IGN

File:IGN Editors' Choice Award.gif

IGN's Editors' Choice Award is given to only the top games

IGN.com is a multimedia news website. Founded in September 1996, it began as a small group of console-specific gaming sites: N64.com, SaturnWorld and PSX Power. Over the years, and through many mergers and buyouts, it has arisen as a largescale multimedia news site, consisting of specific channels for each of the major videogame consoles, PCs, movies, and more.

IGN's main website is comprised of several specialty sites, each occupying a subdomain on IGN. These sites, commonly known as "channels," cover three generations of video gaming: PC Games, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PSP, Xbox, Xbox 360, GameCube, Nintendo Revolution, Nintendo DS, Game Boy, Wireless, N-Gage, PlayStation, N64, Dreamcast, and Cheats & Codes. IGN.com also covers Movies, DVD, Music, Comics, Gear, Sports, Cars, Babes, and Sci-fi Brain, among various other services.

Each channel consists of various subsections, such as Game/Movie Profiles, Product Lists, Previews, Reviews, Features, News, Mailbag, Editor's Choice, Release Dates, Guides, Cheats and FAQs

As of June 2005, IGN claimed 23 million unique visitors a month, with 5 million registered users through all departments of the site. IGN is ranked among the top 300 most visited websites according to Alexa, and the IGN forums have been considered to be among the most popular Internet forums ^[1]. Traffic is seasonal, however, peaking in May during Electronic Entertainment Expo and during the busy October-November Fall release window, so any single traffic number is typically an annualized average. Its yealy traffic is comparable to GameSpot.

Corporate details

IGN originally stood for Imagine Game Networks. However, IGN spun off from Imagine Media on February 1, 1999 to form an independent, online-only business, and the acronym is no longer used. Its corporate name, Affiliation Networks, was changed to Snowball.com soon after the break from Imagine Media.

IGN runs on a combination of advertising and subscriptions. IGN Insider is IGN's premium subscription service for approximately $US 20 a year, although it has been known to fluctuate. Subscribers, who are also known as "Insiders," get special benefits, such as higher resolution videos, and full access to the message boards.

IGN relies mostly on advertising to generate income. Each page on the network has at least one ad, typically a "banner" or the smaller "billboard." There are also interstils between some pages. IGN also uses tracking cookies from both itself and partners such as DoubleClick, Overture, TribalFusion and Claria Corporation. However, tracking cookies are widely regarded as being the most benign of observation mechanisms, since they can be easily removed, or blocked outright with a few clicks in browser settings.

IGN has substantially grown due to the various mergers and buyouts it has conducted. While still known as Snowball, IGN acquired the Vault Network and its message boards in 1999. In March 2004, IGN Entertainment and GameSpy Industries merged. For three months it was called IGN/GameSpy before formalizing their corporate name as IGN Entertainment. In June, IGN bought the popular movie review site Rotten Tomatoes. For a short time, IGN Entertainment was the only major independent gaming website in the stock market (IGNX). However, its stock is no longer publicly traded.

In February 2005, they acquired the popular download site, 3D Gamers. IGN announced on March 4, 2004 that they had completed the merger between IGN and GameSpy. In June, they acquired AskMen.com. Finally, on September 8, 2005, News Corporation announced that had bought 92.3% of total stock of the company for $US 650 million, giving it a controlling stake of IGN. ^[2]

Site editors

• Notes:
  • (M) stands for an Editorial Manager.
  • (C) stands for an Editor-in-Chief
  • (F) stands for an IGN Founder.

• Peer Schneider - Vice President Site Content (M) (F)
• Steven Horn - Publisher, Entertainment and Lifestyle (M) (F)
• Talmadge Blevins - Editorial Director, Games (M) (F)
• Chris Carle - Editorial Manager, Entertainment (M)
• Dan Adams - IGN PC (C)
• Steve Butts - IGN PC
• Tom McNamara - IGN PC
• Jeremy Dunham - IGN PS2, PSP, PS3 (C)
• Chris Roper - IGN PS2, PSP, PS3
• Ivan Sulic - IGN PS2, PSP, PS3
• Juan Castro - IGN PSP
• Douglass C. Perry - IGN Xbox, Xbox 360 (C) (F)
• Charles Onyett - IGN Xbox, Xbox 360
• Jon Miller - IGN Xbox, Xbox 360
• Matt Casamassina - IGN GameCube, IGN Revolution (C) (F)
• Mark Bozon - IGN GameCube Cube, IGN Revolution, IGN DS, IGN GBA
• Craig Harris - IGN Game Boy, DS (C) (F)
• Fran Mirabella III - Chief Video Producer (C)
• Erik Harte - Video Producer
• Brennan Ieyoub - Video Producer
• Nick Scarpino - Video Producer
• Kyle Watson - Video Producer
• Mark Ryan Sallee - IGN Guides, Cheats, FAQs (C)
• Erik Brudvig - IGN Guides
• Jason Allen -IGN Cheats
• Stephen Ng - IGN FAQs
• Levi Buchanan - IGN Wireless (C)
• David Adams - News and Features Editor
• Brian Zoromski - IGN FilmForce (C)
• Brian Linder - IGN FilmForce
• Jeff Otto - IGN FilmForce
• Todd Gilchrist - IGN DVD (C)
• Spencer A. Abbott - IGN Music (C)
• Hilary Goldstein - IGN Comics (C)
• Jon Robinson - IGN Sports
• Justin Kaehler - IGN Cars
• David Clayman - IGN Insider (C)
• Chris Beridon - IGN Insider
• Marc Nix - Gamestats.com
• Teddy Pierson - IGN Boards Administrator, Community Manager ^[3]

Message boards

IGN is also known for its active message boards. They were created in late June 2000 and originally intended for video game discussion. However, like many other message popular boards, it has since expanded to forums for discussion about cars, movies, politics, photography, and various other interests.

On IGN, members have "celebrations" for personal milestones in posting, such as 5,000 posts.

IGN Community Board

The IGN Community Board, often shortened to IGNCB, opened on September 11, 2000 for "non-video game related content" that was beginning to appear on the video game discussion boards. The board is particularly renowned for its high-brow wit and perceived elitism, although this is less true now than it was in the board's heyday in 2000-2003. It has now been likened to a slower version of The Vestibule. THe Community Board features the highest moderators-normal users ratio, primarily because users of the IGNCB have generally been around longer than others.

The OCB, or "Other Community Board," was created on August 10, 2005. Its users are compromised of both IGNCB and The Vestibule users. Like the IGNCB, the OCB is another very small community, but is more welcome than the IGNCB.

The Vestibule

Also known as "The Vesty," "The Cessapool," "The Cistapool," "The TinklePit"

On February 20, 2002, the boards were made subscription-only (IGN Insider members). In response from protest from long-time members, The Vestibule was created on March 8, 2002 as a means to experience the IGN community without having to purchase a scription.

One of the features of the board system is WULs (watched user list), which is essentially a buddy list to keep track of your favorite users' posts. However, users of the Vestibule especially feel a need to be on as many users' lists as they can, raising their WUL count. The system is now effectively a currency of its own - people offer WULs for information and favors.

The Vestibule has no topicality; anything may be posted as long as it falls within IGN's Terms of Service. The discussions tend to be of a frivilous nature, but current events are largely discussed; from politics to sports and television and video games. Viewing shock sites such as Goatse.cx, tubgirl and lemon party are almost considered a rite of passage on The Vestibule. Recently, there has been a tendency towards posting shock videos.

The Vestibule is also known for its popular fads, the contemporary vestibule has some form of fad constantly. One of the original and most memorable by the Vestibule user base is the Orel Hershiser fad of 2002, in which users spammed a picture of baseball player Orel Hershiser holding up a copy of his biography, Out of the Blue. This was because his name resembled the word "oral." These fads reflect the bizarre humour of The Vestibule, despite how childish it may be perceived by others outside it's community. Other fads, often originating from other parts of the internet, include O RLY?, Vin Diesel, and Chuck Norris.

Most in the Vestibule claim that other forums are too rigidly defined to doctrine and topic and prefer the freedom The Vestibule offers. As of 2006, the Vestibule has over 120 million posts, and is one of the fastest boards on the internet.

Board riots

Board riots usually consist of user(s) deliberately flooding the forum in a short amount of time with similar topics and posts. Occasionally, script riots occur on the boards, when more technologically knowledgeable users code javascripts to take advantage of the board code and attack the forums with spam.

• The most famous script riots include the original post script riots of 2002 during which users accidentally clicked links to hosted scripts which automatically posted shock images under their account.
• The flood spammers of 2003 (also known as The other Spammers (ToS) a play on IGN's ToS) used log in-log out scripts to make hundreds of account post threads in a short amount of time.
• The poll hackers of summer 2004 (often considered to also have been members of 'The other Spammers') used the same form of log-in log-out script to bias polls.
• The last major script riot was by the steak scripters of 2005. The steak scripters used a modified version of the automatic post script used in 2002. Any user who clicked on a certain certain TinyURL would go to a GeoCities site where the script was hosted. This turned their board icon (avatar) into a steak, posted a new topic entitled "STEAK!!" with the link to the script inside, meaning that the script spread rapidly, fooling both users and moderators. The script riot was uncontrollable and caused the Vestibule to be virtually unusable for 36 hours. This was partly due to the open source code, allowing other users to duplicate and create more offensive versions of the script.

Eventually, over 100 users were banned for deliberately contributing to the riot. To stop the flooding, IGN administrators changed it so only admins could post topics. Two of the three original scripters were permanently banned from the IGN board system; however, the main scripter remained unbanned and later took part in several other endeavours to the point where IGN threatened to take legal action.

Due to alterations to IGN's board code, it is unlikely that such script riots will occur again. Now a user has his or her own unikque postkey that is automatically submitted in each post. Without the inclusion of this postkey, the post will not go through, stopping streak rioter scripts. However, each users postkey is still viewable, and so scripts can be altered to reflect this change. IGN has prevented this by requiring users to log in on a secure server, preventing the log-in-log-out scripts from running. Although this caused many temporary board glitches, it finally ended a long era of IGN board script riots.

It should also be noted that April 24 has become a date synonymous with mayhem on the Vestibule. In 2004, one of IGN's main administrators Tal-IGN flooded the Vestibule with 'stickies' (threads which remain at the top of the board and replace those below it) so they would fill the entire viewable pane and make all new posts appear on the second page. This resulted in the Vestibule becoming virtually unusable. Moderators added to the mayhem by unnecessarily editing threads (a violation of moderator rules). By sheer coincidence, the steak riot of 2005 also occurred on this date, meaning that many of the userbase have come to associate it with a 'festivile of rule breaking.'

Adoptions

Another large part of The Vestibule is "adoptions" – someone can buy another user an IGN Insider subscription as a gift. Adoptions are almost like WULs insofar as they are used to barter with, but these hold more value. There have been adoption contests from time to time and some people will even adopt purely because they find the user to be a good part of the community. Members of the Vestibule are particularly prone to rioting, which consists of users flooding the forum in a short amount of time with similar topics and posts. Those participating in a "riot" receive a temporary suspension of their user accounts.

Trivia

• IGN retains a site for its unofficial videogame guides. While most of IGN's newer guides are for subscribers or IGN Insiders, the majority of the guides remain free.
• In 2002, IGN launched a dedicated videogame FAQs site specifically designed to host user-submitted guides^[4]. Stephen Ng currently manages IGN FAQs.
• IGN purchased GameSages.com to augment its growing codes and cheats database. Jason Allen currently manages IGN Cheats. This deal caused mass unrest among members of the large bulletin board community established at GameSages, and led to rival sites X-Sages (disbanded to allow the webmaster to pursue "other projects") and TheSagesNetwork (eventually changed format to Conacopia.com, distanced from GameSages) being established. A plurality of the more distinguished characters remain active on Cody's Awesome Super Friends Forum established by noteworthy GameSages player Cody "Ace" Morrison.
• In 2004, IGN launched Gamestats.com, which serves as an more unbiased rating network, as it takes in every corporately owned game rating site, and averages it all into one score to give a general idea of the games quality.
• In 2005, IGN launched their comics site. It is devoted to not just the staple Marvel and DC titles, but also manga, graphic novels, statues, and toys.
• 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 scifi.ign.com, where its front page offers, among other things, the latest news on Terminator 3. Recently, IGN has created SciFiBrain.ign.com which covers some of the content of the old SciFi site.
• IGN For Men: 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 sites such as IGN Babes and Askmen.com that fulfill much of the function of the old IGN ForMen site. Jeff Hall currently manages IGN Babes.
• IGN Wrestling met its end in early 2002, when many of the staff departed. Interviews with professional wrestling personalities and coverage of wrestling games has been folded into IGN Sports, currently headed by Jon Robinson.
• CEO Mark Jung often holds long company meetings where he talks about Chenonceau (a French castle with five moats), sitting next to Calvin Klein at a banquet dinner in a $300 tuxedo, playing basketball with David Duchovny when he was at Yale and seeing a homeless person wearing Snowball branded clothing in New York City.

References

1. ^ http://www.big-boards.com
2. ^ http://www.ign.com
3. ^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4226170.stm

External links

• IGN.com
• GameStats