GMIndie have released the first issue of their new magazine, Game Maker’s Digest. It won’t replace GMIndie Magazine.
The magazine, which is 40 pages long, features a wide variety of content starting with Game Maker news which refreshingly hasn’t just been copied and pasted from elsewhere. Next up is an interview with Ablach Blackrat which is followed by a “Reports” section providing a current status update for the Game Maker Community Game, Game Maker and YoYo Games.
YoYo Games’ competition 5 entries Ninja Penguin and Zoo Escape 3D are put head to head and a large number of games are showcased at the back of the magazine. The “Articles” section contains a strange quote from a Game Maker user regarding Game Maker for PSP (even stranger given GMIndie that had an exclusive insight into it!) and a look at the amusing nakedgm website which Brian attributes to Overbyte.
Also included are a fonts tutorial, a chat-bot conversation Brian had and a puzzle page.
To gain access to the magazine you are required to register at a special forum. Apparently I am not allowed to post the link here.
I suggest making it so you just need to enter an email to subscribe (and of course add an unsubscribe button within the email). The fact that you need to enter a bunch of information just to read the magazine is silly.
Creating the account is subscribing…
Sorry, not interested in creating an account or subscribing.
I must say, it has wonderful content, that i actually was interested in for once. I however did want to pull some hairs trying to get it.
To What Ever Foolish Idiot Made It Register Only:
If you ever want more then a handful of people, you are gonna need to make a free download. It seems like a great service to ‘automatically send you new issues’ but it’s going to get old quick and no-one is going to want to play your silly game. Perk up, let your ego go. You will have more people reading if you make it a non-register. Keep the e-mail service, it’s a great idea, just only for those who want it.
Otherwise, very good job with the entire thing and I look forward to #2.
I’m not going to subscribe. Quite frankly, it’s their loss if I choose not to read their magazine due to their stupid subscription.
I won’t submit this comment until it’s fully downloaded so I can read it and then comment on the content. I don’t really notice the download speed being slow like NAL said since I’m already on dial-up anyway, but I don’t like the fact that it makes you wait 60 seconds before you can actually download it. Use a better file host or something.
I don’t particularly like the fact that you have to subscribe to register (or “subscribe”) on the forum to get a download link. It should be optional and only if you want an email with the link sent to you, but not a necessity. That would be like big name magazines not publishing their issues for newsstands and leaving it for subscribers only, just without the paying for a subscription.
*30 minutes later*
I didn’t have time to read it all, but from what I did read it was alright. I really didn’t notice too many errors either which is always nice as well. I’ll read through it more when I have more time.
Bad points:
The subscription. I did it for the sake of seeing what it’s like, I’ll just block the sender email if I don’t like it. But the vast majority of people aren’t going to want to register just for one magazine series, and they’re cutting out potential advertisements like a GMC topic because, as far as I’m aware, GMC don’t allow content you strictly have to register to see.
The host. I’m downloading a 3.7MB file at dial-up speed, and had to wait 60 seconds for it to start the download anyway, because it’s one of these lousy Rapidshare clones.
I’ll comment on the content itself when it’s actually finished downloading (which it’s been doing for five minutes now).
EDIT: The content wasn’t actually that bad. And, despite the odd stupidly skewed screenshot, nor was the graphical design. There were a few errors (you need to learn how to use apostrophes, of course) in spelling as such, and some of the things said were fairly meaningless, but on the whole it was a good read. Will be looking forward to Issue 2.
I got an email in my inbox. They have you subscribe so they can email you the weekly magazine… O_O
Better than their other magazine I might add…
Not in the mood to subscribe to something I don’t even know if I’ll like. I don’t see why they feel the need to force people to subscribe just to view an issue.