An early cover for what was to be the first (and only) issue of the free magazine known as Re-Play.
I’m cheating here a tad, as this isn’t really an “Article” (per-se), but the first test issue of my free videogames magazine was published 7 years ago today. And whilst the chips were always stacked against Re-Play from the very start, I am still proud of the incredible results that I was able to achieve – especially given the meager resources I had at my disposal, as well as a lack of experience I had in the field. In fact, so good were the results that Re-Play was circulated in over 40 different gaming outlets (including Grainger Games) and had pre-orders of over 25,000 copies. Indeed, I even had plans (and agreements in place) of taking Re-Play nationwide so as to make it the videogames equivalent of NME – long before that music magazine decided to follow the free distribution model and before it was readily available outside tube stations.
Still, and for what it’s worth, I doubt that Re-Play would have been around for too many years afterwards, as the media landscape was changing so to have greater emphasis on online content consumption. And whilst the likes of Edge and Games TM are still around today, it’ll be interesting to see as to whether either of them fold in the next few months – especially as Future Publishing have recently merged with Imagine Publishing.
You can check out the first issue of Re-Play below, and also read its “obituary” here: