Igromania

Igromania
Editor-in-chief Alexey Makarenkoff
Categories Video games
Frequency Monthly
Publisher 1997–April 2003 – Igromania-M (Игромания-M)
May 2003–September 2013 – TekhnoMir (ТехноМир)
October 2013–current – Igromedia (Игромедиа)
Total circulation
(2009)		 ~190,000
Year founded 1997
First issue September 1997
Country Russian Federation
Language Russian
Website Igromania
ISSN 1560-2580

Igromania (Russian: Игромания, Russian for "Game Mania") is a monthly Russian video game magazine published in Moscow and distributed in Russia and the CIS countries. It was started in September 1997. The circulation in June 2009 was 190,000 copies (the largest in Europe). Each issue contains 208 pages. The magazine comes with a poster, four stickers, and two DVD disks.

In its early years, Igromania focused mainly on solutions and guides to videogames gradually enlarging the variety of content topics and finally moving solutions and guides to the accompanying CD and later DVD.

Igromania is published by Igromedia publishing house, along with fantasy & science fiction magazine Mir Fantastiki.

Igromania History

The first issue of Igromania came out in September 1997. The magazine was founded by Evgeny Isupov and Alexander Parchuk who were both originally engaged in publishing books in Best Computer Games series and later decided to enter the magazine publishing business.

The print run of the first issue was about 16,000 copies. Due to massive returns, the number of printed copies of consequent issues was significantly reduced. Originally, the magazine was black-and-white with only the cover being in color. Several issues were printed on a Risograph printer. It was planned to start full color printing in the summer of 1998 but the August crisis in the country forced to postpone such plans.

During the first years of publication, the editors could not decide upon the game platform preference of the magazine. If the first issue carried reviews of only a few PlayStation games, the following issue was entirely dedicated to games on this platform. Very soon the magazine focused on PC games and this focus continues to remain unchanged till now with the only exception of Videomania section on one of its DVDs.

In 1999, Denis Davydov, who had previously worked in Hacker magazine and even before that had created Game World Navigator magazine, became editor-in-chief of Igromania. He initiated dramatic reforms in the magazine and, by 2002, the magazine completely changed its looks and content. Guides and solutions gave way to the widest spectrum of content: game news, previews, reviews, articles about hardware, software, the Internet, game modding and development, features, editors' personal columns, online and desktop games, cheats, retro games, cybersport, computer game competitions, and three hotlines (software, games, and game modding).

The DVDs that come with every issue of Igromania are very popular and attract a great attention. These disks carry content of all sorts. It is often said that many tend to buy Igromania only because of these disks.

In 2004, Videomania emerged as part of the magazine. Started as intro movies for each disk, it soon turned into a separate section. Videomania now has its own disk and is produced by a studio headed by Anton Logvinov. This studio also produces a regular television program about PC and videogames for A-One channel and video materials for Igromania website. All Videomania movies are dubbed by professional actors, such as Boris Repetur, one of the anchors of Ot Vinta! program that ran on Russian TV from 1994 to 1998.

Each issue of Igromania carries 30 to 60 pages of commercial ads. This relatively small amount of ads (considered to be small as the total size of the magazine is 216 pages) is explained by the publisher due to high advertizing prices.

Vision

Simplicity and clarity of information published in Igromania are the basic principles that the editors follow so that the published texts can be understood by the widest audience. Yet, unlike Best Computer Games magazine, Igromania does not avoid videogame slang.

Content Topics

Below is the list of permanent magazine content topics:

Disks

Every issue of Igromania comes with 2 dual-layer DVDs. One of them contains only video: trailers, video news, reports from special events produced by Igromania, and episodes of Ot Vinta! show. The second disk contains game demos, mods, online games installers (time limited or completely free versions), patches, useful software, flash games, cheat codes, saves, trainers, wallpapers, utilities for modding, and other useful things.

Industry Discussions

Starting from 2004, Igromania from time to time publishes controversial columns by leading industry analysts about the current situation on the Russian game development and distribution market causing thought provoking discussions among local publishers and developers. One of such columns Say No to License, by Mikhail Verbitsky, published in May 2006 launched one of the hottest discussions among Russian publishers and developers.

Exclusive

Igromania continues to provide to the Russian readers more and more exclusive materials about major Western and local game releases, as well as interviews with game developers. In the spring of 2005, Igromania was one of the three magazines (the others were Game Informer and PC Gamer UK) to publish the first preview of Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars. In April 2007, Igromania was one of the first magazines in the world (alongside PC Gamer) to publish the first details about Guild Wars 2 and Guild Wars: Eye of the North.

Management team

Editorial Team

Igromania's editorial team, as of December 2013:

External links