United States · 1981–2006
The first magazine devoted specifically to computer games, founded by Russell Sipe in 1981 — a serious, long-lived US PC-gaming institution that survived the 1983 crash and covered the hobby for a quarter-century.
Computer Gaming World (CGW) was an American magazine that ran from 1981 to 2006 and holds the distinction of being the first publication devoted specifically to computer games. Its founding is a small story of spotting a gap: Russell Sipe, who had left the Southern Baptist Convention ministry in 1979 and was a keen computer-game player, realised in the spring of 1981 that no magazine was dedicated to the pastime. With no publishing experience, he formed Golden Empire Publications that June, found investors, and put out the first issue in November. Sipe chose the name Computer Gaming World — over alternatives like "Computer Games" or the jokier "Kilobaud Warrior" — because he wanted the magazine to do double duty: reviewing games for players while also serving as a trade publication for the young industry. The earliest issues, produced out of Anaheim, California and sold for $2.75, were slim bimonthly booklets of 40 to 50 pages written in a plain, newsletter-like style, and notably included contributions from game designers themselves — figures like Joel Billings of SSI, Dan Bunten of Ozark Software, and Chris Crawford. That closeness to the creators gave CGW an authoritative, insider character from the start. The magazine's survival was itself significant. It launched at almost the same moment as rivals like Electronic Games and Softline, and it was one of the few game magazines of its era to survive the video-game crash of 1983 that wiped out much of the industry's press. That endurance let it grow with the PC-gaming hobby through the 1980s and 1990s into a thick, influential monthly, and in 1993 it was sold to the major publisher Ziff Davis. Computer Gaming World's importance is foundational: it established the very idea of the dedicated games magazine, and it did so for the computer-gaming side of the hobby specifically, cultivating a more serious, analytical tone than much of the console press that followed. Across a 25-year run it chronicled the evolution of PC gaming from the Apple II era to the 3D age, and its longevity made it a rare continuous thread connecting the industry's earliest days to its modern form.