Yesterday, I had to pick up my girlfriend from the airport. The main thing I like about airports is the rich selection the newspaper stores offer.
Waiting for her flight to arrive, I browsed a while, flipping through Marvel Comics, magazines, books, etc. Then a whitish cover catched my eye: "Der Freund" .
I do like reading intelligent things. GEE doesn’t completely belong ot this group, but it’s close enough: A game magazine that caters to a mature readership, and that is refreshingly different.
Somehow it reminds me of the early issues of Wired. Wired was, and to a good extend still is, much more designed than GEE, and it had a much stronger political voice as GEE. But both serve the readers need to think twice, coupled with the love for technology as art.
That’s what sets these magazines apart: They don’t count pixel, megabytes etc, but actually sit down and think about what one can do with them. GEE can’t care less if company x builds a faster computer than company y, or if the screen resolution is better. They write about the games itself, and what sort of culture can evolve around them.
Couple that with a clean, if somewhat empty, design, good writing, and I’m sold.
Copyright is a tricky thing. When you have created something on your own, you want to keep it. The least one usually asks for is that people give credit where credit is due. When the creative work is what one does for a living there is of course a healthy interest too.
