30 years of PC games: journey through the history of the magazine – part 3

We continue with our big review, in which we roll up the history of the PC games from start to finish. In the last part, we have just left 2003 behind us, and that means: We are facing a particularly exciting time. A time when World of Warcraft sweeps the competition off the screen, when world-class consoles can finally keep up with the PC – and when Valve releases a groundbreaking shooter that initially costs many PC gamers a great deal of effort. Because for the first time, many are confronted with Steam, a platform that initially caused a lot of discussion – and today it is impossible to imagine the world of PC games without it.

As in the last two parts of our review, the complete series of articles is also available (in summarized form) as an extra extensive video report. The video has a running time of almost 33 minutes and covers our entire history from 1992 to today – just have a look! Of course you can find the post also on our Youtube channel.

missed article? Here are the other parts of our series:
First part: 1992 to 1997
Second part: 1998 to 2003

2004: Half-Life 2 exclusive

The staff carousel is spinning again this year. Christoph Holowaty inherits the post of editor-in-chief from Christian Müller, he now shares the role with Petra Maueröder (who, by the way, becomes Petra Fröhlich in the same year). Holowaty is best known to readers as a frantic reporter who tirelessly scours development studios around the world and fills the DVD with video reports. By far the most popular topic at this time: Half-Life 2. After the hyped shooter leaked unfinished in October 2003 and then postponed for a whole year, the time has finally come in 2004: Valve invites one magazine per country to test the long-awaited game of recent years. PC Games wins the bid and sends a grinning team to Seattle. The wait was worth it, Half-Life 2 gets the best rating since Wing Commander 3 and sets umpteen new standards. In the extensive 16-page XXL test, Thomas Weiß and Heinrich Lenhardt pulled out all the stops, and the article was well received by the readers. There is also an extensive video report on the DVD with exclusive game scenes.

The Germany-exclusive test for Half-Life 2 was a board: 16 bulging pages, great design, elaborate text and a hammer rating of 96 points.

Source: PC games



Even if Half-Life 2 the cover topic par excellence, something is also happening in terms of content. A new section starts in the same issue that doesn’t exist anywhere else: In “Sneak Peek” we invite several readers to the editorial office, where they can then play a brand new game in detail before it’s released. We then process your impressions into a preliminary test in which all readers tell what they really think about the game. The format is complex, with preparation and review always taking several working days, weekends included. Still, we love our sneak peek! Because where else can you talk to the readers in peace and quiet and get real voices directly while watching? We will keep the sneak peek for many years to come.

Unfortunately, this also applies to the universally hated mobile phone porn ads that have been in the magazine since 2003. The embarrassing ad even grew to a whole page in the next few issues – good for the advertising business, but bad for our image: Many readers complain about the ads and many in the editorial department would rather have kicked the junk stuff out of the magazine today than tomorrow .

Valve makes steam

With Half-Life 2, Steam finally comes into our focus. Valve’s online shop has been around for a year, but it just didn’t play a role until Half-Life 2. Now shooter fans are finally confronted with the new platform. The response is divided, many players hate the idea of ​​being tied to an account and want their games to be on a data carrier in the classic way. The industry, on the other hand, is jubilant, since it finally sees the chance to put a stop to the hated pirated copies that cause heavy losses on the PC. Even if it will be years before other manufacturers get involved with Steam & Co., the concept will prevail in the long term. These days download games with account binding are completely normal and usually make copy protection methods à la Securom obsolete. Patching PC games is also a snap, developers can now fine-tune their work down to the last second and no longer have to worry about what they are going to put on the Goldmaster DVD. After all, the Day 1 patch can fix it before anyone notices. In 2004, of course, all this was still a dream of the future. Ultimately, Valve changed the world of PC gaming forever.

Azeroth opens its gates

The second major topic that is turning the gaming scene completely upside down is, of course, World of Warcraft: the online role-playing game was such a hit at the end of 2004 that even Blizzard was completely overwhelmed by its success. After just a few months, the MMO is being played so intensively that many players do nothing else at all – or only got a taste for it with World of Warcraft and discovered gaming as a hobby for themselves. For PC games, this is both a blessing and a curse. Suddenly there are tons of people who are enthusiastic about playing WoW – but they are simply no longer interested in buying advice for other games. Stupid when you have an issue that consists mainly of tests and previews!

Exhausted, Felix Schütz and layouter Alfonso Costanza (right) show their almost finished design for our WoW poster.

Source: PC games



On the other hand, we can now really work our way through the issue: A small, diverse team will therefore not worry about anything else for the next few months than grazing Blizzard’s online playground from start to finish. There are monthly tips and a huge Azeroth double poster that we will soon have to reproduce umpteen times.

The demand for tips on World of Warcraft is so great that we’re about to tackle our first WoW special. The project becomes an affair of the heart, and there are a surprising number of supporters in the coffee kitchen. A class guide comes from our IT expert, while a basic article comes from a colleague from the video department. Even Oliver Menne, who had actually retired from the magazine a long time ago, hits the keys again in his executive office and contributes a guide on group play. The special issue, modestly christened “The Bible”, is a tremendous success and we reprint several editions. Even after that, the topic of World of Warcraft wouldn’t let us go, but there simply wasn’t room for it in the core team. The logical consequence: We hire more experts and set up our own WoW editorial team, which will produce umpteen special issues and class registers over the next few years.