Other titles would soon follow, but before the
next of them joined the fold, Computec Media had issues of its own to consider: Despite some initial success from the launch of new consumer titles in the UK (PlayStation World quickly becoming second to Future’s official magazine), the same success was alluding the company’s US operations. After just six months the magazines Incite PC Gaming and Incite Video Gaming magazines, as well as the trade website MCV Now, were all closed down – along with the company’s San Francisco office. In fairness, with the fallout of the burst of the
dotcom bubble and the overconfidence that had saturated many internet businesses, 2001 was not a good period for games magazines or their websites. All but the most established magazines were closing due to falling advertising revenues and the expected income from online ventures was failing to make up the difference. Games media’s problematic transition was
highlighted in a controversial interview, not in MCV but in CTW, in which Future CEO (and ex-CTW editor) Greg Ingham was asked to defend a share value that had plummeted from £1.3 billion to just £35 million in under a year. In a letter responding to the article that he implied was a hatchet job, Ingham made the charge that CTW wasn’t doing that well either, saying that it was ”getting caned by MCV”. On that final point, at least, he may have been correct.
However, after its US misadventures, Computec Media was also in some difficulty, to the extent that in March 2002, Stuart Dinsey completed a management buy-out, taking ownership of MCV, Develop and the recently relaunched ToyNews. In the process of simultaneously acquiring the assets of the ailing CTW that its ex- editor had called out, Intent Media was born.
WELCOME TO E3
INDUSTRY RELATIONS CTW’s death spasm was to birth a new rival. Writing for
GamesIndustry.Biz in 2017, the site’s launch editor Rob Fahey – who wrote for CTW before it was closed – wrote of the frustrations of working on a weekly trade magazine in an era where the rise and importance of websites was making print as redundant as he had breifly been. “Print no longer made sense” he wrote of his reminiscences; “The time taken to lay out, proof, print and distribute a magazine was short-circuited by the immediacy of the web.” His words might have been laced with some bitterness, but he was right. After pitching the idea of a gaming industry news
site to Eurogamer Network, Fahey was given the resources to launch
GamesIndustry.Biz on June 10th, 2002, just three months after CTW had been absorbed by MCV. “
GamesIndustry.Biz came along and did something
really exciting” says Dinsey. “They moved everything forwards [and] provoked me into investing heavily in online, so that MCV was able to become a significant online brand.” Central to MCV’s digital expansion was the
Jeremy Vine presents the first MCV Awards.
hiring of Johnny Minkley who replaced Samantha Loveday as the magazine’s editor in 2004. Loveday was another CTW veteran, joining MCV in 2000 as deputy editor and taking over the helm as Lisa Carter became increasing involved in the launch of new and acquired titles. Minkley’s background, however, was
September 2023 MCV/DEVELOP | 19
Visitors to E3 when the LA show was in its pomp will recall walking into the main hall beneath the welcoming sight of an MCV banner. It was just a logo over the door, of course, but to anyone attending from the UK, it felt like entering home territory. . “It was a big deal” recalls Stuart Dinsey.
“I
can still remember when Alex [Moreham] and I flew to Boston to do that deal. We went for one night to meet somebody to say that we were really important from the UK and we’d like to have a contra partnership. The one thing I wanted out of it was that banner, and we got it. It made the UK games industry feel at home.”
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