Computer Gaming World - History

History

Early bi-monthly issues were typically 40-50 pages in length, written in a newsletter style, including submissions by game designers such as Joel Billings (SSI), Dan(i) Bunten (Ozark Software), and Chris Crawford. As well, early covers were not always directly related to the magazine's contents, but rather featured work by artist Tim Finkas. In 1986, CGW increased its publication cycle to nine times a year, and the editorial staff included popular writers such as Scorpia, Charles Ardai, and M. Evan Brooks.

In late 1987, CGW introduced a quarterly newsletter called Computer Game Forum (CGF), which was published during the off-months of CGW. The focus of the newsletter was game design, game hints and scenarios, and game development. The newsletter never really took off and only two issues were published (Fall 1987 and Winter 1987) before it was cancelled. Many of the columns which debuted in CGF, such as Scorpion's Tale and The Rumor Bag, were incorporated into CGW, which went monthly in 1988.

The magazine went through significant expansion starting in 1991, with growing page counts reaching 196 pages by its 100th issue, in November 1992. During that same year, Johnny Wilson became editor-in-chief, although Russell Sipe remained as Publisher. In 1993, Sipe sold the magazine to Ziff Davis. Sipe continued on as Publisher until 1995. The magazine kept growing through the 1990s, with the December 1997 issue weighing in at 500 pages. In 1999, Wilson left the magazine and George Jones became editor-in-chief, at a time when print magazines were struggling with the growing popularity of the Internet. Jones' time at the head of the magazine was largely undistinguished, and he was replaced by Jeff Green in 2002.

On August 2, 2006, Ziff Davis and Microsoft jointly announced that Computer Gaming World would be replaced with Games for Windows: The Official Magazine. The final CGW-labeled issue was November 2006, for a total of 268 published editions.

Simultaneously with the release of the final CGW issue, Ziff Davis announced the availability of the CGW Archive. The Archive features complete copies of the first 100 issues of CGW, as well as the 2 CGF issues, for a total of 7438 pages covering 11 years of gaming. The Archive was created by Stephane Racle, of the Computer Gaming World Museum, and is available in PDF format. Every issue was processed through Optical Character Recognition, which enabled the creation of a 3+ million word master index. Although Ziff Davis has taken its CGW Archive site offline, the magazines can be downloaded from the Computer Gaming World Museum.

On April 8, 2008, 1UP Network announced the print edition of Games for Windows: The Official Magazine had ceased, and that all content will be moved online.