Open Letter to Game Informer Magazine
My boyfriend was talked into the subscription as part of the membership at GameStop. I was laughing too hard at all the brother and sister geek-team arguing in the back corner to pay much attention, and Chris assures me he only agreed to the membership package just to get the overly-helpful guy behind the counter to stop talking . Either way, Game Informer Magazine has been coming to our house for the last year or so.
That said, I need to get a couple of things off my chest in regards to the mag. First, let me point out what I like about GI.
Good things about Game Informer
1. I like reading about video games and GI does a great job of staying abreast of the latest news and new releases.
2. I like the calendar of new releases.
Now, let me start bitching about what I don’t like about GI.
Bad Things about Game Informer
1. It is way too much of a sausage fest. If you actually take time to read through the editors page, it’s nothing but dudes. As a female reader, would it kill you to add a female perspective to the magazine? Chicks might like to read what other girl-gamers have to say, and let’s face it — the male readership would love to read what those girl-gamers are into, so that they may figure out something to say to that cute girl in their chem lab.
Now, I get it that the majority of gamers are guys. I live with that everyday, when I kick their asses at Tiger Woods or Madden. But really, to flat out ignore a potential female audience is a detriment to your circulation numbers. I doubt anyone is beating down the door to start up a girl-gamer mag as the numbers wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense economically speaking (not yet anyway), but there are girls and women that really like to play video games. They also would appreciate reading a magazine that maybe includes a female point of view in terms of what’s hot and what to look for. You have an online female editor, but the print edition has not one. Huh?
2. There are never any by-lines. Maybe a female writer is responsible for some features, but we’d never know, would we?
3. Not everyone spent their teens in their parents’ basements applying oxyclean and playing video games on every system known to man. To continually refer to and compare new games with games from 20 years ago is a bit of a turn-off. Sorry, but when you boys were playing with your joystcks, I had better things to do, and even then I was only a flirt with games. So everytime you refer to some arcane game from the Sega Game Cube, I just tune out.
You must understand that today’s gamers are not all hardcore nerds and geeks. Many are normals or quasi-geeks and just want to read fun and informative articles on what games they may want to check out in the future. Have a little diversity in your coverage of said games, and I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts that if you added a couple of or at least one female (or a normal, but that’s a whole other gripe) to your editorial staff, Game Informer would be more accessible to a whole new demographic.
And sorry, I am not available. There is no way I’m moving to Minneapolis. Thanks anyway.
Game Informer, video games, female gamers, readership
