Game Informer: Makers of final cover game praise magazine

The makers of the final game to appear on the cover of one of the world’s longest-running gaming magazines say its sudden closure is a “big loss” to the industry.

US-based Game Informer had been running for 33 years until earlier this month, when its print edition and website were closed without warning.

Horror game The Casting of Frank Stone was featured on the final front cover of Game Informer and the game’s developers told BBC Newsbeat they were “incredibly honoured” to have made it on.

GameStop, which owned the magazine, has been approached for comment.

Narrative, choose-your-own-adventure style horror game The Casting of Frank Stone is a collaboration between Dead by Daylight developer Behaviour Interactive and UK studio Supermassive Games.

It was the subject of an in-depth feature in Game Informer and Traci Tufte, from Supermassive, told Newsbeat that reporters visited both teams to produce it.

“The team that we worked with was absolutely fantastic,” she said.

“The coverage was wonderful and I’m grateful that I personally had that opportunity.”

Game Informer was renowned worldwide for its frequent exclusive coverage of the biggest upcoming titles.

Mathieu Côté, from Canadian studio Behaviour, said he felt lucky to appear in the “legendary final issue” of the magazine.

“It’s sad news for everybody,” he said.

“It’s such a tentpole of video game journalism… it’ll be much-missed.”

Game Informer’s website has been inaccessible since the magazine’s closure, meaning that years of articles – including its Frank Stone coverage – are unavailable.

Some fans are making efforts to retrieve and store archived pages.

The Casting of Frank Stone is a spin-off, single-player game set in the universe of multiplayer title Dead by Daylight (DBD).

Mathieu says Supermassive, known for making cinematic horror games featuring motion-capture performances, was the obvious studio to work with.

He tells Newsbeat the hope is to expose more people to the world of DBD, which is one of the most-watched horror games on streaming sites such as Twitch, even if they don’t end up playing the main game.

Previous reports have mentioned a possible DBD movie project and other potential spin-offs, but the games industry has been hit by layoffs over the past two years.

Like dozens of gaming companies, both Behaviour and Supermassive have let workers go, but Mathieu insists the “desire to explore new ways to grow the horror world is certainly not diminished”.

“We need to make games and continue to have great ideas and invest in them,” he says.

“It’s true that we are probably a little more cautious about the partnerships that we get into or the new projects that we kick off.

“We just maybe take a little more time to dot our i’s and cross our t’s.”

Traci says she hopes the industry “turns a corner soon”.

“I think doing more things like this, bringing more innovation, bringing more creative partnerships, that’s certainly going to add a little bit of invigoration,” she says.

Mathieu adds that The Casting of the Frank Stone took about two years to make – a relatively short time for a video game – because Supermassive has an “established pipeline” for making narrative titles.

The Casting of Frank Stone is released in early September, so both teams aren’t revealing much about whether there will be any more instalments in the new spin-off series.

Mathieu says he’s “ridiculously proud of the result of this partnership” and can’t wait to watch people playing the game.

“Because that’s the whole point, right?

“We create these kind of things to give people an experience, to give people strong emotions,” he says.