A Farewell to My Inspiration.

If you don't like blatant declarations of love that border on the fanatical, then I suggest you skip this post and read one of Paul's articles or wait for the article I'm posting at the end of the week.

Browsing the game blogs today I saw that Ugo Entertainment has acquired 1up.com. Along with this news came word that Electronic Gaming Monthly, one of the best gaming magazines ever in my opinion, would be discontinued with their current issue of the long running magazine being their last. Even worse is the fact that many of those people who worked on the magazine, as well as some of 1up.com's content were essentially left jobless. For a full list of the damage done, click here.

The reason I write about this is because 1up, EGM, and all of it's children were an important inspiration for my current game career aspirations. I've been reading EGM since I was young, and one thing I've always felt the writers and editors excelled at was eloquent writing. Let's face it, most game magazines and sites (including this one at times) suffer from terrible writing. With EGM, that never seemed to be an issue. The people at the magazine wrote well, and knew that their readers were intelligent enough to put up with prose. Their other strong trait was the amount of integrity they had. The editors and writers of EGM made sure that every opinion about a game was that person's honest opinion. People like Dan Hsu were not afraid to ask the game industry people brutal, if not perfectly valid questions. Everyone at EGM maintained as much integrity in their work as they possibly could.

At 1up.com, I became a frequent reader of the many of the employee's blogs. The overall experience felt more personal than many other game sites. The site's review show, aptly named The 1up Show, was an entertaining piece of internet television. The best part was not the cheesy acting in between segments, but the actual reviews themselves. Rather than just talk about a game in the traditional quantifiable way, they simply had a big group discussion about the game. The reviews were much more organic than just talking about the score they gave a game. It was through watching these videos that made me start seriously considering being a game journalist. Yes there was a lot more work involved then they let on, but I didn't care because all of it look liked a ton of fun.

And now both of these, along with many of the people who made them possible are now gone. As I write this, a copy of the last issue of EGM ever sits on my desk. I bought it at the airport over winter break to give me something to read while I spent an eternity in Chicago O'Hare. Even to this day, everything I've said about the magazine still stands. It is still one of the most well written game magazines out there, and I enjoyed reading this issue just as much as I enjoyed the first issue I read way back when.

So to everyone at Electronic Gaming Monthly and 1up.com who have been affected by this acquisition: Thank you. Thanks for the memories and thanks for the inspiration. May you all go on to bigger and better adventures.