Short answers, pulled from the story.
Ralph C. Lally II founded Play Meter magazine in December 1974 from a small office in New Orleans. The publication launched Coin Industry Play Meter to save the dying coin-operated amusement industry following the video game crash of 1977.
Steve Harris led a team of seven playtesters to create the Players Picks column in July 1979. This column introduced a ten-point assessment scale that became the first formal video game review system in the industry.
Founder Ralph Lally was killed in a car accident on the 14th of December 1984. His wife Carol Lally then took over as publisher to keep the magazine alive through the early 1980s video game crash and subsequent recovery.
Hurricane Katrina flooded the three-story headquarters of Play Meter in the Lakeview neighborhood of New Orleans on the 29th of August 2005. The rising waters destroyed the magazine's entire back catalog and erased thirty-one years of archives.
Play Meter magazine published its final issue in June 2018 coinciding with the retirement of publisher Carol Lally. The circulation peaked at 6500 subscriptions in 1991 before declining to 3000 by 2014.