When I was asked to launch a new multiformat videogame magazine, to fill the gap in Future’s portfolio left by ACE, I was 31 and had a wide interest in technology. This ranged from CG and movie special effects to computing, home cinema and electronic gadgets. As well as being an avid videogamer, I was also interested in how they were made.
At the time, the industry was going through another of its regular Doctor Who-style metamorphoses. The days of one- and two-man coding teams had seemingly gone, to be replaced by studios churning out big-budget productions. CD-ROM offered new styles of gameplay (crap ones, as it turned out), and – with some obvious early exceptions – we were making the transition from 16bit 2D to 32bit 3D gaming. The SNES and Mega Drive were long in the tooth, the PC was beginning to make giant strides, and systems like the 3DO showed a glimpse of what was to come.
And, having mainly worked on kids’ mags for almost a decade, it was time for me to do something different. I figured there must be other people like me, who had grown up with videogames and now saw it less as a hobby, more a lifestyle choice; this was an interest that would, in all likelihood, only be diminished by age and infirmity. Time to get serious.
So gone were the kiddy cutouts and cartoons, in came a much more mature design, with long-form articles and interviews, with detailed, well-informed reviews. Ah, reviews – the bane of Edge’s existence. At the time I’m sure I toyed with not having any reviews at all, but when you see how much mag you have to fill with features, it doesn’t take long before the reviews go back in. And we still had to sell advertising, after all.
I was bored of traditional mag reviews and wanted ours to be a bit more considered and critical, with the gravitas of film reviews. I also decided against bylines, hoping that the team would all think alike (and discuss games together) and so the reviews would be delivered as the voice of Edge. However, I never intended for the mag to become self-indulgent. I rejoined Edge for a stint on issues 102 to 105 and at the time I remember reading a review and having no idea if the writer liked the game or not, so verbose and obtuse was the copy. Fortunately, the magazine has changed since then.
As the idea of the mag developed, so the structure informed itself. With the array of games machines available, we couldn’t possibly be comprehensive so I decided to review only those titles that were technologically or culturally important; games that opened up new genres or fresh concepts in gameplay. Truth is, we pretty much simply reviewed games that interested us the most, and as a rule it served us well.
Having said all that, looking back at issue one I’m shocked how many reviews we crammed in. I’m pretty sure that was due to my deputy editor, Jason Brookes, badgering me to keep adding new games he kept finding. I wish I’d stood my ground now, as the review section looks rubbish.
We’d also report on events from anywhere as long as they were newsworthy. Games mags had been fairly parochial up until that point, but with key developments going on in Europe, the US and Japan, it was my intention that the mag should feel truly international, with the price in dollars and yen to emphasise it. I wanted the mag to feel special, and the reader to feel part of a global community.
Once the mag had been staffed up, we started production in earnest and it was time to make a dummy issue – the fabled issue zero. This was standard operating procedure for mag launches: you make a 16- or 32-page section, and repeat it three or four times to create the bulk of a real mag. Then you go and wave it under prospective advertisers’ noses to gauge reaction.
I do remember being really up against it and so instead of mocked-up pages, the dummy actually featured a lot of real content from issue one. But it did serve to highlight one serious issue: the magazine cover. We had some cool ideas about the structure of the cover, and the logo came to us really easily. Launch art editor Matt Williams’ typography was great, but when it came to cover images I was stumped.
Edge issue zero.
Despite supposedly covering ‘cutting-edge’ next-generation games, most of them only generated screenshots at 640×480 – if you were lucky. A magazine cover is usually about 250–300dpi, which isn’t far off Retina display levels; blow up a shot of a 16bit game and it generally looks horrendous. And at that time, publishers weren’t generating the beautiful CG ‘target renders’ that we’ve become used to seeing (often at Sony hardware launches).
So, after desperately scrambling around, Brookesy dug up a cool 3DO shot of a spaceship for issue zero. Sadly, the only image worth using for issue one was a blurry low-res image from Microcosm – which would only be outdone by the diabolically awful pic we used on issue two. Thank God the magazine was packaged in an opaque bag at that point.
I’m painfully aware that the first few issues weren’t really that good, but unfortunately my aspirations were ahead of the gaming landscape at the time. I think it took a year or two for the magazine and its subject matter to properly mesh.
Still, by the fourth issue we’d won the InDin (Industry Dinner) Best Magazine award – which in this market was a bit like being the tallest dwarf. And then, by issue ten, I was done. When the first whiff of an ‘official’ PlayStation magazine arrived, I immediately threw my hat into the ring. And with Edge helping to convince Sony to give Future Publishing the licence, I was fortunate enough to be given the launch editorship.
The fact that I’m here, 20 years later, reminiscing on the launch of Edge is a testament to my genius the hard work of all the editors that followed me: Jason Brookes, João Diniz-Sanches, Margaret Robertson, Alex Wiltshire and, of course, Edge’s own Jedi guardian, Tony Mott. The initial concept might be mine, but the glory is, truly, all theirs.
The post 20 years of Edge: launch editor Steve Jarratt on the creation of a different kind of game magazine appeared first on Edge Online.
Source http://www.edge-online.com/features/20-years-of-edge-the-creation-of-a-different-kind-of-game-magazine/
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