PC Zone

PC Zone is dead.

For those who don't know, PC Zone magazine has run for 17 years - is English and is only eight years younger than I am. I've been reading it pretty consistently since my age reached double figures. It was much loved by its readers for its impartiality, wicked sense of humour and knack for finding writing talent in unlikely places including Charlie Brooker and David McCandless. Rhianna Pratchett also wrote for them but not very much.

Now, their demise comes as no great surprise to me. Their readership has only been about 11,000 per month. I was one of those readers but the mag was monthly. The problem with that was that literally everything they printed... I all ready knew. I knew about everything in the news and reviews section weeks before the magazine hit my post box. This has been the case for the past year and I've only continued to subscribe up to now because it's easier than working out how to stop.

But the news that they're folding does sadden me. It's a part of PC gaming heritage dying right there. More than that, though, it's a part of my childhood. Like most geeks, I had a pretty shitty time of it at school and games really helped me get through the bad bits. How did I find out about games? How did I work out which games to buy? Where did I get the game demos? And that's even before we get onto the purile humour (which was awesome, by the way) of the Cybertwats and the like.

So yes. I don't really have anything particularly original to say other than that. PC Zone were great when they were great. Recently they became slightly redundant but for a good 15 years of their 17 year run, they were absolutely peerless. This is my equivalent of speaking at their funeral. Normally I don't like saying things that have all ready been said a billion times on the internet but... I just wanted to let the internet know that Zone will be missed.