PC Gamer

• 1. Introduction

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  PC Gamer arrived in the United Kingdom in November 1993, at a moment when personal computing was still something of an enthusiast's pursuit. Within a few years, both its British and American editions had become the best-selling PC games magazines in their respective countries. But that commercial success is only part of the story. How did a magazine born from floppy discs and FMV sequences build a reputation sturdy enough to outlast most of its rivals? And what does it mean that Baldur's Gate 3, in August 2023, became the first game the UK edition ever rated at 97%? Those questions open into a richer story about how PC Gamer turned the act of reviewing software into something resembling a cultural institution.

• 2. The Score That Matters

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  Baldur's Gate 3 crossed a threshold in August 2023 that no game had crossed before in the UK edition: a rating of 97%. Before that review, the ceiling had held at 96%, shared by Kerbal Space Program, Civilization II, Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Minecraft, Spelunky, and Quake II. That list alone is a kind of canon. The US edition runs its own parallel scale. Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, Half-Life 2, and Crysis share the top mark of 98% there, a ceiling that still stands. On the opposite end of the UK scale, Big Brother: The Game earned a 2%. Its sequel, Big Brother 2, received something stranger: N/A%, with the review explaining that the editors would put the same effort into giving it a mark as the developers had made creating the game. In issue 255, dated August 2013, the score of 2% was matched again by the re-released Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude, which had originally earned 3% on its first launch. In the US edition, Mad Dog McCree holds the record for the lowest score: 4%, which unseated the previous low of 5% given to Skydive!.

• 3. The Disc That Came With It

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  From the very beginning, the UK edition shipped with a 3.5-inch floppy disc. Starting with issue 11, a CD demo disc labelled CD Gamer ran alongside the floppy disc edition, and that first CD compiled all the content from the previous ten issues' discs. The single CD later expanded to two. For a period, a DVD edition offering 9 GB of content ran in parallel with the two-CD version, until the CD Gamer edition was retired as of issue 162. By August 2011, the UK magazine announced it would drop the disc entirely as of issue 232, replacing it with more pages and exclusive gifts. The American edition had its own version of this history. In the mid-to-late 1990s, when full motion video was a marquee feature of PC games, PC Gamer US produced elaborate FMV sequences for its CD-ROM that featured one of the editors on screen. To reach the demos, patches, and reviews on the disc, readers had to navigate a virtual basement that played like a classic PC game, specifically evoking Myst. It was inside that basement sequence that the magazine's mascot, Coconut Monkey, was introduced, arriving just as the editor who anchored the FMV sequences was leaving. In September 2011, the US edition announced it was dropping the demo disc too, promising a larger magazine on heavier paper stock and moving disc content online. There is one darker chapter in the history of the cover disc: the July 1998 issue of the Slovenian, Swedish, and UK editions shipped infected with the Marburg virus, which CNN Money described as a "widespread threat."

• 4. Editions and Reach

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  The American sister edition of PC Gamer launched in June 1994, a few months after the UK original. Both are published thirteen times per year, with two issues appearing in December, though variations occur. Future plc publishes both. Beyond the two flagship editions, a number of regional versions have existed. The Malaysian edition was discontinued in December 2011. The Russian edition ceased publication in December 2008. A Spanish edition titled PC Juegos y Jugadores also closed, in 2007. The Swedish edition took a different path. Rooted in the UK edition, it grew more independent over time, largely because of the outsized popularity of PC games relative to console games in Sweden, and now produces most of its own material. An Australian edition was published monthly by Perth-based Conspiracy Publishing from August 1998, though it appears to have been discontinued sometime in mid-to-late 2004. In 1999, the US operation, then operating under the name Imagine Media, purchased the rival publication PC Games and folded its staff into PC Gamer. In 2018, Future acquired the Australian video game magazine and website PC PowerPlay from nextmedia and began incorporating its articles into the online version of PC Gamer.

• 5. Voice and Community

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  The PC Gamer UK podcast started on the 4th of May 2007 and ran 93 episodes before its final release on the 5th of July 2013. Its rotating cast included Chris Thursten, Tom Senior, Graham Smith, Tom Francis, and Marsh Davies. Ross Atherton hosted until his departure in June 2009, followed by Tim Edwards until his own departure in 2012, after which hosting rotated between Chris Thursten and Graham Smith. What began as a monthly podcast shifted to a fortnightly schedule. Listeners submitted questions via Twitter, and staff discussed games they were playing alongside news from the industry. The podcast returned in March 2016 on a weekly schedule. The magazine's online community went through its own disruption when the UK site joined the Computer and Video Games network, which gathered Future plc's gaming magazines under one roof. Many long-standing forum members left, citing cramped spacing, heavy advertising, and slow loading times. The blog introduced alongside the transition was widely seen as the one welcome feature of the move. In 2010, PC Gamer relaunched its website by merging the online communities of both the US and UK editions into a single site, bringing together contributors and forums from both sides of the Atlantic. The PC Gaming Show at E3, which PC Gamer and Future launched in 2015, extended that community presence into one of gaming's largest annual trade events.

• 6. What the Pages Carry

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  Each issue of the UK edition is organized around recurring sections that give readers a consistent frame. The Eyewitness and Previews sections cover the industry's near future. Send collects reader letters across two two-page spreads. At least one special feature per issue takes on a broader topic, such as the environmental impact of PC gaming. A review section covers new releases and revisits titles reissued on budget. Extra Life reports on modding culture and older games. Systems handles hardware, from video cards to monitors. The back page, called It's All Over, is reserved for game-related artwork. One notable example reproduced Salvador Dali's The Persistence of Memory with objects from the game Portal substituted in. A feature called Gamer Snap, which printed amusing reader-submitted photographs, was eventually retired and replaced with Guess the Game, where readers submitted Microsoft Paint drawings of memorable game scenes for others to identify. Subscribers to the UK edition receive a version of the magazine with no headlines on the front cover, only the masthead and the BBFC rating. That small distinction has stayed consistent throughout the magazine's run in continuous monthly publication since 1993.