Are those Game Informer circulation numbers for real? Over 1.1 million copies a month, according to the company? Indeed, just by the end of last year, GI had increased its circulation from 669,965 to 981,542, the Audit Bureau of Circulation reported.

There may be a lesson in this meteoric growth for games publishers: get those retail salespeople on your side. "That was our first sell job," says Rob Borm, director of marketing. Owned by retailer GameStop (majority-owned Barnes&Noble), GI initiated a customer loyalty program in 2001 that gave instore customers a 10 issue/$10 subscription as well as a discount card for used game purchases.

On the magazine's part, GI got a new, lush look and feel, a highly graphical approach that made good use of the book's oversized format. "We had to sell the store associates on the new look, and we put them on our comp list and treated them like kings," says Borm. The result was exponential growth that puts GI's circulation at double its nearest competitor, Electronic Gaming Monthly. With 1,250 GameStop stores now open nationwide, "No other magazine has an active sales force of 5,000 individuals," says Borm. In fact, 94% of GI subscriptions come from the retail sales floor, a powerful stat that has not gone unnoticed by competitors. Late last year, Ziff-Davis and Electronics Boutique partnered in a similar venture for its GMR magazine, which claims to have harvested 225,000 subscriptions with a similar model just in the first quarter of 2003. Lesson learned.

Based in icy Minneapolis, where the editors admit there is a lot of time for gaming, GI keeps a lean 8-person staff, with editor-in-chief Andy McNamara as the main contact person for features and executive editor Andrew Reiner as the assigned catcher of news, previews and reviews pitches.

GI likes to keep current, so lead time is generally five to six weeks before the magazine hits the street, with deadlines hitting around the 15th of the month. GI maintains a graphics-driven approach, so front-of-book news items (6-8 pages an issue) generally require photos to get included.

McNamara says that planning time for features and especially cover stories has increased in the past year as competition for those slots becomes fierce. He recommends that game publishers pitch major coverage at least five months before an issue's intended street date because the staff is sifting through numerous feature possibilities. McNamara notes that cover stories need to be pitched as exclusives. The magazine has given exclusive cover treatment to Spiderman 2, Tony Hawk 5, and X-Men Legends in recent months.

An advance look at playable code certainly helps the cause of landing coverage, says McNamara, and the staff especially likes being involved with the development from early on. "We pride ourselves in keeping our mouths shut, so we love to get in early and get involved in the process of the game from beginning to end," he says. "Blizzard called us out of the blue and showed up with a copy of Starcraft Ghost that blew us away. That was an easy sell."

Mix It Up

The extensive reviews area of the book does not require pitching so much as getting near-final code in to editors two weeks to a month before deadline. GI tries to review just about every title for consoles in some way, and much of that coverage is determined by the quality or buzz around a game.

The available title mix automatically favors the PS2 platform in previews and reviews, but McNamara says that this actually makes for a great editorial opportunity for other platforms. His readership is way ahead of the general consumer base in owning multiple machines (especially GameCubes - see chart). "With the whole industry being weighted to PS2, we're dying to get GameCube or Xbox reviews."

Likewise, he would like to increase GI's PC coverage because despite dwindling overall sales in this category, he still considers this platform the one all gamers tend to look towards for the cutting-edge game concepts that eventually influence the console environment.

After leaving the Web some years ago, Game Informer Online returns this summer, but now it will be more tightly focused on serving the large GI readership rather than competing aggressively against GameSpot and IGN. Subscribers will get premium access to enhanced magazine coverage, and daily news and earlier magazine reviews will go in front of the subscriber wall. Perhaps the most interesting innovation will be a buyer's guide, a database structure that will cross-reference and categorize game reviews so that readers can make comparisons among like titles.

As an industry, McNamara thinks the focus is moving this year from quantity to quality after so many companies overextended themselves in 2002 by foisting large, mediocre catalogs on consumers. Thankfully, he says, survivors have learned, "Instead of 50 products, make three or four great ones." For the rest, he sees an inevitable thinning of the herd. "I don't know what is going to happen to them," he says. "They want to be bought by EA, and that's not going to happen."

System Ownership: Game Informer Subscribers

Because 53% of GI subscribers own two or more gaming platforms, there is a lot of opportunity for publishers to get PC, Xbox and GameCube titles in front of a targeted audience here. Clearly, according to GI readers in this April 2003 survey, the Xbox has the big mo this season with 21% of readers planning to buy in.

System           %Own  Plan to Buy/
                       Next 12 Months (%)
PC               86%   13%
PS2              75%   11%
GameBoy Advance  58%   10%
GameCube         50%   14%
Microsoft Xbox   44%   21%
Source: Game Informer/Readex, April 2003

Contacts: Andy McNamara, andy@gameinformer.com; Andy Reiner, reiner@gameinformer.com; Rob Borm, rob@gameinformer.com

[Copyright 2003 PBI Media, LLC. All rights reserved.]

COPYRIGHT 2003 PBI Media, LLC
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group