(Ed’s Note: Since GameAxis Unwired is no more, I figured it would be appropriate for those who worked on the magazine to say their farewell. Here’s former Managing Editor & Product Manager for GameAxis Aaron Yip and his piece)
Unwired Plugging Out – A Tribute To The Best Gaming Mag & Its Crew
Aaron Yip with some woman from Ubisoft. Heard she made Assassin's Creed or something.
Hi, some of you readers may remember me. But for those of you who don’t, well, let’s just say GameAxis holds a big place in my heart than any of you can ever imagine. Really. So here’s a bit of my personal history with GameAxis.
My journey in GameAxis started out in the year 2001, when I was just a bungling 21 year-old writer for www.hardwarezone.com and HardWare Magazine (back then the magazine was a quarterly publication; how retro, eh!). Somehow, the gaming DNA in me kept pushing for both tech publications to start a gaming section. And that was how GameAxis was born – a gaming section in the pages of HWM, and also when you actually get to see game reviews on the very hardcore tech site that is hardwarezone.com. And I was very thankful to my old mentors, Editor-in-Chief Dr Jimmy Tang and Executive Editor Terence Ang, who were tremendously supportive of my gaming ambitions.
Perhaps I was at the right place at the right time. Life was blissful, but even then, I was never truly satisfied. I was determined to carve out GameAxis to stand on its own feet. How naive of me.
I remember doing a proposal (with Jimmy Tang presenting) to convince my CEO Jackie Lee, to release the domain www.gameaxis.com for development into a full-fledged gaming website – filled with video content, walkthroughs, reviews, etc. It was a proposal done by a full-blooded and passionate young writer, who never saw (back then anyway) the consequences, and definitely not with the proper knowledge on how a gaming site is being run (e.g., who is going to do the video production, write the walkthrough, source for game copies?)
Now keep in mind, this was in 2001/02, and back then there wasn’t any gaming specialist media. This means that publishers did not have the habit of sending games to us to review.
Anyhow, Jackie canned the proposal, and for all the good reasons mentioned above. It wasn’t helped by the fact that I didn’t factor in the all-important question mark – where will the new site get its revenue from? Hey, I was still young and inexperienced. And it was 2001, when the world was still reeling from the disastrous dotcom bubble burst. Jackie’s action made perfect business and, by all accounts, logical sense.
But I was determined, and stubborn. So I roped in two other partners in crime from the other department, namely Lim Chuan Jer (who’s the GM of HWZ.com @ SPHM now), as well as Crono Lee (stationed at SPHM’s subsidiary ClickThru) to help build a website from scratch in secret and after office hours. Interestingly as I recall back, it didn’t take much of an effort to convince them to partake in this fellowship of the illegal ring. Maybe we were all sold into the idea of building up a cool new gaming portal. Or maybe it was just the adrenaline of self-labeling ourself as ‘the company’s rebels’.
In any case, we finished the site and we showed it to Jackie again. He bombed. And again, for the right reason too. If the CEO says no to a project, the common office sense is to not do it. But thankfully, Jackie isn’t your typical CEO. This dude’s got foresight. He saw the potential in GameAxis.com and smartly allowed us to continue working on the website – but only after office hours. It also helps that Jackie is a gamer himself, and bribing him with gaming swags/copies helped calmed him down a lot.
And so in 2002, GameAxis.com was officially born. The timing was impeccable. Xbox has arrived in Singapore in 2002, and suddenly gaming was the biggest thing in the smallest dot on the Atlas. GameAxis became a full-time machine. We had online ads coming in, we were able to hire freelancers and you know you had hit one of the pinnacles of videogame journalism when you get invited to attend E3 on media junkets. At one point, we even had a dedicated Xbox portal, aptly named XboxAxis! Of course, credit should also go to Microsoft for changing the local gaming landscape, which is another story for another time.
Fast forward to 2003, and Jackie threw a surprise bombshell this time. He wanted me to produce a print version of GameAxis. To cut the long story short, it would be called Unwired (an offshoot of the website’s name, GameAxis Online), would be freely distributed, and would come in a gargantuan A3 size.
I loved it. As the new Editor for a full-fledged magazine, the challenge was daunting. We were still a small media outlet back then, so pushing out a new product isn’t quite as simple as you think. But the one key trait of all HWZ staff back then, was that we all took an intense ownership of our own media. So as the Editor of GameAxis, I didn’t just write nor edit articles. I marketed the magazine and website to publishers, helped the sales team to produce sales strategies and angles to target advertisers, organized gaming events (which also helps promote the GameAxis brand) and took part in community-level activities too. Inadvertently, I became the face of GameAxis.
From 2003 onwards, Unwired would evolve from an A3-size magazine to the traditional A4, where we also packed in more pages. Then from a freely distributed magazine to a paid one with glossy covers. Online didn’t remain stagnant too, going from a content-generating website to one with a blog-style layout – which seemed to work better too. During this time, I was blessed with a fantastic dream team of designers and writers. Most of them have moved on to greener pastures, like editor Ismet Bachtiar and writers Jason Woo and Shoeless Wayne Santos, along with designers Khang Lip, Agnes Lai, and Felicia Lee.
I’m also not forgetting awesome interns like Hatta Aziz and Hakim Raim too. I felt compelled to name these folks out, because as much as Unwired is about the coolest stuffs in gaming, Unwired wouldn’t be the coolest magazine in Singapore and Malaysia without these folks.
I left GameAxis myself in the summer of 2007 for greener pastures too but remained its biggest fan until today. So it was still with a tinge of nostalgic sadness that I learned about the ceasing of GameAxis Unwired. It’s nearly impossible to disconnect yourself from a ‘baby’ that you’ve watched grown up. It’s also an irony that Unwired is going back to where it first started – right inside the pages of HWM.
Will we see Unwired as a standalone publication again? In my working experiences, I’ve learned to never say never. So I would truly hope so. But in the meantime, I continue to look forward to Kichigai and Mr. Toffee’s postings on GameAxis Online. And that will help ease the heartache a little better.
- Aaron Yip aka Battousai (Ex-Managing Editor & Product Manager, GameAxis)
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Aaaahhh,it’s good while it last.
I’m gonna miss you guys and your game reviews. Been buying the mags since 2005 and it’s sad to see it gone.
All the best and good luck for new ventures. You guys are the best! Thank you for all of your hard work.
Cheers!~
You guys will be missed. Although the magazine is canned, I’m definitely checking back the website for updates and also via the iPhone app.
Best of luck guys! Give yourselves a pat on the back. Good well done. Cheers y’all!
Matt.
It’s a great magazine by the great folks…
Long live the mag as many found memories to the readers and subscribers :)
Cheers!
Matthew Fam.
I remember my first contact with Gameaxis was when I picked up your print issue No. 1 of Gameaxis Unwired in A3 in 2003. Although the contents then were sorta messy (you had game stuff, anime stuff, mobile phones too! bundled into some 12 to 16 pages) every month, I liked the enthusiam felt into every article written in the mag.
What was really amazing to me is that after I reading through six years worth of Unwired mag, I was present on this journey to see the team’s efforts put in to sculpt our growing Unwired mag month by month. Steadily, getting closer to becoming Singapore’s gaming mag.
As much as I would miss Unwired, it’s time to move on(line). (Go truly Unwired – go wireless! :P Ok, not a funny joke. Sorry.). Don on your new image and strive to become Singapore’s gaming media portal in cyberspace!
P.S.
If my calculations are correct, Unwired should turn seven years old this August. Here’s wishing Gameaxis Unwired, Happy Birthday! It was great to have you (also everyone who has been with Unwired’s editorial team) as my monthly read for these six years. Thank you.
To Unwired, enjoy your time-off from print. You’ll need all the rest you can get before you go real busy to reach out in cyberspace.