IGN/Gamespy Going Public

GameDailyBiz has the news that gaming media powerhouse IGN is going public. From the press release: "IGN owners Great Hill partners were recently looking for someone to purchase the company, and then priced IGN for over $800 million dollars. According to Media Metrix, IGN and its sister sites attract over 25 million users a month. This includes GameSpy, RottenTomatoes, FilePlanet, TeamXbox, and VE3D. IGN also provides online gaming technology for hundreds of video game developers."

Comments

Whoopty Shit...

[ZephyrXero]

As if IGN wasn't a crappy enough site already, now we've got the shareholders to put their worthless voices in on it too... Public corporations are a waste of time if you want to do anything more than make money...

Re:Whoopty Shit...

[Anonymous Coward]

Then what are you doing on /.? It's part of a public corporation.

Re:Whoopty Shit...

[linzeal]

Amen, socialist brother.

Re:Whoopty Shit...

[vertinox]

now we've got the shareholders to put their worthless voices in on it too...

So let me get this straight, if one buys enough stock, one might say... Get unbanned on their forums and get ad free downloads on file planet? And maybe ban a few non-stock holders off the planet forums while your at it? Seems like Capitalism works for me!

Re:Whoopty Shit...

[Anonymous Coward]

Which explains Zonk.

800 Million dollars?

[hobotron]

Yeah, of annoying flash ads, interrupting full screen ads, html overlay ads, are-you-sure-you-want-to-click-that picture-cause-it-might-be-an-ad ads, 25 million hits because reviews are split over more 10 more million pages than TomsHardware.

Actually, I salute them for making the internet's first advertisement wildlife preserve.

Re:800 Million dollars?

[superpulpsicle]

Nowadays you have to get to the central hub www.gamerankings.com. They link you directly to the game in an organized format may I add.

The only thing SPECIAL about gamespy not matched anywhere else is http://archive.gamespy.com/stats/
which gives you almost realtime statistics on the most popular games online. If there is anything better, let me know.

Re:800 Million dollars?

[moonbender]

It'd be great if the numbers were reliable. They apparently aren't for Valve's games: http://www.steampowered.com/status/game_stats.html Of course Valve might inflate their own games, but at least technically they should be able to determine pretty much exactly how many people are playing currently.

Deja vu

[Anonymous Coward]

Hold on a second, wasn't this already pulled under the (now deceased ?) company/scam dubbed "Snowball" during the peak of the dot-bomb era?

Ah, how soon the public forgets. It was a poor choice for a name btw. ;)

Re:Deja vu

[Starsmore]

If I remember correctly, IGN was Snowball. Or owned by Snowball. Or something like that.

It's a pity that IGN bought out Gamespy. What? You say it was a merger? Hah. Gamespy had the online multiplayer tech that IGN wanted, and got bought out, lock, stock, and barrel. Look at how money-driven Fileplanet has gotten recently? IGN Insider, anyone?

I miss when game sites were fun, and the internet was free.

Re:Deja vu

[kyndig]

The dot-com era was the first thing that came to mind. Because a company claims you are worth 800 million, doesn't mean it will draw that amount in shareholder earnings. Just from the brief summary above, it looks as though visitor traffic is playing a large role in the estimated worth of the network. From the overall negative remarks below, to the consideration that the intended audience for such a network organisation are non-tax paying youths; I would second guess before going public. Better to sell it on eBay and count yourself lucky if you get a cool million.

I Remember...

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember when game sites were cool.

Re:I Remember...

[Anonymous Coward]

then PORN SITES changed everything..

I agree

[hexghost]

IGN is complete shit. Their reviews are worth less than the data that stores them. I'd rather just pay a monkey to hoot and holler and act excited - at least you know the monkey is honest. Their sites are so jam packed full of ads its not even funny. And who gives a f*** what their stupid staff is playing right now?
Don't even get me started about fileplanet. I don't want to sign up to IGN's marketing system just to get a game patch, and I don't want to pay to do it either.
I hope IGN gets bought up by someone who promptly fires off the entire staff and turns it into, well, its hard to make it worse, so just fire the staff.

Re:I agree

[aeoo]

Well said. IGN is a joke. I think it reflects the heavy corporatization of gaming and the overwhelming amount of boring and half-baked knock-offs and promotional games (all the games with the same title as the "popular" movie of the month).

One can only hope someone remembers what gaming was all about originally.

Re:I agree

[atezun]

Although in all honesty what major gaming website can't we say this about?

Re:I agree

[roche]

Probally the same people that care Commander Taco is playing World of Warcraft and Lumines or Hemos is playing Golden Sun 2 and Unreal Tournament 2004.

Re:I agree

[aeoo]

As soon as they start taking money for game ads, then all bets about their integrity are off. I prefer the sites that have user reviews on them. The thing with that is, I have to have trust that the reviews are uncensored and unedited/uncut.

So yea, I am affraid I agree with you?

Re:I agree

[Khuffie]

Why, exactly? I've seen people say this, a lot, but I've yet to see a reason why? I'm not saying IGN is great (they suck), but so what if they take ads? They have to make money somehow. And (at least on GameSpot), I've yet to see their reviews altered by said ads. I once ran into an interstitial ad at gamespot for an EA game just before going to the game's review, which was harsh, and gave it around 5.6, which is hardly a good review. So what more do you want? Besides, in gamespot if you pay the $30 fee for gamespot complete, you get absolutely no ads.

Re:I agree

[KDR_11k]

Some companies pressure reviewers into giving favourable reviews to their hyped games by threatening to give them no more exclusives, previews, etc. Of course they don't do it for every game, just the highly anticipated ones. Remember the Driv3r debacle? Atari said "You can be the first to review our highly anticipated new game IF you give it a rating higher than 90%!". The game was buggy as hell and barely deserved 70% but the honest reviewers had to wait until the game hit stores and by that time the early adviews had done their damage.

It's one thing to ignore a few bugs that you think will be fixed in the retail version, it's another to review a game with game killing bugs and not mentioning that it has awfully many bugs and needs those fixed. I've seen magazines refuse to review some games because the testing builds were too buggy and the bugs would have influenced the rating a great deal.

Re:I agree

[Yaotzin]

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but doesn't IGN have user reviews (and scores) under their own scores?

Re:I agree

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but they're pretty unreliable IMHO. I believe half of the reviews are written by fanboys who give the game full marks because it's from their favourite franchise. Then you get the ones who hate the game because it competes with their favourite franchise (e.g. MGS vs Splinter Cell) and they give the game a stupidly low score. Neither source is inherently trustworthy.

Also, have you ever looked at the IGNBoards? It sometimes makes me wonder how they drag their knuckles up to the keyboard to type. I think the IGNBoards have a collective IQ of 6 or the same IQ as a glass of water.

Re:I agree

[benbean]

Agreed wrt GameSpot. I've been a GameSpot Complete subscriber for a couple of years and I've been very satisfied with the depth and integrity of the coverage and the available content, including their patch and demo download service, DLX.

I've never seen evidence of corporate back-handers influencing a review, even on high-profile games. Certainly I do occasionally disagree with a particular point, or sometimes a review in its entirity, but it's always for pragmatic reasons.

Re:I agree

[patio11]

In what fantasy world do you live in that gaming has EVER been non-corporate? Do the names Sega, Nintendo, Commodore, Sony, etc. ring any bells with you besides being included in the title of consoles? Hint: they're not orders of ascetic monks.

Re:I agree

[SkyWalk423]

Yes, but they're pretty unreliable IMHO. I believe half of the reviews are written by fanboys who give the game full marks because it's from their favourite franchise. Then you get the ones who hate the game because it competes with their favourite franchise (e.g. MGS vs Splinter Cell) and they give the game a stupidly low score.

This phenomenon is not exclusive to IGN. The chimps that do this find their way into every corner of the Internet. That's the tradeoff inherent in user reviews; the responsibility is on the reader to filter the quality out of the sea of crap.

Re:I agree

[Burpmaster]

That's interesting, but you didn't say who actually agreed to give it a high score in exchange for an early review. It's probably some no-name. Gamespot gave Driver a 7.7, so it's not them. IGN gave it a 9.7, but the review came out after the game's release, so it doesn't look like they took the deal.

Also, what is your source?

Re:I agree

[KDR_11k]

I forgot where I read it and who was involved (I think one was GMR) but looking through Google suggests it's less clear cut than I thought, some dispute it, others believe it. The only hard evidence we have of such behaviour is the threat by Trip Hawkins but that guy is clearly not representative of the game industry.

Re:I agree

[aeoo]

"Preferred" just means +1 to the site that does it. IGN for me is like -50 +1 = -49 total score (where negative is bad and positive is good).

I read IGN with a very cynical eye as I don't like the vibe it has (like all the crazy ads that block the page), hidden content, lame staff that I can't trust at all, etc.

In order for me to trust a staffer's review I have to like him/her as a person.

Sure, IGN finally broke down and added user reviews after every other site had them. That's not enough of a positive for me to start liking IGN.

That's just me though. Just one person. No biggie.

cool

[Anonymous Coward]

I sure hope this in some way shape or form mages the xbox division stop talking about how amazing Halo 2 is. They sure talk about it enough...like it's the only good game for the system or something...

IGN/GameSpy Sites

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with IGN/GameSpy sites is that there is too little content for too much advertisements (I'd say the content to advertisement ratio would be about 1:2, without hesitating). They force a full-screen advertisement down your throat, often several times per day, and once you have bypassed that, you still have advertisement banners of considerable size (thank God for Adblock!).

I much prefer sites such as Eurogamer and its sister site GamesIndustry.biz which don't attempt to have you eat their advertisements, yet provide satisfactory content nevertheless.

Pedantry

[joelpt]

Write it either $800 million, or 800 million dollars. Pick one and go with it. Commit to your grammar!

Why is IGN bad?

[zuivelproduct]

(I am not associated in any way with metacritic or IGN, this is just my honest opinion)
I usually go to metacritic.com for reviews of games. They take a lot of reviews from other sites, convert their ratings to a '0 to 100' scale and calculate an average score.
I've found that these scores reflect my own opinion most of the time (not always).
Now, IGN's score is usually close to the average score. This indicates to me that they are not very biased at all. And I usually find the reviews themselves to be pretty good as well. They cover all the aspects of the game and give a good impression.
Now, I am naive or missing something?
I do agree that sometimes the add overdose can be annoying, but I think the content of IGN is just fine.

Re:Why is IGN bad?

[Burpmaster]

Yeah, I've heard people say IGN is bad/biased so many times, from people that couldn't actually back it up, that I'm inclined to believe it's not true. If IGN was so biased, I think somebody would have produced a good argument by now.

When I ask for evidence of bias, everyone points to the amount of advertising on IGN, which I agree is annoying, but to bring that up is really just changing the subject. I'd actually be more suspicious of a review site that didn't have so many ads, because I'd question how they are making their money. More money from regular ads reduces the need to sell out the integrity of reviews.

But people still believe thay are biased. It's like it has been repeated so many times that people just start believing it. They say "Everybody knows IGN is biased," which is really saying "If it's not true, why would people say it?" There is an answer to that. It's called the hostile media effect. Fanboys find it easier to attack the reviewer than admit that someone just didn't like their favorite game. People are going to attack critics by virtue of what a critic does, just like they attack the media. Regardless of which games get high scores and which games get low scores, being called biased will be a constant. The only variable is who does it.

User reviews, the alternative to sites like IGN, are practically worthless. People only review games they were willing to buy in the first place (or sometimes they didn't buy it and probably weren't qualified to review it), so that's a bias right from the start. Fanboyism can be an incentive for someone to give a system-exclusive title a high (or low) score. Additionally, the marketing of a game easily affects its review scores by determining who will buy and review the game in the first place. This effect can hurt unique games where potential buyers have less of an idea of what to expect, and are more likely to give a bad score. After all the biases that affect user scores are applied, there is one final filter: whether the person feels strongly enough about the game to write a review. For this reason, user reviews tend toward the highest possible score or the lowest possible score.

Just comparing IGN's review scores to reader review averages (or user reviews at some other site) shows who is more biased. User reviews almost always average higher scores. The only exceptions are the very highly rated games, where it takes only a few 9/10 ratings to lower the reader average below IGN's score.

Other then IGN..

[SnowCrashed]

While I've never liked IGN's site (for too many reasons to describe, lets just say I share the general consensus), I do like several of their sister sites, such as Rotten Tomatoes and Gamespy (and before the subscriber bullshit, File Planet). While Gamespy certainly has gone down hill as well, it's still the main place I get my gaming news online, Rotten Tomatoes is where I look for a quick synopsis of movie reviews, and File Planet is at the very least where I go to see what's new in the gaming download world.