IGN
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IGN is a part-free and part-subscription general gaming website. It was founded in 1995, starting as N64.com, SaturnWorld and PSX Power. As of June 2005, it claims 23 million unique visitors a month, with 5 million users registered through all departments of the site, including reviews, previews, walkthroughs, codes, and other media.
IGN is ranked among the top 300 most visited websites according to Alexa, and runs some of the most popular forums on the Internet according to Big-boards.com.
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Corporate Details
IGN runs on a combination of advertising and subscriptions. IGN Insider is IGN's premium subscription service at $20/year. Insiders get benefits like the ability to disable some ads, access to Insider only forums, and can read Insider only content.
IGN Entertainment was only the only gaming website in the stock market (Nasdaq: IGNX), however its stock is no longer publicly traded.
IGN originally stood for Imagine Games Network, until it was spun out of Imagine Media as part of Affiliation Networks (soon renamed Snowball Inc). Snowball is now known as just IGN Entertainment, thus the IGN acronym has no real meaning. There was a short time when IGN stood for the "Internet Generation Network."
In March 2004, IGN Entertainment and GameSpy Industries merged, and was briefly known for 3 months as IGN/GameSpy before formalizing their corporate name as IGN Entertainment.
In June 2004, IGN bought the popular movie review site Rotten Tomatoes, and in February 2005 they acquired the popular download site, 3D Gamers.
In June 2005, IGN bought male lifesytle website AskMen.com.
Editors
- Peer Schneider - Network Director
- Tal Blevins - Editorial Director
- Fran Mirabella III - Chief Video Producer
- Brennan Ieyoub - IGN Insider
- Jeremy Dunham - EIC IGN PS2, PSP, PS3
- Ivan Sulic - IGN PS2, PSP, PS3
- Ed Lewis - IGN PS2, PSP, PS3
- Mark Nix - IGN PSP
- Jason Allen - IGN PSP
- Craig Harris - EIC IGN Game Boy, DS
- Matt Casamassina - EIC IGN Cube
- Juan Castro - IGN Cube
- Douglas Perry - EIC IGN Xbox, Xbox 360
- Aaron Boulding - IGN Xbox, Xbox 360
- David Clayman - IGN Xbox, Xbox 360
- Steve Butts - IGN PC
- Dan Adams - IGN PC
- Tom McNamara - IGN PC
- Hilary Goldstein - IGN Comics
- Brian Linder - IGN Filmforce
- Brian Zoromski - IGN Filmforce
- Chris Roper - IGN Gear
- Jon Robinson - IGN Sports
- Chris Carle - EIC IGN Cheats, Guides, and FAQs
- Mark Ryan Sallee - IGN Cheats, Guides, and FAQs
- Erik Brudvig - IGN Cheats, Guides, and FAQs
Message Boards
IGN is also known for its active message boards. The IGN boards were created in late July 2000 as a place of video game discussion for members of IGN.com. IGN Boards contains many forums on topics ranging from the 3 major video game systems, to cell phones, to DVDs, and gear. According to Big-boards.com, the IGN Boards are ranked 3, behind FaceTheJury at 2 and GaiaOnline at 1. On April 16, 2005 at 9:34 am PST, cheese8214 (http://users.ign.com/about/cheese8214?boards=ign) posted the 100 millionth post.
The IGNCB
The IGNCB, or IGN Community Board, opened on September 11, 2000, for "non-video game related content" that was beginning to appear on the video game discussion boards. It is full of self-important drama queens.
I-Boards
When IGN Insider was created, special Insider Boards where created for subscribers. These included boards for different systems, a multiplatform board, and a community board for general discussion.
In February of 2002, IGN changed it so that all IGN forums required membership in its insider subscription program, including the popular IGNCB. This controversial move left a lot of loyal "regulars" unable to access the boards. The special Insider Boards were temporarily named the Asylum Boards, and later the I-Boards, which is their current name.
The Vestibule
On March 8th, 2002 The Vestibule was created as a means of allowing non-subscribers to use the boards. It was originally intended to be a trial board, but it was frequented by both subscribers ("Insiders") and non-subscribers ("Outsiders"), and soon became the most popular board on IGN. As of 2005, the Vestibule has over 20 million total posts and hundreds of daily users discussing topics such as religion, culture, drugs, and fapping furiously to pictures of Jessica Alba. The 20 millionth post was made on 6/20/05 at 8:08 PM EST.
Closed sections
As the site has evolved, several older sections of it have fallen into disuse.
IGN Sci-Fi
Largely dead since 2002, this section of the site included movie news, comic book reviews, and other associated items. It has since fallen into disuse. It still exists at [1] (http://scifi.ign.com), where its front page offers, among other things, the latest news on Terminator 3.
IGN ForMen
This section closed down officially on October 2, 2001 soon after the announcement that Leah was moving on. It can be found at formen.ign.com but is no longer updated. IGN has recently opened a new site at http://babes.entertainment.ign.com/ that fulfills much of the function of the old IGN ForMen site.
IGN Wrestling
IGN Wrestling met its end in early 2002, when many of the staffers departed. Interviews with professional wrestling personalities and coverage of wrestling games has been folded into IGN Sports (http://sports.ign.com).
Criticisms of IGN
Like many popular gaming sites, IGN has its detractors. The most contentious issue is their ubiquitous advertisements. IGN was one of the first sites to use interstitials. Originally these ads were designed to show up after a set number of page links; currently, they now appear more often. Also, for a brief time, IGN's entire website was significantly changed to add Coca-Cola and McDonald's logos everywhere. Currently, they now advertise the Pepsi Logo.
IGN has been criticized for displaying advertisements for its Insiders, who pay a yearly fee to receive added benefits. Many sites with subscriptions disable all ads for those who pay. After many complaints from Insiders, IGN gave them the option to disable the most intrusive of the ads. Banner ads, including Flash ads, are still shown to Insiders.
IGN defenders say that they should be given credit for developing a business model which allowed them to survive the dot-com crash of the late 1990s.
Another major criticism of IGN involves their editors and board administrators. Some of the editors at IGN do not make any effort to visit the boards regularly to chat with IGN Insiders on gaming topics.
Another criticism is the fact that some strategy guides on the website are unfinished. Tales Of Symphonia (a major game on the Nintendo GameCube) is still incomplete.
Finally, yet another criticism is the subject of the website's competency as a news website. Although IGN is known widely for having more inside sources than any other source of Gaming news coverage, many feel that the website tends to blow hot air by saying that it has sources at the very heart of the gaming scene.
External links
- IGN.com (http://www.IGN.com/)
- GameSpy (http://www.gamespy.com)
- IGN/GameSpy (http://www.igngamespy.com)
- IGN Insider (http://insider.ign.com/)