KickStarter - The Electronic Gaming Monthly Compendium

[Phillyman]

5 hours ago, vDaedalus said:

Where might one find said collection? Came here immediately after seeing the kickstarter...

https://www.retromags.com/files/category/99-electronic-gaming-monthly/

Enjoy!

[vDaedalus]

Hah, thanks!

[JHD]

On 10/28/2024 at 3:59 AM, tcaud said:

Here's one for you: does EGM have ownership of the ads in their magazine?

 

Without seeing the original contracts I cannot provide a definitive answer, but it would be my expectation that the advertising content belongs to the company placing the ad. The magazine publisher would normally own the editorial content only. Advertising copy is usually provided in a fully completed form, and the publisher just has to drop it on the page. 

 

Things quickly get complicated with freelance (vs. staff) writers, photographs provided by third parties, etc.  Given the passage of time, the presumed loss of original contracts, and the fading memories of the people involved, there will always be some ambiguity.

 

As with most copyright disputes, the stakes are so very low that nobody is ever going to litigate the matter because the costs far exceed any possible recovery. Breen was a rare exception, and he was apparently financed by third-parties with an ideological basis.  

[tcaud]

1 hour ago, JHD said:

 

Without seeing the original contracts I cannot provide a definitive answer, but it would be my expectation that the advertising content belongs to the company placing the ad. The magazine publisher would normally own the editorial content only. Advertising copy is usually provided in a fully completed form, and the publisher just has to drop it on the page. 

 

Things quickly get complicated with freelance (vs. staff) writers, photographs provided by third parties, etc.  Given the passage of time, the presumed loss of original contracts, and the fading memories of the people involved, there will always be some ambiguity.

 

As with most copyright disputes, the stakes are so very low that nobody is ever going to litigate the matter because the costs far exceed any possible recovery. Breen was a rare exception, and he was apparently financed by third-parties with an ideological basis.  

See here's where I see the strongest argument for independent preservation. So much of the appeal of these mags is nostalgic... the reviews were sparse and insubstantial, often reflecting burnout of the reviewers more than anything else. The other part was the previews (again sorta irrelevant) and the rumors. The ads really were a big part of the experience of these mags... those and the rumors got us pumped up and talking. We'd take these things to school and talk about them with other kids. The strats were also talked about but Gamefaqs has those cornered and these days gamers tend not to even rely on outside sources for information... it's seen as confusing/unclear design. Back when there was a thriving rental market where you paid $2-$3 to play a game for a weekend and you tried to get your money's worth before your save file got wiped by the next renter. Strats helped there (couldn't afford the the games they were too expensive or simply not available. Mags like this helped you beat the game fast and see the ending. Gonna be honest I'm surprised they are even bothering with a digital archive instead of simply relaunching the mag... I think it's a cash grab. (I don't think the mag is gonna thrive either... 4chan will make short work of it)

[kitsunebi]

5 hours ago, tcaud said:

Gonna be honest I'm surprised they are even bothering with a digital archive instead of simply relaunching the mag... I think it's a cash grab.

Relaunching a magazine into the current marketplace doesn't make much sense.  It's hard to believe they would be successful when all other gaming mags have failed.  And it makes sense that they would charge money to access the archive, especially if they had to spend money paying for scanning services or for the services of someone assembling the original digital assets.  And even if they just swiped everything from here (fingers crossed that isn't the case), they still have to create and operate a site to host those scans and make them readable and searchable online.  It's not a free venture, so why would they offer it for free (they're a business, not selfless patrons of the arts like ourselves).

But as to the point about the ads, it wouldn't surprise me to see them missing, unfortunately.  Whatever contracts may have existed regarding them, so far as I know, they would have applied to print publication and not to digital reproduction, unless that was also specifically stipulated in the contract (extremely unlikely, especially on older mags).  There aren't a lot of mags that offer digital archives of their old issues to provide examples (I'm not talking about mags that were released digitally concurrently with their print issues, but rather digital editions of long out of print mags created after the fact.)  The UK's Retro Gamer strikes me as a good example of the potential pitfalls of such an endeavor.  First of all, the PDFs they sold of their older issues were incredibly low resolution, which they did to keep the filesizes small.  And second, ALL ads were removed from the issues.  If that's the kind of digital archive that is provided, I think it's safe to say that no one's going to be dumping our scans from their hard drives for theirs.  But we shall see.  A high-res, cover-to-cover fully-complete archive of mags created from original assets would be a welcome upgrade, and worth paying for.

[kartracer3]

I believe I saw the creator reply to a comment confirming that all ads would be present. But I suppose that could change, be interesting to see what the final product is like.

[Jie]

Whelp, backed with the $75 tier.

I will be a tad bit sad if they don't include the crazy ads back then.