Igromania - Igromania History

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.