The GameFan history thread

[James]

Late entry? What the hell are you talking about, there's still 25 hours left in the year as I type this.

Shidoshi, if you want a pile of issues to destroy for the purposes of scanning, speak up. I've got a pile collecting dust here, and if I send them away then I won't hear their screams as you razor down their spines.

James

[kdeselms]

Nick pointed this thread out to me on my blog's message board and so I wrote a long-ass post about GameFan Online during my tenure. I won't waste the bandwidth here to reprint it but go here if you want to read it. I think Sam taking sole credit for quadrupling traffic is a bit self-serving, but he did have a huge hand in getting the site turned back around. I know that during my time, Shidoshi was off-site and doing his AnimeFan stuff independently, so may not have as much perspective on that period of time, which happened to be the site's most prolific, traffic-wise.

Kevin Deselms

[mollipen]

Shidoshi, if you want a pile of issues to destroy for the purposes of scanning, speak up. I've got a pile collecting dust here, and if I send them away then I won't hear their screams as you razor down their spines.

Let me do some testing with my scanner to see what kind of quality I can get. If I think it would be worth it for the quality, I may indeed be interested in your offer.

Also, I'd like to say the more history I can collect about GameFan, the better. So anybody with stories, post away. And maybe this can be a part two of the GameGO thread were all of these past editors came out of the woodwork. *heh*

It won't be for my moma.bible GameFan entry, because the point of that is strictly to be a non-POV informational page about the basics of what GameFan is. I do, however, have another idea for something, but I can't get into that just yet.

[djpubba]

Also, I'd like to say the more history I can collect about GameFan, the better. So anybody with stories, post away. And maybe this can be a part two of the GameGO thread were all of these past editors came out of the woodwork. *heh*

So what is up with that? Are you going to try to get a bunch of old GameFan alumni to spill their beans and then compile it into a book and sell it? Don't be selfish now.

[mollipen]

So what is up with that? Are you going to try to get a bunch of old GameFan alumni to spill their beans and then compile it into a book and sell it? Don't be selfish now.

No no, nothing that will bring me money. *heh*

Nick pointed this thread out to me on my blog's message board and so I wrote a long-ass post about GameFan Online during my tenure. I won't waste the bandwidth here to reprint it but go here if you want to read it. I think Sam taking sole credit for quadrupling traffic is a bit self-serving, but he did have a huge hand in getting the site turned back around. I know that during my time, Shidoshi was off-site and doing his AnimeFan stuff independently, so may not have as much perspective on that period of time, which happened to be the site's most prolific, traffic-wise.

Very interesting read, Kevin. You're right - I had little perspective on what was going on with the site at that point, and to be honest, the magazine in general.

One of my big regrest is the point at which I was part of GameFan, and the website, in terms of my personal life and experience. I wish I was heading to GameFan now with the knowledge that I now have, as opposed to what I had at that point. My experience with websites was so minimal at that point, and I look back at what I did and do a lot of cringing.

For those who don't know, this is how I became part of gamefan.com. Well, actually, let me go a bit further back. I got my start with GameFan the one (and only time, I believe) that there was an actual "writers wanted" ad published in the magazine. At that point, I had done a number of fanzine publications, I was an unoffical staff member of GameOn! USA (Viz's short lived video game magazine), I was part of their J-pop.com website project, and I had done a thing or two for Animerica. (I think I had, at that point. It might have been a bit later that I started doing freelance for Animerica, though.)

I sent in my resume, copies of my fanzines, and some other work. I got a call from Dave, and a few months later I flew out to SoCal with the intent of being one of the new video game reviewers for the magazine at the same point that people like Mike Griffen (Glitch) and Michael Hobbs (Substance D) were also joining the magazine. Unfortunately, things didn't work out quite like that. I think some of the people there weren't as happy with my writing as they were hoping to be, and I think part of that was that I was pretty rough on the games that I reviewed. So, anyhow, I ended up getting a lot less work as far as reviewing game reviews than I was initially set to get.

Because of that, it was decided that I was to help out Ryan Lockhart (Orion), who was then head of the GameFan website. I was then given the shittest job I could have had at GameFan; when press releases came in by fax or mail, I would sit there and manually retype the entire press release so that it could be put up on the website. Trust me, it sucks as much as it sounds like it would. After a while, it was decided that they wanted an AnimeFan section for the website, and that task was given to me. Initially the design was handled by the IT guys, but then later re-design of the website was handed over to me. At that point, I had so little experience with designing websites that the result was utterly hideous. It was used, however, and I was then in charge of AnimeFan Online. (While also, of course, still retyping press releases.)

Two factors worked against this. First, the computer I had to use at the office was utter crap, and not meant for anything beyond some simple text editing and whatnot. To be fair, though, the hardware available at the GameFan Offices was for a long time at that kind of level. Everybody there was forced to push their hardware farther than it was ever meant to go. The other problem was that I had never run any sort of website, I didn't have a feel for what it took to run one, and I have ALWAYS been crap when it comes to coming up with news out of the air. I've never been very good at that. Finding news and interesting information from other places, that I'm good at, but I didn't want to make a site that was simply content pulled from other sites and sources. (Of course, now you have sites like Slashdot that are famous for being that very thing.) So the site was a small smattering of news, backed up by a bunch of reviews and a few other kinds of things.

I think Ryan really disliked the stress of having to find new and interesting content on a daily basis, and having to also beg and plead the magazine writers to help out with previews, reviews, screenshots, and whatnot. At a certain point, I think he just snapped, and decided he had had enough. Ryan stepped down from running the site, and I was pushed into running the site by myself. Here's a word to the wise - when you have a real, "major" site, don't put somebody with only a minimal amount of experience running a website into that position. The thing that worked into my favor was that, back then, there weren't a lot of people who had experience running websites, so people with little experience could run one and still possibly get away with it.

So I found myself running GameFan.com, with no experience running a site that size, no industry contacts, no experience talking to industry contacts, no idea where I was supposed to be getting news from, or anything. For a while, I hated it, and the site totally sucked. After a while, I just sort of said, "Fuck it," and started running the site as I would my own personal fansite. This had two effects, I think. First, we felt a lot more like a fansite than any of the other "majors" out there. The other was that I think we were a lot more fun than any of the majors out there. *heh* I honestly still can't believe I got away with some of the stuff I did. After a while, Bryn Williams (the Guvnor) joined up, and he was pretty close to the same type of personality that I was. He also wasn't totally clear on what to do for content, so we ended up producing even more of the kind of stuff I had been doing. I think the site really felt like the mag, though, and we did stuff a lot of other large sites weren't doing. We had Jun (J-bomb) translate stuff for Japanese games almost nobody had ever heard of, and we'd do up big articles with a bunch of screenshots, artwork, etc. (For example, we did a big write-up on Atelier Marie.)

I think that what Bryn and I were doing, it wasn't what needed to be done for bringing in the visitors or ad dollars, but it was a lot of fun, and it was different and interesting at the time. That isn't to diss the era of the site when Kevin and them were running it: the site under the two regimes were totally different beasts, and each were great for different reasons.

[Fe 26]

No no, blah blah stuff and monkey fluff reasons.

I think you are being a little hard on yourself.

For one thing, you have always been ahead of your time for webpage lay out. You had a fairly nice looking webpage for yourself back when most personal pages were nothing but solid color backgrounds with flame gifs and white text.


Are we ever going to hear about what exactly happened at GF to drive you off your rocker for a while? I recall at one point you basically disowned anime and gaming on the front page of your website.

I know you are past that now, but what made you disown these things you seemed to really enjoy earlier?

[Clash!]

Maybe its just me, but that Cybermorph review is not all that strange for Dave. Nothing about it really seemed off course for Dave. I mean he could have been on Acid, but it just seems like standard Dave getting way too into a game nothing would have made me think he was on something. He balbs on about little details all the time, read his stuff in Play its no different. He made Devil May Cry 2 sound so freaking awesome, mainly because he talked and talked about the environments.

None the less I love all the Stories of GFs past. I too was a spaz for GameFan though I was much more into it in its last couple of years. I am more interested in what happend to Cerberus, The Judge, Eggo (still with Tecmo?), and those folks I guess.

[Dolemite]

Dolemite I hope you can find that issue because I'd hate to have to call up my parents and bug them to dig through old Gamefans for me.

Sorry, just checked my stack, and the earliest issue I have is August 1995. But it looks like gamevet was kind enought to scan the post the pages. Thanks, guy.

Heh heh...Dave thought Cybermorph was the first "real game."

[kdeselms]

I am more interested in what happend to Cerberus, The Judge, Eggo (still with Tecmo?), and those folks I guess.

I added a "Where are they now" thing to my post on my forum, yesterday - that'll give you a rough idea of what's happening with alumni from my time there, at least with those I have contact with...I've lost touch with a lot of them and only have "last known whereabouts" basically. George left Tecmo ages ago, he's been in test at Activision for a couple years at this point, I think.

[Dolemite]

What was the deal with the Monitor guy (or whatever he was called)? Who came up with him, and why? Was he around since the beginning, and why was he dumped?

Kei thought this was the best thing ever and would show how he was not afraid to manually take care of Puggle's needs, right in front of whoever was around to see.

....

WTF

So what is up with that? Are you going to try to get a bunch of old GameFan alumni to spill their beans and then compile it into a book and sell it? Don't be selfish now.

"They reviewed games on acid...they were stiffed cash...they mastrubated puppies...this is the story of Gamefan Magazine."