Computec Media is reversing the conventional publishing route: instead of adding a website to a magazine, it is giving an established online brand its own print edition.
“We are taking exactly the opposite route,” said Computec chief executive Johannes Sevket Gözalan. He said more than 800 buffed users subscribed within several days before seeing the magazine.
buffed – Das Magazin für Rollenspieler will initially appear every two months at €5.90, with a launch print run of 75,000 copies and 128 pages. As on the website, the editorial team plans to integrate its community through excerpts from user comments and references to selected mybuffed blogs.
Editor Heinrich Lenhardt said the magazine would connect readers to supplementary material on buffed.de while using print for longer background features and reports. The publisher intended the magazine as a complement to the online portal rather than a duplicate.
Computec reported more than 175,000 registered users for buffed.de, with around 80 million monthly page impressions and 10.7 million visits in July 2007. The site combined game databases, daily news, guides, podcasts, and video reports for online role-playing audiences.
