 Editorial: A scream from the Crypt |
4/20/01 |
| Zombie gives his thoughts on the imminent situation affecting the gaming conglomerates. |
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Over the last few years gaming sites have come and gone. A few have survived and became something else. They've become big sites that cover more than games. Sites that try and give you what they think is everything that you need. These "super" sites have begun to crumble. The latest casualty is IGN. Earlier this week, IGN's parent company, Snowball, revealed that they are in financial trouble. The impending death of IGN is not far behind as IGN Wrestling was the first to go two days ago. With the word that IGN will be charging a monthly subscription, the rest of the site is sure to fall soon. Leaving the many sites IGN ate up over the years to become affiliates in big trouble. What is the cause of so many of these gaming sites to fall this year? The reasoning can can be likened to small fissures which in time grow to a point that it can become catastrophic. The breakdown is as follows: Forgetting your roots Like many online sites, IGN began as a modest gaming ring that over the course of time, grew substantially into other areas. Their growth was based in the gaming community with readers visiting to get their news and reviews in a resourceful place. Unfortunately, as they became bigger, IGN forgot their roots and just transformed into a network that became highly diverse, with gaming coverage seemingly taking a back seat. Without this focal point in their roots, the core audience can be lost. Loss of orginality Another crack can be seen in the manner that as [networks], namely IGN, take over independent sites, compelling them to adopt the look and even writing style of the portal site. People read reviews to see peoples individual thoughts of a game and originality. Lately, IGN's writing has faded from this and become bland and rather like "filling in a form". It's not the members within the company that causes this, because they try as hard as they can to offer unbiased, informative coverage, but as in the case of IGN, it's easy to lose focus on the enjoyment of writing reviews and other related articles, thus the work become bland. With the sound of sites beginning to crumble, one might think this is a terrible time for online videogame news and information, but it's not. I'd prefer to look at it as a time of rebirth and refreshed originality. No longer will sites just be able to survive on just being big and making money. They'll need to reach out to their readers with originality and remembering what the most important aspect that developing sites are all about, the games.
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