Total PC Gaming was a monthly magazine published by Imagine Publishing

Imagine Publishing

Imagine Publishing is a UK-based magazine publisher, which publishes a number of video games, computing, creative and lifestyle magazines. It was founded on 14 May 2005, and launched with a core set of six gaming and creative computing titles. In November 2005 it acquired the only retro games...

, launched in 2007 it ran until March 2010. The magazine featured videogame industry news, game reviews, hardware reviews, and sections dedicated to fans of retro gaming and Massively multiplayer online game

Massively multiplayer online game

A massively multiplayer online game is a multiplayer video game which is capable of supporting hundreds or thousands of players simultaneously. By necessity, they are played on the Internet, and usually feature at least one persistent world. They are, however, not necessarily games played on...

s.

Staff

The staff included editor Russell Barnes, who had been at the helm since issue 2, as well as Games Editor Ben Biggs, who wrote a blog on the magazine's website, Sam Bandah, who ran the Letters page and designer Andy Salter. Stuart Campbell regularly freelanced for TPCG and wrote the monthly "Why I hate PC gamers" column for issues 3-12. Freelancer David Crookes produced a monthly two-page interview with many big names and some old school PC content was also taken from past issues of Retro Gamer. Freelancer James Pikover produced monthly hardware reviews, as well as the 2008 holiday gift guide special.

Review scores

Total PC Gaming scored games reviews out of ten, and only two have achieved a perfect score, Fallout 3

Fallout 3

Fallout 3 is an action role-playing game released by Bethesda Game Studios, and the third major installment in the Fallout series. The game was released in North America, Europe and Australia in October 2008, and in Japan in December 2008 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360...

and Grand Theft Auto IV

Grand Theft Auto IV

Grand Theft Auto IV is a 2008 open world action video game published by Rockstar Games, and developed by British games developer Rockstar North. It has been released for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 video game consoles, and for the Windows operating system...

. The lowest score was 2, which is jointly held by The Dark Legions and Soldier of Fortune: Payback.

Format change

When the title was launched, one of the main selling points was that there were no extras attached to the magazine, thus keeping the price (£3.99) lower than the competitors, PC Zone

PC Zone

PC Zone was the first magazine dedicated to games for IBM-compatible personal computers to be published in the United Kingdom. Earlier PC magazines such as PC Leisure, PC Format and PC Plus had covered games but only as part of a wider remit. PC Zone was founded in 1993.The magazine was published...

and PC Gamer

PC Gamer

PC Gamer is a magazine founded in Britain in 1993 devoted to PC gaming and published monthly by Future Publishing. The magazine has several regional editions, with the UK and US editions becoming the best selling PC games magazines in their respective countries...

, who both retailed at £5.99 and were sold in a sealed plastic bag that included a DVD that contained extra content. However, with the release of issue 11, Total PC Gaming had changed to match this format, and had raised the price to £5.49.

The end

On the 20th March 2010 a letter was sent out to the magazine's subscribers stating that issue 31 will be the final issue. No reason for the closure was provided. Imagine Publishing director Damian Butt told MCV: "Imagine Publishing can confirm that following a period of review it has decided to close Total PC Gaming magazine with immediate effect. All staff have moved onto other magazines within the company. The website www.TotalPCGaming.com will continue to run as part of the NowGamerNetwork. Issue 31 will be the last to be published.

"The support from our advertisers and readers has been fantastic and it's always a shame to close a magazine, especially one that is still profitable, but following the widespread delisting of PC games magazines from many magazine-selling outlets, we felt that the team deserved to be working on projects with greater future potential.

"We are currently deciding whether to continue to run a regular digital edition of the magazine on our popular global iPhone/iPad platform."