The End of an Era: Games for Windows Magazine is No More

By Joe Haygood | April 9, 2008

After 27 years of publication, dating back to a small black and white leaflet in 1981, Games for Windows, formerly known as Computer Gaming World Magazine is no more. The higher ups at Ziff Davis and Microsoft felt that the time had come to pull the plug on the oldest video game magazine still in publication after a long and heralded run.

The magazine has been a staple for PC gamers back to its inception when Russell Sipe and Johnny Wilson got together to put out a small black and white leaflet that talked about the latest games for the up and coming gaming platform, the PC. At that time, Computer Gaming World was not much more than a couple of pages and it had a very limited distribution. But it was a new era and the magazine was the first in a field that would grow to hold nearly hundreds of other print mags that would deal with PC and console gaming.

As the years went on, the magazine continued to grow, both in editorial staff and pages. At one point, the largest issue of the magazine came out in the mid 90’s when one of the holiday issues came in at about 400 pages. They were also known for their policy of never reviewing anything but final code and were always catching heat from publishers for giving honest and occasionally, brutal reviews. Who can forget some of the back and forths between CGW and Derek Smart after the horror of a release in Battlecruiser 3000AD, that got a 1 star rating out of a possible 5 stars.

As the years moved on, PC Gaming entered a new era, where it was proclaimed dead every year. Even through all of this, CGW still moved on, although in a much slimmer model, never getting over 115 pages in length. After Johnny Wilson left as editor in chief, and the magazine kind of drifted for awhile until Jeff Green took the helm. Jeff took the magazine in a new direction and added a little attitude and panache that readers really came to enjoy. Having an editor that was conflicted with his age vs. his gaming commitments was hilarious and related to a lot of the readers that had grown up with the magazine.

In 2006, the magazine ended its run as Computer Gaming World, and rose from the ashes as the newly rebranded as The Official Games For Windows Magazine. While Microsoft would get a couple of company sponsored pages in the magazine, it continued to have the edge that a lot of readers had come to enjoy over the years, including always ripping on their partner in the venture, Microsoft.

But yesterday, the news came out and the magazine had now ended its run. They do not even get a final issue to say goodbye, just a press release. All is not lost as most of the content that was in the magazine is moving online to gfw.1up.com. Jeff Green, Shawn Elliot, Sean Malloy, Ryan Davis and company will still be found, and their podcast, the best in the business in my opinion, will continue on. I for one am disappointed in this decision, and I still think it relates to the bankruptcy proceedings over at Ziff-Davis, but what is done is done. I would also recommend that everyone check out Jeff Green’s latest blog entry, that says it all – “This Sucks.”