One of the most ungrateful and money losing propositions in the game industry is magazine publishing and this is particularly true in the RPG field who (in English) had just two really successful magazines: Dragon in the US and White Dwarf in the UK. But this extreme mortality did not stop a lot of people from trying, with various degrees of success, especially in the first decade of existence of RPGs where every company wishing to have a 'voice' and support its products 'needed' a house organ. Long would be the list of dead magazines and among the most lamented ones (by us at least) we can count The Space Gamer (USA), Different Worlds (USA), Pyramid (USA), Sorcerer's Apprentice (USA), The Adventurer (UK), Arcane (UK), Imagine (UK) and... The Gamer (USA). Wait: what?
The Gamer was a gaming magazine published by a company called In Print Inc. and edited by Scott Haring, a veteran game designer and editor, along an editorial board composed by Tom Wham, Greg Costikyan, Douglas Niles and Michael Stackpole - we are sure these names are not unknown to our readers. The magazine was to have a bimonhtly schedule, with the first issue coming out dated January/Febrary 1992 and the fifth ine (the last in magazine form) undated (a sure sign of trouble for magazines...) but released at the end of 1992. After the fifth issue, The Gamer becomes another magazine in newspaper form (in France somebody attempted something similar but the product, DXP, lasted just two issues).
One of the defining elements of The Gamer was that it was totally devoted to 'journalistic' coverage of gaming: no adventures, no new rules, no gaming material at all. Instead, readers got interviews, reviews (both big and small), profiles, news, reports editorial commentaries from the board and other gaming luminaries and professionals, dossier... The other one was that it was quite outspoken and not afraid to publish controversial pieces: for example, Costikyan's articles were sure to be 'polemic' (and they costed The Gamer the advertising from TSR and GDW...) and the long interview with Gary Gygax in issue 2 is accompanied by an article where Don Turnbull and Kim Mohan express their scarce consideration for Gary Gygax (Don Turnbull is particularly harsh with him). Considering that criticizing Gary Gygax seems akin to blasphemy even today, this was not something minor.
Of course, The Gamer was not always a crusader: its reviews tended to be something generous with most of products getting As and Bs, sometimes Cs (C meaning 'good product' anyway) and often written by people who had some links with the companies producing the books and games reviewed. However, the magazine let readers know if the writers of the review worked (or had worked) with the company whose products were critiqued. A nice touch of class. And the news were not the usual "company X printed this, company Y will print that..." but true news about (for example) lawsuits, industry 'insider' events and so on.
The Gamer lasted just one year in magazine form, before resurfacing in March 1993 as a monthly tabloid. We have no news about it but RPG Geek writes: "Here were three iterations of this publication. Initially published as a magazine, it was later published in a tabloid newspaper format and after that as a newsletter. At least twelve issues plus one GenCon/Origins special issue were published". It seems very likely that low circulation and lack of advertising, unavoidable in such a publication, were the usual culprits for its demise. It's a pity because it was really a magazine for the intelligent gamer and it was very deserving to be supported (assuming the reader was interested in the journalistic side of the game industry of course). But some of the spirit and the style of The Gamer resurfaced in Pyramid (especially its news coverage) whose first issue appeared in 1993 and that was edited by Scott Haring from issue 5 to issue 30 (the last one).