Gamertell

Believe it or not,  I’m glad when I don’t have to call out Wired for being a gamer hater. I know the mag truly likes gamers but they just cannot seem to get it 100% right, at least when it comes to the print version.

In the latest issue of Wired (November 2008),  there are several pages that give some favorable nods to stuff gamers dig. Although more game-friendly coverage than normal, there’s still one page that’s a bit questionable.

There’s a page on the Webkinz phenomena (p. 038), a page highlighting a few casual creations by Jason Kapalka (p. 094), an opinion piece by Steven Levy regarding the Wii, Guitar Hero and the iPhone (p. 114), a questionable comparison of game systems (p. 164) and a trio of decent manual cover scans. To get a closer look at each page, check out the scans in the photo gallery below.

Going in simple page order,  the Webkinz article, titled “The Webkinz Effect,“ (p. 038) offers a quick list of four supposedly knockoff spawns of the toys with web components: Hasbro’s Virtual Interactive Pets, Disney’s Pixie Hollow, Disney’s World of Cars and Barbie Girls. It’s a nice little look for a 1/3-page article with a giant graphic element.

The second article (?), titled “Just Can’t Get Enough“ (p. 094), isn’t as much an interview as a quick comments from Bejeweled creator Kapalka on a few addictive game he didn’t create. In it Kapalka compares Solitaire to to Tetris (“You’re lucky or you aren’t, and it just goes on until you’re out of moves”), says that the Rubik’s Cube’s fun is in “creating order,“ notes that Where’s Waldo-esque games date back to the 1800s, Tetris is a “timeless classic” and Collapse! is a positive “mindless experience.“

The page where I have some issue is simply labeled “Gaming Gear” with “Test” marked at the bottom (p. 164). It pits the gaming consoles against each other, as well as a few gaming PCs in its own column and the two big handhelds in a third comparison column. In the first column, Wired rates the Xbox 360 an 8 (out of 10, I assume), the Wii 8 and the PS3 6. Even with the tie score, the mag gives the Xbox 360 the top spot due to the “deepest gaming library around.“ The Wii,  which gets the same score, is shown as a wireframe next to the PS3,  with “short on games and doesn’t play movies” as the negatives and “swinging that WiiMote with abandon” as a positive. The PS3 get a nod for Blue-ray but knocked to the bottom place for “killer titles [being] a tad sparse.“ There a similar issue with two gaming rigs getting 8s but one gets the bigger highlight. Sure, you have limited space in print, but if you cannot break a tie with numbers, why bother with bigger coverage? As for the third quickie chart, the DS Lite wins over the PSP.

The fourth is an article by Steven Levy titled “The New Reality: 2008” (p. 114). In it he lists the Nintendo Wii, Guitar Hero series and the Apple iPhone as being able to “integrate the digital world into the physical world in a straightforward way” by being “sci-fi mashup[s] of the real and artificial.“ Levy credits the WiiMote and the Balancee Board as allowing gamers to partake in sports by simulating the movements of actual athletes. Guitar Hero gets a nod for “swapping joysticks for fa instruments.“ The iPhone is credited as making Web surfing a more immersive, physical experience thanks to its touchscreen GUI. This one alone is enough to reinvigorate some of my faith in the mag.

The last notable gaming entry is simply a section of manual scans , which immediately activated the nostalgia geek in me. The three most interesting to gamers are the Pong game system Owner’s Manual from 1976 (p. 223), a scan of the Apple-1 Operation Manual from 1976 with a faint red store stamp that reads “Byte Shop III Computer Store” (p. 227) and the Cray-1 supercomputer Hardware Reference Manual from 1977. OK, so the third isn’t a game system in any fashion but if you were alive in the ‘70s, you likely had some pretty wicked dreams about uses for the Cray.

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All images from the November 2008 issue of Wired magazine.

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Check out the gallery: Wired Magazine , November 2008 page scans