IGN Retro

[Dyne]

WTF are you babbling about?

[NeoZeedeater]

No, I wrote that article to piss people off. I didn't expect anyone to agree with me really.

I'm surprised there hasn't been more backlash. Most of the dispute there is from one guy with some views biased by his preference for later games. I expected a bunch more like him. Not that I think it deserves backlash. The points are logical but whenever the topic shows on message boards there's usually a lot of arguing.

WTF are you babbling about?

The site in his sig. It's awesome as there isn't another site quite like it that focuses on researching developers, especially "behind the scenes" ones.

[Frogacuda]

You know there's a site *wink** wink* if you're into that sort of thing. *nudge* *nudge*

I thanked/linked to your site in my article, btw.

[CRV1]

I thanked/linked to your site in my article, btw.

I know. Thank you.

[Finch]

No, thank you. srsly



OR IS IT?

[NeoZeedeater]

I used to love checking IGN Retro to see what stuff they would cover but man the site has taken a nosedive in overall quality this year. I'm guessing it's not Levi's choice. I imagine the higher ups have something to do with the content shifting towards all these "Is [insert mega-popular game] overrated?" topics designed solely to improve site traffic. I guess it couldn't sustain itself on exposing obscure classics alone.

[Frogacuda]

Long story short, economy is in the shitter, ad revenue is way down, and management basically froze his budget except for the big IGN Presents features (I just did a Resident Evil one like a week ago and I have what I hope is going to turn out to be a really good one coming up in a couple weeks) which are handed down from above, so Levi is basically just trying really hard working entirely on his own to get the numbers up and maybe fix that. I don't think the specific strategy is handed down from above as much as it is just a need to get traffic.

Even before this, we did get word from above to start focusing on more popular games, which I had no real problem with (maybe because "popular" really just meant "not bullshit obscure unless you can tie it in to something the readers know about"). What we were told was that we needed to get traffic in, get people aware of the channel (which a lot of people sadly still aren't) and THEN it would more reasonable to talk about obscure stuff. So I'm hoping that's still the intention here. I don't think they're planning to go this route forever, it's just that they need to get the IGN Retro name out there.

I think the editorial opinion articles are fine, but I do worry that over-saturating the site with them could seem desperate and/or undermine the channel's credibility, but we'll see how it it pans out.

[Yoshi]

"Is [insert mega-popular game] overrated?"

The answer is always yes.

[Finch]

or... is it?

[NeoZeedeater]

What we were told was that we needed to get traffic in, get people aware of the channel (which a lot of people sadly still aren't) and THEN it would more reasonable to talk about obscure stuff.

Ah, sounds like a temporary measure like income tax.

I guess I had hoped that the "IGN Presents" topics and Virtual Console reviews would be enough to satisfy the mainstream content. I liked that there used to be that balance. It's now overkill when you have an "Is Ocarina overrated?" article, then a reader response podcast for it, and then another reader response article.