LFTE: The Origin Of A Cover Story (Oct 09)

Every month I'll post up my Letter From The Editor when the magazine hits the street for you all to mock or praise.

So without further adieu, here is the letter from the Crackdown 2 issue. Enjoy.

Celebrity and fashion magazines make a splash with mug shots and models. Game Informer has its cover games. The cover story is the single most sought after story that we put in any issue. The trials and tribulations of the birth of a cover story are hard to put into a couple of paragraphs, but I’m going to try.

In terms of the most frequent questions asked by readers, “How do you decide what you put on your cover?” is right up there, with “How do I get a job at Game Informer?” We don’t follow one simplistic formula, but the routine for each cover is about the same.

Sometimes it starts with a game development studio sharing its vision of a new game with us. Other times the public relations team give us the heads up as to when a game is coming to gauge our interest. To give you an idea how far out this process starts, we’ve already had conversations and even seen early footage of games coming out as far away as 2011.

Knowing a game’s name and premise is only half the battle, as we have had upwards of five or six amazing games all vie for the same month’s cover. Sometimes we can work with the publishers and developers to move the announcements around to get all the games we want to showcase, but other times you just have to pass on some amazing products in favor of another. One of the hardest decisions we ever had to make was putting Halo 2 on the cover over the original God of War.

Which brings me to the selection process. Obviously, some games are no-brainers. When Activision approached us with Modern Warfare 2, we already knew that Infinity Ward is talented and makes some of the best games the world has ever seen. But even when it comes to a game like this, we still ask to sit down with the developer so we understand its vision and design goals before we take a look at the game.

New properties are the hardest, but they are also the most exciting, especially if it comes from a developer that doesn’t have much of a history. Batman: Arkham Asylum is a great example, where we looked at Rocksteady’s past, what its limitations were on the previous game it made (Urban Chaos in this case), and evaluated whether we thought with additional resources the companies involved were capable of making a great game. In that case, we thought so, and they did.

We have made other big bets in the past as well. The Chronicles of Riddick, BioShock, Crackdown, and Infamous were all games we were very excited to show the world for the first time. Other breakout hits like Assassin’s Creed, Gears of War, and Uncharted were all shown for the first time on our covers, and all were extensively researched before the decision to put them on the cover was made.

The bottom line is the Game Informer team carefully chooses the games that grace our cover each and every month. No outside source, marketing department, or voice from above influences that decision – just the opinions of our dedicated staff of gamers. We spend months researching new titles to guarantee we can bring you the inside story on those we think are shaping this industry, regardless of whether the game will sell 10 million or 10 thousand.

Cheers,

Andy