digiElement Goes To The DVD

Electronic Gaming Business, April 7, 2004

Just as all games marketers are experimenting with ways of presenting their medium more effectively on G4, SpikeTV, and GSN, others are playing with DVDs as the natural evolution of printed games magazines and hint books. New York-based digiElement is among the first DVD-zines to emerge in the genre, a mix of game and anime content. Going into its second issue, and with an initial circulation of 5,000, digiElement is being distributed at anime conventions and New York Internet cafes. A six-issue annual subscription runs $29.95.

In our viewing of the well-crafted first issue, the DVD follows many of the conventions set down in the mid 1990s by long defunct CD-ROM-based IE (Interactive Entertainment). Staff voices narrate and evaluate game footage in a series of reviews and previews. For now, managing editor Henry Wong and editorin-chief David Chen are getting their games footage either from the Web or directly from the games themselves, but to their credit, five-person staff at digiElement are doing a good job of highlighting the medium's moments of drama and visual creativity.

"We want to place this in video game, anime and mass multimedia retail outlets," says Wong. "This so-called alternative entertainment is about ready to capture more audience than people thought, and we have the technology to do that," adds Chen.

The company has a complementary Web site ( http://www.digielement.com ), which the team hopes will build community and extend the content of the DVDs. They invite publishers to pass along assets and games information. The next issue is going to bed now and will appear in May. Generally, they are looking for assets during the first month of their two-month editorial cycle. Much of the final production work is done in the last two weeks before release.

For the time being, digiElement is a marketing bargain. The company is offering five-second video ad lead-ins to reviews/previews at $1250 an issue (calculated at a rate of $.25 cents per user), and end-of-segment video spots of up to 15 seconds for the same price. Menu banners run $1,000 an issue. Discounts apply to multiple issue buys.

Traditionally in publishing in all content areas, packed-in discs with print magazines work better than disc-based magazines. Like the ill-fated multimedia CD platform of the '80s and early '90s, disc-based magazines require users to take a "lean-in" approach, navigating video menus to get the information they really want. In theory this has always seemed more promising than in practice, which is why no CD\DVD-zine has ever succeeded.

This does not bode well for digiElement, nor for the DVD hint guide projects now being cooked up by several companies. Nevertheless, didiElemnt has in its favor the anime connection. If it can amass enough anime material to appeal to that par of the audience, and truly distinguish their use of game assets, then they could carve a niche as a pop\art-driven video zine rather than just another games review vehicle.

Contacts: Henry Wong, 917/650-8096, hwong@digiElement.com ; David Chen, 646/441-1976, dchen@digiElement.com

[Copyright 2004 PBI Media, LLC. All rights reserved.]