The old cow analogy, an old country saying, stung a little. As the second IGN editor hired in August 1996 (after EIC Chris Charla), I am indeed the oldest, most veteran editor of this now monstrous, industry-leading entertainment Website, IGN.com. And I am indeed leaving; my final day is Friday, April 13, superstitions be damned.
For the last few days, I thought about why that analogy bugged me. It's a little erroneous. That saying refers to cows going out to die or to slaughter. I ain't going to slaughter. But in another respect, I guess it's true. I started at Next Generation magazine at the age of 28, moved to IGN.com at 30, and now, 11 years later, I'm 41 years old. The truth? It stings. I'm not the new kid on the block, the fresh-faced news hound, or the party-going, all-night fiend I once was.
Few things have been as big and important in my life as working at IGN. The site, well sure, it's just a game site. It's filled with ads and it's monetized up the wazoo. But we're still honest, we still thrive to grab the exclusive, scoop the competition, and we still love games. Believe it or not, remaining optimistic and bringing a child-like joy day in and day out to this job is real work, especially considering how many bad games we're forced to play. That's why I've stuck around for so long. IGN's a great place to work at and a fun site to read. I'm happy to have helped build it.
IGN has come a long way since the flat, ugly days of N64.com, SaturnWorld, and PS Extreme. It's funny looking back at the changes. Did you know we had to change our name from N64.com to IGN64.com because, in those early days of easy domain names, we snagged N64.com before Nintendo did? (And yes, legal papers were involved.) Do you remember the many, many re-launches of GamePlayers.com, when Frank O'Connor, aka Bungie's Frankie, wrote his daily top 10 list? Or the failed black site? And how about those crazy former IGNers -- Dave Z., David Smith, Brandon Justice, Aaron Boulding, Anthony Chau, Jeff Chen, Jay Boor, Adam Douglas, and Kaiser Hwang, among others -- who worked unbelievable hours to make this site the best one on the Net? Without a doubt, those guys were pillars in the foundation of IGN.com and, in a way, game journalism.
Speaking of pillars, our early executives, who often didn't know a thing about videogames or popular culture, didn't help much in the beginning. For starters, they named our company Snowball.com. If this doesn't make sense, see the movie Clerks for a whiff of sick and funny. During the dotcom craze, we bought Secrets of the Game Sages for millions of dollars in cash, a wrestling site, and poured endless wads of cash into the failed Power Students Network and Chickclick.com. We made it through the toughest of times when nearly every single site around us died in the dotcom crash, including every network at Snowball.com except for IGN.com (see Power Students Network and Chickclick.com). If it hadn't been for extreme measures -- the biggest of which was charging for paid content with Insider -- we would have died. That was a huge turning point for us and it was a harsh reality. It wasn't necessarily handled all that well at the time, but we were desperate and that was our only real solution. To all those readers who stuck with us during those times and who bought an Insider Account, thank you. You helped us more than you know. (For a really great laugh at old school IGN, Insiders should watch our Insider Video Documentary on the Atari Trip to Mexico to see what made that Insider content so special.)
Oh yeah, and who could forget the fantastic days of IGN the PDF Magazine, Unplugged? Hehehe.
Those were the old days, these are the new ones. Now we're part of Fox Interactive Media (aka FIM), and as publicly stated, we were bought for the outrageous sum of $650 million by NewsCorp. Though he often had crazy ideas, five every few seconds, I have to hand it to Mark Jung, our former CEO. He landed us a really big gig and for those of us who have stayed, there is some financial reward. Yes, there is a little pay-off at the end, a little stock action. The company is huge now, but amazingly enough, IGN.com is only a small part of the big picture. While we can hold our own in the game and entertainment space, MySpace rules the roost at FIM. Those guys are huge.
I can honestly say there were just as many hard times as there were great times -- whether it was dealing with Microsoft happily giving Ashlee Simpson first coverage of the Xbox 360 or fighting with 989 Studios over the secret source who leaked the Syphon Filter 2 story to us. And the good times? -- Grabbing the opportunity to visit DMA Studios in Scotland and getting the exclusive online everything on Grand Theft Auto III; being the first journalist to use the term "Living Breathing City" to describe the open-world experience and watching the term take off and remain in the lexicon many years after. Jumping on the wrestling map with Sarge at the unveiling of WCW Mayhem, interviewing Goldberg, Hideo Kojima, J Allard and DMA's lead Producer Leslie Benzies, or breaking news stories such as EA Jumping on the Live Bandwagon, Halo 3 Details, revealing first news on Xbox 360, new details on the hardware, and the first Beta Kits. Or even writing my first satire (For a Few Dollars More).
Strangely enough, working at IGN has been a life-lesson in dealing with truth. The reason is simple. Our readers, you guys, are our best critics, our biggest fans, and the infinitely brutal mirrors of reality. Like the other editors, I have strived to review games with brutal honesty, to be the tough journalist who asks hard questions, and, after having seen so much sh%$#@! and having reached the point of burnout many times over, I'm happy to say I'm still a fan of videogames. I would have failed long ago had I not realized that our biggest asset here at IGN is you, our readers.
So, as I "hoof" toward greener pastures, I want you to know this -- thanks for all of the harsh criticism, the praise, the nit-picking, and for ruthlessly questioning us all the time. I don't always like what I hear, and often times the criticisms are knee-jerk reactions and stupid rants, but there are just as many smartly written criticisms, analyses, and bashings that couldn't be ignored. I've had some of the best times of my life here with the excellent staff, the crazy loyal fans, and the creative types who actually make the games. It's not going to end. It's just going to change. In parting with you, I want to say thanks for your dedication, attention, and input. You'll hear from me soon. But for now, this old bull is ready to bolt. Cheers.
-- Douglass C. (as in Charles) Perry