LEVEL in Romania
In September 1997 Vogel Publishing Romania launches the first Romanian gaming magazine called "LEVEL INTERNATIONAL GAMES MAGAZINE". Today it is the leading computer games magazine in Romania with 21.000 magazines per issue and 79.000 readers per issue. LEVEL Romania saw its ups and downs in its over a decade of activity.
The magazine includes a DVD since 2006, it was the second Romanian magazine to include a DVD, after XtremPC. The magazine also features a full game every issue since 2002, a very controversial decision back in the day because of the games' quality, which varied from issue to issue.
The longest lasting author of LEVEL Romania is Marius Ghinea, who joined the team back in 1998 and raised the standards by writing high quality reviews, correlating gaming to forms of art and by having a very "refined taste" in games. Other authors that deserve to be mentioned for outstanding activity over the years: Mr. President, Claudiu 'Claude' Gedo, Wild Snake, Sebah, Mihail 'Mike' Stegaru, Mihai 'Mitza' Sfrijan, Sebastian 'Locke' Bularca, Vladimir 'Ciolan' Ciolan. LEVEL Romania was in direct competition with PcGames4Fun, which got closed, and used to be in competition with GameOver (which featured only 16 issues), the latter being considered by many to be the best gaming magazine ever written in Romania so far.
In 2007 LEVEL Romania organized an event called "Level-fest" aka "Viva la Level-ution", which would mark a successful re-tooling of their magazine. The even was held in Bucharest, in a club called "Fire".
In 2008 LEVEL Romania held the contest "Tu faci jocurile" (You make the games) in which they awarded a team of programmers 5000 Euros for creating an original and entertaining video game (you could only enter the contest if you were an independent team, not part of a company).
Starting with 2009 LEVEL has sometimes given 2 full games with certain issues and is also heavily promoting interesting Indie Games.
Currently Level is the only Romanian printed games magazine left on the market.
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