What with our cut-offs changing every year and the fact that each mag has to be individually adjusted, things slip through the cracks and a lot of mags that are allowed are still marked as if they aren't.  But that doesn't mean that we won't be able to fix it and upload a scan if anyone is willing to provide one.

The only thing holding back scans of EGM or any other magazine is the fact that despite having over 12,000 members, less than a handful of them are willing to commit to contributing anything.  If we had 30 people scanning one magazine per month, we could have daily releases.  Unfortunately, we usually only have 2 or 3 people scanning a mag a month, so those other 12,000 members are just going to have to be patient while they wait for someone else to scan their favorite mags.

At any rate, I wouldn't worry too much about EGM.  Like yourself, I prefer PC games, but the vast majority of people who visit this site are only interested in video games.  As such, EGM is one of the "most likely to be scanned" mags in our database.  We just have to wait on one of those 2 or 3 people to get around to it, or else wait for one of the other 12,000 to step up to the plate.

[Jayroddd]

Kitsune, thanks for the response. If I had the magazines and a quality scanner I would help contribute. I do have a scanner at work but I don't think management would take too kindly to that.

It looks like issue #138 (January 2001) is the last to be preserved in series (there seem to be a few exceptions before that), then #141 and #168. The rest of the 2001 mags say "acquired". Everything after #150 (January 2002) says "not allowed" which is why I was thinking the timeline could be shifted, although you mention perhaps this hasn't been updated yet. Do you or another RetroMags contributor have the magazines in your possession waiting to be scanned? 2001 issues would seem to fit this description. If 2001 or later has been sourced, and sheer manpower is the reason there is a backlog, have you considered the possibility of another user paying for shipping & handling and helping with the scanning effort, rather than buying the individual mags from eBay on their own? Of course this involves a fair amount of risk; specifically the user could not respond after receiving the mags (although they would be out S&H) or the scans are a substandard quality.

[kitsunebi]

Believe me, lack of mags waiting to be scanned is not a problem.  I own more mags than I'd ever be able to scan in my lifetime.  Contributions of magazines aren't something to go unappreciated, but what we really need are more people able/willing to scan (and especially - EDIT.)

Not owning a scanner or even magazines doesn't prevent anyone from helping, though.  Phillyman is too busy these days to edit magazine scans, but he still runs issues through his scanner from time to time and puts the unedited files in a folder accessible to patrons.  Anyone with Photoshop or another photo editing tool is then able to take those files and edit them so that they can be released here (such as was the case with our most recent release, an issue of Compute that E-Day edited from Phillyman's scans.)  Unfortunately, other than E-Day, pretty much no one else ever takes it upon themselves to edit those files (editing is by far the most time-consuming part of the process), so they usually sit there untouched for months.

As for EGM, I probably own all the issues in question up through around 2007, but I doubt I'll ever scan any of them.  For one thing, they're all in storage in America, so I don't have them on hand at the moment anyway.  And also, I'm fairly certain that other scanners out there own them as well (EGM is fairly common, as video game mags go), so I usually try to scan things that either interest me (PC game mags) or things that are more rare (like Japanese mags).

[E-Day]

Sadly at the moment I don't think there is a way to auto change the cutoff date for all the mags each January 1st. Phillyman was going to look into writing some sort of script that he could run every January for that, but that hasn't happened yet. There is a long list of things to do on this site at all times. Right now it's trying to find a new web host because of recent issues with the current one.

If more people were willing to edit scans, it would be great. But I understand why we don't. Editing is basically bitch work; it's very time consuming. Speaking of that, there is another issue of Compute I should start editing...

[kitsunebi]

1 minute ago, E-Day said:

 Editing is basically bitch work

You are my hero.

Truer words were never spoken.

[Jayroddd]

On 5/2/2018 at 5:06 PM, kitsunebi77 said:

Anyone with Photoshop or another photo editing tool is then able to take those files and edit them so that they can be released here

Is there a guide for editing? I don't have Photoshop but have used paint.net.

[kitsunebi]

26 minutes ago, Jayroddd said:

Is there a guide for editing? I don't have Photoshop but have used paint.net.

E-Day's guides are at the top of the page (in the "support" drop down menu).  Everybody has their own way of doing things depending on the hardware/software at their disposal (I don't really go by those guides at all, to be honest), but they'll give you some general ideas about how to go about it and will fill you in on certain quality standards we require mags hosted on our site to adhere to.