About
IGN is a website containing video game-related news, cheats, reviews and media.
History
In September 1996, the Imagine Games Network was founded by Jonathan Simpson-Bint for the gaming websites PSXPower, Next-Generation, Saturnworld, Ultra Game Players Online and N64.com. In 1998, many of the sites consolidated to become channels at IGN.com.[2]
In 1999, IGN purchased the role-playing video game website Vault Network.[1] In 2005, the multi-media business empire News Corporation acquired IGN for $650 million. On May 25th, 2011, IGN’s online game store Direct2Drive was sold to the video game rental service GameFly. In February 2013, News Corporation sold IGN to the publishing company Ziff Davis.
Features
IGN contains video game news, information, podcasts and videos for a variety of platforms, including PlayStaion, Xbox, PC and Nintendo. In addition, the site contains sections for movies and television entertainment. The IGN Forums provide community boards for video games and other entertainment media discussions.
Highlights
Operation Rainfall
Operation Rainfall was an online campaign orchestrated by gamers on the IGN Forums urging Nintendo to release North American versions of the games Xenoblade, The Last Story and Pandora’s Tower.
Didn’t Read LOL
"Didn’t Read, LOL” is an expression commonly used to taunt others online by announcing their comments and posts have been ignored. The first known GIF featuring the phrase surfaced on the IGN Forums in July 2008.
Controversies
Video Game Scoring
IGN video game review scores, which rank games on a scale from 1-10, are often mocked online for being overly generous in light of the actual review commentary. On February 6th, 2012, the gaming blog Twenty Sided[5] published an article criticizing IGN, which accused the site of “review-score prostitution.” On December 25th, an anonymous 4chan user replied to an illustration of a phallus with the comment “8/10 it’s okay – IGN,” mocking the lackluster reviews accompanied by above-average scores on the site. On October 16th, 2013, IGN reviews editor Dan Stapleton participated in an “ask me anything” (AMA) post on the /r/Games[4] subreddit. In the comments section Redditor recklessfred pointed out that many people perceived IGN reviews being on a 7-10 scale rather than the stated 0-10 scale. On November 17th, a post was submitted to the /r/OutOfTheLoop[3] subreddit about IGN scoring jokes. On December 5th, Redditor cyanghost109- submitted an infographic accusing IGN of giving unfair favorable reviews to games in the Call of Duty franchise, gaining over 2,300 upvotes and 300 comments prior to being archived (shown below).
Traffic
IGN reported that it was receiving 24 million unique visitors per month by June 2005. As of June 2014, IGN has a global rank of 312 and United States rank of 167 on the traffic analytics site Alexa.[6]