China says goodbye to its oldest gaming magazine

Gaming may be a growing industry in China, but it seems that even that growth isn’t enough to counteract the downfall of one of the last bastions of old-school gaming: the gaming magazine. China’s Play (家用电脑与游戏) — the country’s oldest gaming magazine — hinted in its most recent Weibo post that its upcoming November-December issue will be its last. The shutdown hasn’t been officially announced, but the image accompanying that Weibo post mentions a goodbye and most observers have interpreted it as an announcement that like so many other print magazines before it, Play is finally folding.

Play, which is celebrating its nineteenth anniversary this month, holds a special place in the hearts of many of China’s older gamers as their first source of gaming news and instructions. As such, its passing has prompted waves of nostalgia from China’s older generation. For example, here’s Yao Yu, editor of a different Chinese gaming magazine:

I recall fondly the days of sitting on the toilet reading game magazines, and the feeling back then of being uncontrollably excited when the magazine introduced a new game, I would even dream about wanting to play it.

As an “older” gamer myself, I can appreciate the sentiment, although I didn’t grow up reading Play because I didn’t live in China. But there really was something special about opening a magazine each month with more or less no idea what new games you might find in its pages, since the internet wasn’t around to broadcast everything the instant a developer makes a job posting for a new game.

Of course, it’s easy for nostalgia to blind us. There were nice things about those days, of course, but I work for a games website and I like being able to learn about the latest games in a span of hours, not days, weeks, or months. Some of the China’s online commenters obviously feel the same, as mixed in with the many nostalgic responses are more than a few like these Tencent Games commenters who wrote things like “I haven’t bought this in years” and “make a digital version.”

For those outside China, the closest analogy might be the shutdown of the once-popular gaming magazine Nintendo Power last year. I rememeber poring over copies of that magazine during recess when I was a kid, so when it shut down, I felt a little sad. But at the same time, how long had it been since I had even seen a copy, let alone bought one? China’s Play, I think, occupies the same position: for this generation of Chinese gamers, it will always hold a place in their hearts and in gaming culture. But as a useful source of news and information about games, its time has undeniably come.

So bon voyage, Play magazine. I hope they have all the latest games and systems for you to play up in print media heaven. China may not exactly be clamoring for your return, but rest assured that quite a few of the Middle Kingdom’s gamers will miss you.

(via Tencent Games)