1UP No Longer Has Any Extra Lives

1UP No Longer Has Any Extra Lives

Well, 1up and EGM are dead. So who the hell cares? I mean, I would say it was a good crapper reading material but that would be a lie. I read EGM religiously for a few years in the mid 90s. I loved those giant 300-page holiday monster issues they'd put out once or twice a year. I used to pore through the import ads in the back, staring at the imported action figures... it was a great fucking magazine then. Now? I get a free subscription and I don't even care to flip it open half the time.

This is all because media giant UGO, who I completely forget even existed much the same way one forgets McDonalds exist when they realize they want to eat GOOD food. Sure you see one every couple of blocks or every few weeks someone links me to a "news" piece from their website. But for the most part I try to ignore it on the super highway of internet traffic.

Either way you look at it, UGO buying this out means EGM as a magazine is dead and 1up is going to be belly-up. The major loss is going to be to the podcasters who followed the 1up podcast religiously. Which I hear is now going to be opened with this line.
"Welcome to the unemployment line PC podcast. This is your host, Ryan Scott, and I'm sorry."

I always wondered how gaming podcasts made any kind of revenue. Turns out they don't. Well... didn't. While they were all fun(?) for game fans and those getting paid to do them, they simply had to get canned. And I mean they cleaned house. They fired a LOT of people. In fact I swear I heard a Meeeggggaaaaa-Killlllll!!!!! when I read the list.

Adrian Frieg
Amy Mishra
Amy Moran
Andrea Garcia
Andrew Fitch
Andrew "Skip" Pfister
Anthony Gallegos
Cesar Quintero
Christina Rosa
CoyLou Steel
Derek Chinn
Doug Parsons
Eric Ellis
Giancarlo Varanini
Greg Ford
James "Milkman" Mielke
Jason Bertrand
Jason Wilson
Jervilyn Jaramillo
Justin Frechette
Leslie Gelfand
Marci Yamaguchi
Matt Chandronait
May Tong
Meredith Stowe
Michael Donahoe
Monique Convertito
Ndubuisi Madu
Nick Suttner
Norris Boothe
Philip Kollar
Rey Serrano
Robert Bowen
Rosemary Pinkham
Ryan O'Donnell
Ryan Scott
Shane Bettenhausen
Simon Cox
Tammy Ross
Tipler Ubbelohde

My only question now is what the hell do you follow that up with? I mean the employees. Good luck getting a new job with "Video game journalist" on your resume. Hopefully they all played Fallout 3 before getting fired so they could build some experience in scavenging for old food and trash.

For those curious as to what sort of jobs would you land being an ex-well respected gaming journalist? Jeff "Black Dragon" Green got a job at EA and Shawn Elliott now works at 2K but I guess if you're not funny or articulate then your career options are pretty limited. Jeff Gerstmann started his own site after he was fired, so I guess a bunch of them could get together and do that.

Then the issue comes up as to where is the money to even support something like that. Advertisers are literally under mandate to not spend shit for cash on new web properties and google adwords won't even pay the bandwidth cost. Even the semi-popular escapist is about to go under because no advertisers give a fuck about flash inlays/overlays anymore. No one is clicking.

I have a friend who is also hit hard because his dream of becoming a respected gaming journalist is now crushed. I suppose that dream should have been given up a while ago being that no such thing exist. Gaming journalism as a professional or corporate endeavor is a joke. As long as their advertisers are also their primary content sources game "journalism" will be 80% rewriting press releases and 20% writing best of/worst of lists.

It doesn't help that gaming magazines have been useless and been bleeding subscribers for years now. To be fair it's across the board. Print readership has been down all across the board. L.A. Times' parent group declared bankruptcy and looking at the news stands I wonder who even buys magazines.

So on this day we mourn(?) the loss of EGM and 1up. I'm sure we'll get our Video game news from somewhere. To be frank, the speed at which a GOOD game that I'm excited comes out, I know well in advance without the use of a magazine or internet article to remind me in such a shill fashion as to its existence. So I'll survive.

To all you who lost their job... well, sucks to be you. That other shoe was bound to drop eventually. Be proud that 1up was at one point the only games reviews website that wasn't a complete whore and utter waste of internet space. So I suppose we lost.. something?