Gaming Magazine Content Focuses on Warlike Games
Gaming magazines seem to focus on a particular type of game: the kinds that are graphic, gruesome, and military or battle-oriented. Taken as a whole, most of the ads in gaming magazines are quite dark. They deal with death, evil, and destroying things, whether it is space ships, souped-up cars with rocket launchers, or demons. This leads me to believe that these computer gaming magazines focus more on the war gaming genre than any other. Is this a bad thing? Well, if you are not interested in combative games, or if you prefer non-violent games, you will probably be a bit put off by all this. For many gamers, the focus on violence and war and the failure to target the female market constitute several strikes against signing up for a magazine subscription.
Sadly, there is not one "safe" computer gaming magazine I could recommend to my friends who play games like Simcity, Re-Volt, or Myst. Not only do these magazines alienate women, but they also alienate entire groups of non-combative and non-violent gamers.
At this point, you are probably wondering why I have not mentioned which magazines I am talking about, or which products are being advertised poorly. My goal is not to belittle the magazines or the products-- rather, I hope to enlighten and pursuade. I have faith that good businesspeople are going to entertain the thought that what they are doing is limiting their sales. Perhaps their readership would increase if they encouraged female subscriptions as well as male. I want these companies to prosper, and I want them to recognize and market to a broader audience.
If you know of a good gaming magazine that perhaps I have not yet discovered, please tell us about it. I haven't as of yet done a full analysis of console gaming magazines, so I do not know if the same conclusions apply. What do you think?
References:
1. The New Boys Club: Women Fight for their Place in the Video Game World -- http://vanward.bccc.com/~roconner/special/
2. IDSA -- http://www.idsa.com/releases/consumer.html
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