Located on the 15th floor of 135 Main Street in San Francisco, the offices of Computer Gaming World (circulation 318,000) offer a riot of software piled around the cubicles. From the moment you step off the elevator, you're in no doubt the nerve center for computer gaming.

Terry's cubicle--a window seat for those that judge floor location and power--is the low walled variety of about three feet high instead of the usual five feet high. It reflects a degree of openess befitting his personality. Crammed underneath his desk is a collection of software titles stacked two rows deep and two rows high. He is, after all, Reviews Editor for CGW. Atop the desk, the usual collection of marketing bric-a-brac and work in progress. Yet in all this seeming chaos, plastic army soldiers stood in three neat ranks. An office can tell you a lot about a person.

Terry's a veteran wargamer--if you reach far enough back, you'll find his name in some journals of old. It's where he partially learned his trade and he still remembers the old days and you'll find mentions in his columns for CGW.

We ate lunch at a terrific restaurant within a couple of blocks of the office. Over superb saffron scallops and other gastronomic delights, we talked about MagWeb, wargaming, computer gaming, CGW, AT&T Interchange, our tenures at Ziff Davis Publishing, and the industry as a whole. Part of this turned to the Internet and the topic of "free" sites vs. "pay" sites.

My take on free vs. pay comes down to the quality of the information and the ability to weather advertising interruptions. Just like TV, there are "free" channels which use advertising to pay for the sitcoms, news shows, movies, and other programming. You suffer through the advertising in order to see the "content" (i.e. TV programs).

If I told you 25 years ago you would pay for the privilege of seeing TV shows, you'd laugh at me, especially if I said that you'd not only pay for them, but the shows will include advertising. Yet people pay for cable TV.

Furthermore, there are premium cable TV channels, like HBO, that provide content with little or no advterising, and you pay a premium price for them above and beyond "basic cable." That, in essense, is MagWeb--a premium Web channel with advertising-free, military history and product content. Dow Jones does it with finance information. MagWeb does it with military history.

We then talked about trends--that the day of free access is coming ever closer. For example, years ago, it cost a set fee for a certain number of hours of access and then a per-hour charge for every hour over that. Then, per-hour prices started to drop, and now finally, you have an average $20 per month unlimited access--and some ISPs charge as low as $10 per month for unlimited access. There is at least one company that gave away 10,000 computers and free internet access.

With this history in mind, and the ever lowered cost of sending electrons around, I feel that access will one day be entirely free or very low cost--no doubt supported by advertising, but essentially paving the way for premium "pay" niche sites like MagWeb. I'm keeping one eye on cable providers--I can see the day when the $40 per month charge is erased and Web access is incorporated into basic cable charges.

In addition, consumers are starting to tire of banner advertising, not to mention feeling like they are being treated as a target demographic, not a visitor. Click through rates have dropped from 2.1% in early 1998 to 0.5% in early 1999 according to NetRatings. From customer feedback on MagWeb, I've found that when people want to buy something, they'll look at ad banners, click around, etc, but when they want information, they want it fast and without suffering through innumerable pop-up ads for credit cards, books, clown schools, and other time- and bandwidth-wasting ads. That's why we split off the Mall at MagWeb.

Of course, being Computer Gaming World, Terry wanted to talk at least a little bit about online gaming, and we spoke about the pros and cons about various efforts and looked at the successes and failures of various companies. I'm not prepared to comment about MagWeb's ongoing special projects, but I did point out a couple things: I wrote a few rules sets for historical miniatures gaming, we own a site called www.wargaming.com, I used to be a computer games reviewer, editor, and columnist for a variety of Ziff Davis publications, and in my CEO Communique for January, I noted we have special projects focus for 2000. I let Terry put together the pieces.

After lunch, we went back to his office and hooked into the Web, and specifically, MagWeb. He wandered through the site and I pointed out a variety of features. I was impressed to find out that a T-1 line in mid afternoon put MagWeb's pages on the screen in seconds. He also seemed suitably impressed with the speed, not to mention the breadth (number of magazines: 61) and the depth (over 11,000 articles, over 10,000 images), and the pricing (under $5 per month) of MagWeb.

He also liked the small map-large map (and occasional jumbo map) idea, although he suggested I add more graphics to articles. I explained that I included what the magazines included. If they wanted to include more graphics, I'll include more, but if there aren't any, I can't put in what isn't there. I did note that thanks to MagWeb royalties and increased marketing exposure that generates new subscribers (i.e. a revenue stream), some publishers have been able to add more pages, graphics, and articles to their magazines and newsletters.

And with that, a pleasant couple of hours passed. My only regret was that Johnny Wilson was away on a business trip. It would have been good to see him again, too.

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This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com