CTW: Matt, you’re launching what’s basically a grown-up’s multi-format mag. Edge has had this market to itself for five years - why do you think it still sells so poorly? And doesn’t that worry you?

MB: With Edge, you’ve got this magazine that appeals very much to your hardcore gamers, and to people who are in or want to be in the industry, and expanding that beyond a base level of however many thousand of them there are is going to be difficult.

CTW: Surely everyone who’s interested in games wants to be a part of the industry – you just play games all day for money!

MB: Ha. Edge doesn’t really have a problem as such – the magazine makes money, does fine, it’s very popular with the people who like it.

CTW: So was the Spanish Inquisition, I believe.

MB: Eh?

CTW: Never mind.

MB: When Edge was launched, it was never supposed to be a populist title – it was pitched as something not for everyone – it was strictly for the cognoscenti, the hardcore. I don’t think you’ll ever see it competing with the big-selling magazines, that’s not what it’s there for.

CTW: Okay. That brings me, though, to why there isn’t currently a successful multi-format magazine at all in the whole business.

MB: I don’t think that’s necessarily true – I’m aware of three which are all successful on their own terms.

CTW: We’re not talking about "on their own terms", though, we’re talking about mainstream numbers. The three existing multi-formats sell, what, half of what the single top Playstation mag does?

MB: Well, OPM is a phenomenon at the moment, I think it’s slightly unfair to compare it. Playstation magazines at the moment are currently selling more than any kind of games magazines have ever done. I think all the multi-format mags that currently exist are, to some extent, specialist titles – Edge is a specialist title for hardcore industry people, hardcore gamers, people, mostly, who’ve been into games since the 80s. C&VG and Gamesmaster are, to a large extent, kids’ mags, aimed at the same kind of age range that read Smash Hits, Shoot and Match. So it’s easy to argue that there hasn’t really been an attempt at a big mainstream multi-format games magazine since the days of Zero and Ace, and you could even argue that in their own way they were relatively specialist too. One of the interesting things about what we’re trying to do as a new magazine is that we’re trying to make a completely mainstream multi-format men’s mag, and if that does well, that’ll be proof that there’s potentially great life in the multi-format mag market.

CTW: I accept what you’re saying about existing titles being specialist, but that still doesn’t get to why it’s taken this long for someone to try a mainstream one. Surely it’s a really obvious thing to do?

MB: The gaming scene has changed a lot in recent times. Something like C&VG, I think, started out as a very general gaming mag, and has retained a lot of the flavour that it always had, and since the games market has become significantly older since then, people growing up with games and not giving the pastime up in the way that people maybe did before. Over a period of time, then, something like C&VG starts to look like a kids’ mag, whereas when it started out it was more mainstream. So there’s a new mainstream now that the mag business just hasn’t approached yet.

CTW: I guess you’ve done lots of research on this – how many people actually have more than one games format?

MB: You know, I really haven’t done any research on this at all.

CTW: Doh!

MB: I’m sure we have some figures there. I have no idea what they are, though.

CTW: How did you get this job again?

MB: The thing about this mag, I think, is that we’re trying to reach not just people who own two games machines – we’re talking to people, possibly, who own a Playstation and have access to a PC at work, or people who have only one machine, but are sufficently interested in the whole games scene to want to know about what’s happening on other machines anyway. Also, we’re talking about a market where systems come and systems go. The PC, I think, will certainly always be here, but there’s no guarantee of that with the Playstation, say – I think Sega and Nintendo’s experiences show that this can be a hard market to hold on to – and personally, I’m a bit sick of starting magazines up knowing that they’ve got a finite shelf life of five years or so.

CTW: This is something I wanted to ask you about. Because it seems to me that we’re slowly but palpably moving away from multiple games platforms as a concept – I don’t think the Dreamcast’s going to be a big hit, and I think when it goes down it’ll take Sega with it as a hardware manufacturer. Nintendo are having a pretty hard time with the N64 – the hot gossip in industry circles is that they’ve effectively given up on it already, and it only takes the briefest of glances at the release schedules to find some support for that theory. There seems to be a growing feeling that Playstation 2, when it arrives, will be backwards compatible –

MB: Which would be an incredibly good thing.

CTW: - a fantastically great thing, yes. And what all this suggests to me is that as little as four or five years from now, you’ll have a situation where there’s the Playstation and the PC, and that’s all. Playstation IS going to move to being a VHS kind of brand.

MB: That’s completely possible, I think. I’m well aware that this magazine is likely to be 80% concerned with those two formats, with Playstation being the dominant of those. Other stuff like (chiefly) the N64, Dreamcast when it’s out, maybe a bit of Game Boy, will tend to squeeze in around the edges. But yes, I think you’re right – effectively, there’s going to be a polarisation, with the games market splitting into two big camps. You’ll have the more cerebral games on the PC, and then the very graphics-intense, high-actiony kind of games on console.

CTW: Or in other words, racing games and Command & Conquer / Quake clones.

MB: Exactly. From where we’re sitting right now, that looks like the future.

CTW: Do you actually see the PC as being a genuine force in gaming? Because we’re always reading stories from publishers and retailers moaning about how badly PC games sell, especially compared to console stuff.

MB: I think there’s still a relatively small pool of people buying all the PC games, and it’s not expanding as much as you would think, or hope, into the general population. We’ve definitely got the Playstation to thank for games being as much a part of the public consciousness as they are now. So, er, I don’t really know what I think about the PC. Certainly it’s always going to be here, I can’t see anything taking over from it as a business tool, and as long as it’s there as a business tool, there’s always going to be people playing games on it. So it’s definitely a force, how important a force is still unclear.

CTW: What concerns me is that, I feel, there’s a lot of, for a better word, resentment from console owners towards the PC generally. It’s seen as this big £1,000 lump of hardware that most of them have no real aspirations towards at all, full of these weird, forbidding-looking games that make very little sense in a magazine context – you really have to play them to understand what they’re about. And I’m wondering if there’s enough merit in having the PC coverage at all, to overcome the negative feeling it’ll generate amongst the mainstream audience that’s been brought into the whole scene by the accessibility and user-friendliness of the Playstation.

MB: I think, yes, "casual" gamers are mostly into consoles, mostly into the PS, that’s completely true.

CTW: And you don’t think they’re going to go "Ooh, PC, techy, geeky, anoraky, I don’t want anything to do with this"?

MB: I think it’s quite possible that they won’t read some of the PC stuff, yes. I think the challenge for us is to make the PC stuff interesting and accessible enough for them to want to read it, enjoy it, and at least think about playing PC games, or at least check them out next time they’re near a PC.

CTW: I’m thinking more about it putting them off the magazine in the first place – seeing an anoraky techno-geek mag and just dismissing it immediately.

MB: It’s not going to look like an anoraky techno-geek mag. The whole reason for this mag existing is to take gaming, and say "This is part of mainstream culture now, join in". We’re saying "This is for everyone now, it’s not just spotty boys in bedrooms, it’s young guys in the City playing games at weekends with their mates, it’s people on oilrigs, in prisons –

CTW: Wow! They have Playstations in prisons now? That’s what I call penetration.

MB: - well, I’m going to have to do my research on that one. Breakout, they play, I think...

CTW: I think you can tell people that PCs aren’t geeky, techy things until you’re blue in the face, but they still won’t believe you.

MB: Well, hopefully there’ll be a degree of osmosis from the increasing presence of PCs generally in peoples’ lives. But we’ll see.

CTW: You’re on record as saying this mag is going to be like Q, but about video games. What does that mean, exactly?

MB: It’s shorthand for "This is a magazine that’s popular, male-oriented but not exclusively, 20s-30s but not exclusively, reviews-and-news-based magazine that makes an entertaining read for someone on the train", or lying on the sofa watching Brookside or whatever they do – it’s not meant to be a technical handbook, it’s not meant to be an industry guide, it’s meant to be an entertaining, mainstream mag for blokes (mostly). I compare it with Q and Empire and so on because those are obvious points of reference, because they're well-know, successful magazine for subjects that aren’t video games, but appeal to similar sorts of people as those who play video games. We’re going to cover the subject in a fairly serious kind of way, but a way that doesn’t completely suck the fun out of it.

CTW: So you’re going to be stepping away from the current groundswell of style that’s happening in, say, Playstation mags at the moment, with gratuitous tits everywhere and lots of talking about lager?

MB: Well, I never stepped towards it. It’s certainly not going to be full of gratuitous tits or anything. If you want an idea of tone, then the nearest things are going to be the likes of Q and Empire. There’s definitely been an increase in the laddy element of console mags especially – they’ve cottoned onto the idea that they can hire Page 3 girls relatively cheaply and get them to stand around in bikinis. They’ve been influenced by things like Max Power, which has done very well, and they’re talking to the same kind of people, so why not copy that? But this magazine is for an older, more mature audience, and it’s certainly not going to be afraid of sex, but it’s not going to be full of gratuitous tits and bums either.

CTW: How do you feel about those kinds of mags? Do you think they’re helping things move towards the mainstream by using this kind of vaguely offensive, laddish, gratuitous bimbo thing, or do you think that’s going to put off more people in the potential mainstream audience than it attracts? What I’m trying to get at is the conflict between definitions of "mainstream" – you could say that the Lad thing defines the mainstream at the moment, with the success of things like FHM and Loaded. Where does that leave something aiming for a mainstream market, but taking the slightly more sophisticated approach?

MB: I suppose what I think about that is that there’s many mainstreams (or at least a couple). You’ve got your Sun kind of mainstream, which these mags are very much in the style of, and you’ve also got your slightly more educated mainstream, served by, if you want to keep the analogy going, broadsheet papers like the Guardian.

CTW: That’s sort of my point – what you’re talking about there is really the exact opposite of mainstream. Broadsheets sell, what, a fifth to a tenth of what tabloids do? FHM sells, I don’t know, five to ten times as many copies as Arena? It sounds to me like you’re sort of pitching at the Arena market, and that’s almost the anti-mainstream to me. It seems like you’re saying "We’re going to be this mainstream games mag, intelligent and sophisticated but fun", but intelligent and sophisticated has never, ever been the mainstream. Isn’t there a problem there?

MB: Q is the mainstream as far as music is concerned. Not as far as the general audience is concerned, but it’s the biggest-selling monthly music title by a long way. This is a specialist subject magazine in the same way that they are, in the same way that Top Gear is a mainstream magazine – it’s an intelligent magazine that sells more than anything else in the same market.

CTW: Now, you say you’re going for the mainstream, not the absolute specialist audience of something like Edge. But Edge, surely, is currently being sold to exactly the intelligent, mature, sophisticated gamer you’re talking about? Aren’t you going to stand on its toes somewhat? An intelligent, mature, magazine, that’s bigger and cheaper, more accessible –

MB: - and isn’t supplying the Edge reader with the degree of in-depth information that they’re used to getting and want. It won’t be full of industry stuff in the same way that Edge is, it won’t be full of extensive interviews with programming teams in the way that Edge is, it won’t be covering new technology, stuff that won’t be coming out until the next year and the year after, in the depth that Edge does.

CTW: So no tedious programmer interviews, then? Hurray!

MB: We ARE going to talk to programmers and developers, but not to the lengths that Edge does, not over six and eight pages. Two pages, maybe.

CTW: With much smaller pictures, hopefully.

MB: Oh no, still lots of big pictures of their feet and stuff.

CTW: And their beards.

MB: And their beards, yes. But our audience, the audience I envisage buying this magazine –

CTW: - want to see pictures of beards?

MB: ...will have a degree of interest in the people behind the games, just not an over-riding one. They’ll want interviews with them much more like the ones in Empire, Neon and so on – relatively short and sweet, because –

CTW: - they’re not very interesting?

MB: Because that’s the level of interest. A single page, 600-800 words, a nice picture on the opposite page, that’s much more up our street. I hope this magazine will appeal to the industry, a major, attractive magazine about their business that you wouldn’t be ashamed to be seen reading on the bus, but it’s not aimed at the industry, it’s not going to be an industry analysis mag in nearly the way that Edge is. I’m after the largest possible cross-section of gameplayers that I can get.

CTW: So are you harbouring secret hopes that this magazine is going to be a trailblazer for a whole new way of videogames-magazine life, a less embarrassing thing to tell people you’re involved with.

MB: There’s nothing secret about it! I’m looking to create a magazine that’ll stand comparison with all the big mainstream culture magazines that people respect, the ones we’ve talked about. If that does anything at all to raise the profile not only of the games industry but also the games magazine business, then fantastic. And if that starts to make the whole thing more respected, then that’ll be brilliant.

CTW: I think being less completely terrible would make the whole games mag business more respected...

MB: I don’t think it’s completely terrible at all – there’s good and bad, I think there are an awful lot of good games magazines out there at the moment.

CTW: Name five.

MB: Well... Edge is a good magazine, PC Gamer is a good magazine, N64 is a good magazine, C&VG is a good magazine... how many’s that?

CTW: Four.

MB: Um... (pause)... Official Playstation Magazine! That’s a good magazine.

CTW: Goodnight everybody! And finally, any thoughts on the name yet? You just know something like Format Power’s going down the toilet practically before it starts with such a terrible name, it’s clearly an important thing to get right.

MB: The name isn’t decided yet. I’m pretty sure in my own mind of what it’s going to be, but it’s not official. What I will say is that it’s almost certainly going to be a single-word title, that might, in the same way as Edge or Empire, only have passing relevance to the industry concerned.

CTW: Looking forward to the first issue of "Lara", then. See you on the news-stands.