GamePro's magazine for parents circa 1993
by Alexander Sliwinski 
{ Oct 1st 2006 at 8:55PM }
Once upon a time there was a magazine to teach parents what video games are really like called PlayRight, but like a news station that only reports good news, it had the half-life of a housefly. A subscription-only magazine lasting four issues from 1993-1994, PlayRight was created by the editors of GamePro as "the first video game publication written expressly for parents."PlayRight's rise and fall is chronicled in Kevin Gifford's "Game Mag Weaseling" on GameSetWatch. After the magazine collapsed, a PlayRight column lived on in GamePro magazine until 2004. Gifford assumes due to shrinking page counts at the magazine the column was cut.
Certainly on the surface, PlayRight was a sincere effort by the best video game magazine at the time to create some good PR for the industry. Sadly, good PR doesn't help if nobody is paying attention to you anymore -- that's when you need marketing, or to be owned lock, stock and barrel by a national video game retail outlet like Game Informer.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Wulkar @ Oct 1st 2006 8:26PM
if GI starts putting in articles for my mom i swear to god i will hurt you.
just kidding. or am i
otakucode @ Oct 1st 2006 8:34PM
A gaming magazine aimed at parents might seem like a good idea on the surface, but it falls apart when you dig any deeper. Parenting magazines out there today that succeed show parents how to make their lives easier and mix in the boring stuff like telling them about things kids like as a side concept. Their real hook is tips for making life easier, claims that raising a kid can be made simple with just a top 10 list, and fear-mongering articles about how their kid is going to be kidnapped at any moment if they don't obliterate their kids pesky independence and privacy.
It's much easier to offload the responsibility of making value judgements about material to a 3rd party like the ESRB, letting them determine things like "a nipple will destroy your childs psyche forever and can only be seen by those 17 and up". It has the added bonus of infantilizing the whole industry, making sure any truly adult games can never make an impact since they won't be carried by regular retail channels and therefore will never be produced.
The last things parents need is a videogame equivalent of the book "Tropic of Cancer" or the movie "Caligula" or the play "Oedipus Rex". Certainly we can sacrifice the potential for creating important, substantive, powerful classics in the videogame medium in order to prevent kids from seeing some blood or a nipple, right? I mean, sure there isn't a single shred of evidence to show such things have ever affected a single child in all of history, but who needs proof, right?
/this post has been sarcasm, brought to you by my personal disgust
Nimby @ Oct 1st 2006 8:37PM
You simply cannot be informative and only helpful. You need to push the audience. They have to be just a little uncomfortable. I mean I do not watch the news because all I hear are terrible acts of others, nature, God, you name it. The worst part, it works. They get better ratings being the first to the scene of a huge car accident. Gross. People do not want a magazine that doesnt spill blood and use goats to resurrect demons. Oh yeah, I am actually a fan of Gamepro, at least they tried.
evolgenius @ Oct 2nd 2006 12:29AM
Just want to say that Gamepro was never the best game magazine, not even in '93. EGM was. I thought Gamepro was crap even as a child.
Jaded @ Oct 2nd 2006 1:52AM
Yeah I have to second comment #4. It wasn't even close. GamePro struck me as being amaturish even when I was 11. Even though there were a few things that EGM did that were laughably bad back in that era, it was still clearly the best mag on the market. Hell, for what it was, Nintendo Power was better than GamePro.
Mark B @ Oct 2nd 2006 2:19AM
GamePro has always sucked.
Always.
More like LamePro.
copa @ Oct 2nd 2006 10:56AM
Let's see. The cover story of the first issue proclaims that. "Like it or not, video games are here to stay, and kids love to play them... Video games are going to be a continuing part of our kid's lives... Your children are ours, don't fuck with us."
The next issue explains that "girls should play video games," and explains why parents should be helping to expand market share, er... I mean participation, to their daughters.
I can't imagine why this wasn't a best-selling publication, right next to SI and People.