PC action

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PC action
PC Action Logo.png
description Computer games magazine
publishing company Computec Media
First edition January 1996 (2/1996)
attitude December 2012
Frequency of publication per month
Sold edition 34,980 copies
( IVW  Q4 / 2009)
Range 0.37 million readers
( AWA 2009)
Editor-in-chief Petra Fröhlich
ISSN 0946-6290

The PC Action (short PCA ) was a German computer games - magazine , published by Computec Media in Fuerth . PC Action appeared monthly, usually on the second Wednesday of each month, and had around 150 pages per issue, depending mainly on the number of games currently being released. The magazine had a humorous touch. With the 01/2013 issue, Computec Media discontinued the magazine.

history

The predecessor of PC Action with the same name was a magazine on diskette , also from Computec-Verlag. Apart from the booklet cover and short instructions, the entire content was on the floppy disk - mostly smaller full versions of games, but also shareware programs. Sometimes only a single, but more extensive game was published. The price of the magazine was 19.80 DM. Published games were for example Mysterious Worlds + Pila der Ball (issue 2/1992) or The Neverending Story II (issue 6/1992).

After the disk magazine was discontinued, PC Action was re-launched in early 1996 as a printed magazine with CD-ROM as a supplement. While the first edition cost DM 4.50, the price from issue 4/1996 was DM 7.50. In the beginning, the CD-ROM contained demo versions as well as letters to the editor that could be called up via a special menu. The magazine also appeared briefly as a special edition called PC Action Plus, which also contained one or more full versions on a second CD-ROM - the price at the time was DM 14.80. From issue 1/2000 there was PC Action (and PC Games) with Incite-TV DVD by subscription. Starting with 11/2000, the magazine was also available with DVD in stores.

With the 7/2002 issue, the magazine received its humorous, satirical, sometimes coarse witty and self- deprecating character, which has remained formative to the last, although there was no shrinking from sexist and so-called marginal group jokes. Ambiguous article headings and picture descriptions were defining. The vast majority of the sexist and so-called fringe group jokes were directed against women or Germans from the new federal states . The captions, which were meant to be exclusively funny, were later supplemented by additional serious descriptions. From issue 7/2007 the PC Action cost 5.30 euros, from issue 2/2009 the price was 5.50 euros.

Most recently, the circulation fell to less than 30,000 copies. With the 01/2013 edition published on December 12, 2012, PC Action was finally discontinued, the editors and layouters were transferred to the print and digital activities of the " PC Games ".

The editorial office

The editor-in-chief of PC Action, Heinrich Lenhardt , replaced the long-time editor-in-chief Christian Bigge, who headed the editorial department from the 9/2001 issue to the 11/2006 issue, with the 12/2006 issue. Lenhardt left PC Action in mid-2007 and has been working for Buffed , the Computec Media portal for online games , ever since . Petra Fröhlich took over his work as editor-in-chief . Christian Bigge already formed a triumvirate of senior editors with Christian Müller and Alexander Geltenpoth, who initially headed the editorial team from the first edition 2/1996. Christian Müller only took over sole management with issue 5/1996.

For years Joachim Hesse worked as deputy editor-in-chief and Harald Fränkel as chief of the service. Harald Fränkel answered letters to the editor sent to the editor. The special thing about it was that the answers contained a lot of sarcasm and humor. Joachim Hesse and Ralph Wollner had a very successful category “PC Action cooks”. Various recipes were cooked and filmed in this. The readers were asked to cook the dishes and send pictures of them to the editors.

Most recently, the editorial team consisted of editor-in-chief Petra Fröhlich, chief editor Thorsten Küchler, editors Marc Brehme, Christoph Schuster, Wolfgang Fischer and Alexander Frank, Jürgen Krauss and Michael Grill, the only Austrian in the team. Dennis Blumenthal, Lukasz Ciszewski, Andreas Bertis and Ralph Wollner were employed as freelancers.

After internal restructuring in December 2008, the magazine started in January 2009 with a leaner editorial team and a new layout.

From July 2007, the former print employees Lukasz Ciszewski and Christian Gürnth were responsible for the pcaction.de website. Ciszewski left the site in March 2009 shortly after the relaunch and realignment “Players. Community. Action! ". Gürnth, who has since managed the website with the help of freelancers, announced in June 2010 that he was leaving the editorial team. He now works as a creative director for Gameswelt. Since then, the site has been under the responsibility of the online editor-in-chief Florian Stangl .

Output types

  • PC Action DVD from 16 years of age (DVD also contained demos and full games with an age restriction of 16 years and over)
  • PC Action DVD from 18 years (DVD also contained demos and full game versions with an age restriction from 18 years, only available by subscription or in Austria and Switzerland at the kiosk)
  • PC Action Premium (normal edition of the PC Action DVD from 16 with numerous gimmicks relating to a current game; first published as edition 11/2006)
  • PC Action + Film (normal DVD 16+ and another DVD with a film)

content

magazine

In contrast to the competition, reports, tests and interviews were underlined in a satirical way, especially letters to the editor and captions were mostly commented on with humor that was far from meaning. From the beginning of 2006, neutral signatures matching the image were also printed.

The main categories of the printed edition of PC Action were:

  • News from the PC computer game scene.
  • Previews ( previews ) of PC computer games, which were still in development.
  • Tests ( reviews ) of current PC computer games (recently published or about to be released ).
  • E-sports with information on electronic sports and content such as “Schlag den Pro!”, In which professional players competed against readers of PC Action.
  • Player forum with more detailed presentations of mods and free games.
  • Articles on current PC hardware components related to computer games (e.g. graphics cards , joysticks and computer mice ).
  • Tips, cheats and solutions (in the sense of a computer game, e.g. step-by-step instructions ( walkthrough ) for playing a current computer game).
  • A magazine section with letters to the editor.
  • From issue 4/2007 there was a separate department for film, music and consoles.

Booklet DVD

Type of DVD : DVD-10 (both sides of the DVD written with a maximum of 4.7 GB of memory each)
The data carrier enclosed with the booklet contained demos , videos , mods , patches , drivers and full versions of computer games.

Scoring system

A specially developed rating system was used for the game tests. There was a difference between individual ratings and an overall rating. The individual ratings were in percent for

  • Price-performance
  • graphic
  • Sound
  • control
  • Multiplayer

forgive.

The overall rating was calculated independently of the individual ratings. All points of criticism in the form of percentages were deducted from 100 possible gaming fun percentage points. This resulted in the overall rating in percent.

Circulation statistics

The IVW reported no circulation figures since the third quarter of 2010; This was justified with a change in concept. The last comparative figures are therefore from the fourth quarter of 2009. According to the publisher, the circulation in the first quarter of 2011 was only around 28,000.

In the fourth quarter of 2009, the average monthly circulation according to IVW was 34,980 copies. That is 39.4 percent (= 22,752) fewer issues than in the same quarter of the previous year. The number of subscribers decreased by 11 percent to 8,338 subscribers within a year. In the fourth quarter of 2009, 23.8 percent of readers subscribed to the magazine.

Number of issues sold each month

Number of subscriptions sold each month

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Uwe Mantel: "End of the world moved forward": Off for "PC Action". In: DWDL.de . December 13, 2012, accessed January 5, 2013 .
  2. ↑ Review in the Diskmag Hitdisk 3/1990. Retrieved February 11, 2015 .
  3. ↑ Coverscan PC Action 1/93 at kultboy.com. Retrieved February 11, 2015 .
  4. ↑ Editorial office online in the imprint pcaction.de
  5. ↑ Publisher's information on the edition of PC Action I / 2011