Computer and Video Games

• 1. Introduction

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  Computer and Video Games landed on British newsstands in November 1981, the first magazine in the United Kingdom dedicated entirely to video games. Nobody else had done it. The home computing market was just finding its feet, arcades were pulling in crowds, and a new publication decided to cover all of it. The first issue ran articles on Space Invaders, Chess, and Othello, alongside advice on how to learn programming. What no one could have known at that moment was that this magazine, known to its readers as CVG, would still be publishing more than two decades later. And long after the print edition folded, a website carrying the same name would serve gamers until 2015. How did a magazine born in 1981 become the longest-running video game media brand in the world? And what did it leave behind when it finally closed?

• 2. The C+VG Hit Era

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  A circulation of 106,000 in the second half of 1986 tells you something about the grip CVG had on the British gaming audience during its peak print years. The magazine ran numerical scores for every game it reviewed, and the highest-rated titles earned a badge called the "C+VG Hit". That small logo became something publishers and developers coveted. Whether a game was a major release or a modest title, landing a C+VG Hit carried real weight with consumers. In 1992, the magazine extended its reach into portable gaming by launching Go!, a handheld gaming supplement bundled with each issue. The magazine published monthly from November 1981 all the way through October 2004, making its print run span more than two decades of an industry that reinvented itself repeatedly during that time.

• 3. The Golden Joystick Legacy

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  In April 1983, CVG published the results of its very first Golden Joystick Awards, alongside photographs from the ceremony held in Berkeley Square. DJ Dave Lee Travis was there to present the award for best game of the year, which went to Jetpac. That ceremony, originally created in 1982 as the magazine's own annual awards event, grew into something far larger than an in-house feature. The Golden Joystick Awards became recognised as the longest-running gaming ceremony in the world. When CVG moved online in 1999, the awards followed, continuing under the CVG.com banner. The awards outlasted the publication itself, carrying forward a tradition that started with a party in Berkeley Square and a single winning game.

• 4. Online and the Final Years

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  CVG launched its website in 1999, the same year the Golden Joystick Awards moved to the web. The site ran YouTube content alongside written coverage, including a series called GTA V O'clock, which tracked news and conspiracy theories around Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto V and Grand Theft Auto Online. CVG was among a small number of publications invited to preview Grand Theft Auto V before its public release on the 17th of September 2013, and again before the PC re-release on the 14th of April 2015. In April 2008, the magazine briefly reappeared in a new printed form called CVG Presents, on a bi-monthly schedule. By early 2014, Future, the company operating CVG's website, had flagged the site for closure. Staff cuts followed in July of that year. Future announced the official closure in December 2014, and on the 26th of February 2015 the website went dark, with all pages redirecting to Gamesradar+, another Future publication. Several writers who had worked for CVG went on to found Video Games Chronicle in 2019.