IGN

IGN (formerly Imagine Games Network) is an American video game and entertainment media website operated by IGN Entertainment Inc., a subsidiary of Ziff Davis, itself wholly owned by j2 Global. The company is located in San Francisco's SOMA district and is headed by its former editor-in-chief, Peer Schneider. The IGN website was the brainchild of media entrepreneur Chris Anderson and launched on September 29, 1996. It focuses on games, films, television, comics, technology, and other media. Originally a network of desktop websites, IGN is now also distributed on mobile platforms, console programs on the Xbox and PlayStation, FireTV, Roku, and via YouTube, Twitch, Hulu, and Snapchat.

IGN
Logo of IGN Entertainment since 2009
Type of businessSubsidiary
Type of site
Entertainment
Available inEnglish, German, French, Hebrew, Swedish, Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Polish, Greek, Romanian, Korean, Russian, Croatian, Turkish, Czech, Portuguese, Japanese, Hindi, and other Philippine dialects
Founded1996 (1996) (as Imagine Games Network)
Headquarters625 2nd Street, 4th Floor
San Francisco, California, United States,
U.S.[1]
Founder(s)Jonathan Simpson-Bint
Key peoplePeer Schneider (General Manager)
IndustryVideo game and media journalism
Employees250
Parent
URLwww.ign.com
Alexa rank 540 (Nov 2019)[2]
Registration
  • Free
  • IGN Prime
  • Founder's Club
Current statusActive

Originally, IGN was the flagship website of IGN Entertainment, a website which owned and operated several other websites oriented towards players' interests, games, and entertainment, such as Rotten Tomatoes, GameSpy, GameStats, VE3D, TeamXbox, Vault Network, FilePlanet, and AskMen, among others. IGN was sold to publishing company Ziff Davis in February 2013 and now operates as a j2 Global subsidiary.

History
IGN Entertainment's former headquarters in Brisbane, California

Created in September 1996 as the Imagine Games Network, the IGN content network was founded by publishing executive Jonathan Simpson-Bint and began as five individual websites within Imagine Media: N64.com (later renamed ign64.com), PSXPower, Saturnworld, Next-Generation.com, and Ultra Game Players Online. Imagine expanded on its owned-and-operated websites by creating an affiliate network that included a number of independent fansites such as PSX Nation.com, Sega-Saturn.com, Game Sages, and GameFAQs. In 1998, the network launched a new homepage that consolidated the individual sites as system channels under the IGN brand. The homepage exposed content from more than 30 different channels. Next-Generation and Ultra Game Players Online were not part of this consolidation; U.G.P.O. dissolved with the cancellation of the magazine, and Next-Generation was put "on hold" when Imagine decided to concentrate on launching the short-lived Daily Radar brand.

In February 1999, PC Magazine named IGN one of the hundred-best websites, alongside competitors GameSpot and CNET Gamecenter.[3] That same month, Imagine Media incorporated a spin-off that included IGN and its affiliate channels as Affiliation Networks, while Simpson-Bint remained at the former company. In September, the newly spun-out standalone internet media company, changed its name to Snowball.com. At the same time, small entertainment website The Den merged into IGN and added non-gaming content to the growing network. Snowball held an IPO in 2000, but shed most of its other properties during the dot-com bubble. IGN prevailed with growing audience numbers and a newly established subscription service called IGN Insider (later IGN Prime), which led to the shedding of the name "Snowball" and adoption of IGN Entertainment on May 10, 2002.

In June 2005, IGN reported having 24,000,000 unique visitors per month, with 4.8 million registered users through all departments of the site. IGN has been ranked among the top 500 most-visited websites according to Alexa.[4] In September 2005, IGN was acquired by Rupert Murdoch's multi-media business empire, News Corporation, for $650 million.[5] IGN celebrated its 10th anniversary on January 12, 2008.[6] IGN was headquartered in the Marina Point Parkway office park in Brisbane, California, until it relocated to a smaller office building near AT&T Park in San Francisco on March 29, 2010. On May 25, 2011, IGN sold its Direct2Drive division to Gamefly for an undisclosed amount.[7]

Acquisition of UGO, sale to Ziff Davis

In 2011, IGN Entertainment acquired its rival UGO Entertainment (owners of 1UP.com) from Hearst Corporation. Ultimately, News Corp. planned to spin off IGN Entertainment as a publicly traded company, continuing a string of divestitures for digital properties it had previously acquired (including MySpace and Photobucket).[8]

On February 4, 2013, after a failed attempt to spin off IGN as a separate company, News Corp. announced that it had sold IGN Entertainment to the publishing company Ziff Davis, which was recently acquired by J2 Global. Financial details regarding the purchase were not revealed. Prior to its acquisition by UGO, 1UP.com had previously been owned by Ziff Davis.[9] Soon after the acquisition, IGN announced that it would be laying off staff and closing GameSpy, 1UP.com, and UGO in order to focus on its flagship brands, IGN.com and AskMen.[10]

Subsidiaries and spin-offs

The role-playing video game interest website Vault Network was acquired by IGN in 1999.[11] GameStats, a review aggregation website, was founded by IGN in 2004. GameStats includes a "GPM" (Game Popularity Meter) rating system which incorporates an average press score and average gamer score, as well as the number of page hits for the game. However, the site is no longer being updated. The Xbox interest site, TeamXbox, and the PC game website VE3D were acquired in 2003.[12][13] IGN Entertainment merged with GameSpy Industries in 2005.[14] The merger also brought the game download site FilePlanet into the IGN group; as of 2011 both FilePlanet and the GameSpy website still operate as video game-related web sites. IGN Entertainment acquired the online male lifestyle magazine AskMen in 2005.[15] In 2004, IGN acquired film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes and in 2010, sold the website to Flixster.[16] In October 2017, Humble Bundle announced that it was being acquired by IGN.[17]

Scoring systems

Original scale

A member of the IGN staff writes a review for a game and gives it a score between 0.1 and 10.0, which is assigned by increments of 0.1 and determines how much the game is recommended. The score is given according to the "individual aspects of a game, like presentation, graphics, sound, gameplay and lasting appeal". Each game is given a score in each of these categories, but the overall score for the game is an independent evaluation, not an average of the scores in each category.[18]

20-point scale

On August 3, 2010, IGN announced that the site would be changing to a new scoring scale. Instead of a 100-point scale, where games are scored in increments of 0.1, all future reviews would use a 20-point scale where games are scored in increments of 0.5. Under both systems, the maximum possible score a game can receive is 10.0. The scoring change is not retroactive: all scores on reviews written before the change will remain the same. This change also did not affect the scoring system for reader reviews.

100-point scale

On September 13, 2012, IGN revealed that as part of their new review format all future reviews would now follow a 100-point scale again, but this time without using decimals, meaning a score of 8.5 would now be an 85. Unlike the previous conversion to the 20-point scale, this latest scoring system change was retroactive and all previous IGN review scores were to be updated to follow the new system. However, despite the announcement, the article included a short addition, post-release; it stated that after much discussion, they have decided to retain the decimal point in all upcoming scores.[19]

Re-review policy

In early 2014, IGN introduced a new policy, in which a game's review score can be re-reviewed and improved, provided that continuous updates form a significant change in the game compared to how it was at launch. Examples of games that have been re-reviewed were League of Legends, Heroes of the Storm, Warframe, and the pocket edition of Minecraft.[20]

10-point scale

In January 2020, IGN revealed they would be reverted back to a 10-point review scale, from 1 to 10, finding that the finer distinction of the 100-point scale was difficult to maintain, whereas a 10-point scale would still be truthful to their reviews and easier to promote.[21]

IGN 'Best of' awards

IGN's 'Best of' is an end-of-year event to annually honor the year's best games, films, television shows and comics.[22] Winners of each award category is selected by IGN staff from a list of nominees, while readers are able to cast their own votes online to determine the 'People's Choice' award for each category.

Other sections

In 2000, Snowball.com purchased an E-federation called the Internet Wrestling Organization (IWO).[23] Since Snowball owned both IWO and IGN, IWO would go on to become IGN's first official E-Fed, even doing a column on the website. The IGN For Men section officially closed down on October 2, 2001, and is no longer updated. IGN has sites such as IGN Stars and AskMen.com that fulfil much of the function of the old IGN For Men site. IGN Wrestling met its end in early 2002 when many of the staff departed. Interviews with professional wrestling personalities and coverage of wrestling games have been folded into IGN Sports, currently headed by Jon Robinson. IGN Sci-Fi: Largely dead since 2002, this section of the site included movie news, comic book reviews, anime coverage and other associated items. It has since been discontinued. The site, SciFI.ign.com, now redirects to the recently created SciFiBrain.ign.com, which covers some of the content of the old Sci-Fi site.

In 2002, IGN launched a dedicated video game FAQs site specifically designed to host user-submitted guides.[24] This was launched following the cancellation of affiliation with GameFAQs. In 2004, IGN launched GameStats, which was intended to be a more unbiased rating network, as it takes in scores from every corporately owned game rating site and averages them all into one score to give a general idea of the quality of a game. IGN also launched Direct2Drive.com in 2004. Its primary focus is selling digital downloads of full PC and Mac video games, as well as anime, comics and game guides. In 2005, IGN launched its comics site, which is devoted to not just the staple Marvel and DC titles, but also manga, graphic novels, statues and toys.

In 2006, IGN launched its television site. It provides interviews with various television celebrities, in addition to a TV schedule, TV trivia and TV news. Akin to IGN FilmForce, IGN's TV section has a variety of exclusive clips from upcoming television shows.

On May 30, 2006, IGN Dreamcast was restarted; however, none of the Dreamcast updates were posted on the main IGN webpage.

In 2007, IGN launched its anime site. It provided features on anime and manga, including trailers and free episodes. It also included reviews of manga and anime from other sections of IGN, such as IGN Comics and IGN DVD. The anime channel was dropped after IGN redesigned the site. In 2008, the IGN Retro channel was launched to mark IGN's 10th anniversary.[25] To coincide with the release of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, IGN created the Super Smash Bros. World site. On the site, people can submit their user-created stages from the game and download ones made by other people. IGN subsequently launched a similar website called GTA 'Hood on April 29, 2008, for Grand Theft Auto IV.

Along with their popular website content, IGN also publishes many different podcasts on both their website and on iTunes. Some of their podcasts include console-oriented shows like the PlayStation-focused "Podcast Beyond" and the Xbox-oriented "Podcast Unlocked", the Nintendo-oriented "Nintendo Voice Chat", and Game Scoop!, a podcast where a variety of editors discuss news and topics surrounding the video game industry.[26]

Regional websites
  • Since 2006, IGN Entertainment began launching regional versions of the website for various countries and pan-regions. Initially, IGN began opening new offices outside the United States in order to support those regional websites, but later IGN began franchising its brand as a more cost-effective means of globalization, wherein it licensed various media publishers in many countries to use the IGN brand and manage regional websites on their own. When visiting www.ign.com from an IGN-supported region, the site automatically redirects visitors to their localized version using geolocation software, based on their countries' IP addresses. Each version of the site has a modified logo with their country's/region's respective flags near the IGN logo. However, it is still possible to access the original American website using a navigation bar on top or below (depending on the regional website) the page's master template.
  • IGN opened its first offices in the UK and Australia in 2006, which both share the same information as the American site but with added content authored from editors within each respective region. Other licensed regional publishers work on their own servers, albeit can link to IGN's HQ database, where they can import or translate articles, and use videos uploaded on IGN's servers that use IGN's own hosted video player.
  • On May 16, 2012, in collaboration with the Emirati-based company t-break Media, IGN Middle East was announced for the MENA gaming community. The site replaces t-break Media's own ME Gamers website, which was formerly one of the largest Middle Eastern-based gaming media outlets that was originally launched in 2006. ME Gamers' entire staff converted their duties to IGN Middle East, importing or translating many of IGN's English articles, whilst writing up their own articles, especially for Middle Eastern-specific events. IGN Middle East is available in both English and Arabic languages.[27] Whilst the site was initially launched to cover only video games, t-break Media announced in September 2012 that they started posting movie-related articles under the IGN brand as IGN Movies Middle East, merging most of the duties from their own ME Movies website, which was originally established in 2009, under a similar manner to their video game content.[28] Unlike video games, however, most movie-related content will be in English only.
  • In September 2012 the Italian edition of IGN launched, managed by a local team, providing both original and translated contents.[29]
  • On October 9, 2012, in collaboration with the Spanish-based media company Marca, IGN Spain was announced. The site effectively replaces Marca's own Marca Player gaming news website. Marca Player's editors converted their duties to IGN Spain, translating many of IGN's English articles, whilst writing up their own Spanish articles as well, covering various topics including video games, movies, TV series and comics.[30]
  • In March 2013, IGN Russia was launched. Russian version is managed by Gameland publishing house, and its staff was initially completed by former editors and writers from Strana Igr, Gameland's printed video game magazine that was closed later that year.
  • On December 2, 2013, IGN Africa was launched.[31][32]
  • On December 17, 2013, in collaboration with Times Internet, IGN India was launched. The Indian edition takes AAA game reviews from its US counterpart and focuses more on coverage of gaming news and events in the country, apart from writing about comics, movies, technology.[33]
  • On September 1, 2014, IGN Latinoamérica was launched in collaboration with Publimetro and cover the whole Central and South American region (except Brazil) with content in Spanish.
  • On November 11, 2014, IGN Israel was launched.
  • On February 23, 2015, IGN Brazil was launched.
  • 2015, IGN Hungary was launched.
  • On June 2015, IGN Romania was launched.[34]
  • On November 6, 2015, IGN Poland was launched.[35]
  • On January 4, 2016, IGN Adria was launched. IGN Adria covers countries of ex Yugoslavia region: Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and North Macedonia.
  • On April 11, 2016, in collaboration with Sankei Digital, the online publishing arm of Japanese newspaper publisher Sankei Shimbun, IGN Japan was publicly launched, and was expected to have a full scale release by summer 2016. The launch of IGN Japan is considered a critical development: In addition to translation of English articles, IGN Japan is hoping to also contribute much original content for other IGN editions from the Japanese end of the gaming industry,[36] one of the world's largest video game markets with little mainstream journalism for Western media.
  • On April 12, 2016, in collaboration with Pakistani-based Express Publications, IGN Pakistan was publicly launched. Pakistan originally shared some media coverage with IGN Middle East, and later IGN India, before spinning off to a completely independent IGN edition with focus on local gaming and pop culture events in Pakistan.[37] IGN Pakistan is initially only available in English, but an Urdu language version was expected to launch later in 2016.

IGN Pro League

In 2011, IGN launched IGN Pro League, a professional e-sports circuit that ran tournaments for StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, ShootMania Storm and League of Legends.[38] On March 6, 2013, only weeks prior to the event, IGN abruptly cancelled the finals of IPL 6—which were to be held in Las Vegas from March 28 through 31, and discontinued the league. IGN indicated that it was no longer in a position to commit to competing with the increased number of e-sports events that were now being held.[39][40] On April 8, 2013, Blizzard Entertainment announced that it had acquired the staff and assets of the IPL from IGN; its former staff were reassigned to work on in-house e-sports productions.[41]

Plagiarism

In August 2018, the owner of YouTube channel Boomstick Gaming accused IGN reviewer Filip Miucin of plagiarizing his video review of the game Dead Cells.[42] On August 7, IGN replaced its review with a statement that its writers "take plagiarism very seriously" and were investigating the claim.[42] Later that day, IGN stated that it had found "substantial similarities" between the reviews, apologized, and announced that it had dismissed Miucin.[42] On August 10, IGN published a new review by Brandin Tyrrel, which included an editor's note apologizing again and stating that "this review (and its score) represents solely the opinion of the new reviewer".[43]

In a subsequently deleted video,[44] Miucin responded that while he took "complete ownership over what happened", the similarity was not intentional.[45] Website Kotaku found similarities between Miucin's other reviews and reviews on Nintendo Life and Engadget,[46] and material posted on the games discussion forum NeoGAF.[47] On August 14, IGN announced that it would remove all of Miucin's work pending further review.[47] On April 19, 2019, Miucin admitted plagiarism and issued an apology on his YouTube channel.[48]

References
  1. "Contact - IGN Entertainment". Retrieved May 31, 2014.
  2. "Ign.com Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved November 5, 2019.
  3. Willmott, Don (February 9, 1999). "The 100 Top Web Sites". PC Magazine. 18 (3): 114.
  4. Doe, Johnny (November 13, 2019). "ign.com — Site Information from Alexa". Alexa. Retrieved August 26, 2009.
  5. "News Corp. Acquires IGN for $650 Million". Bloomberg Businessweek. September 11, 2005. Archived from the original on November 4, 2005. Retrieved August 25, 2010.
  6. Geddes, Ryan. "IGN: Origins: The History of IGN". Retro.ign.com. Retrieved August 26, 2009.
  7. "Gamefly, Inc. Acquires Direct2Drive from IGN Entertainment" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on June 26, 2011. Retrieved October 24, 2011.
  8. Siegler, M. G. "Confirmed: IGN Buys UGO, Hearst Gets Equity In New Venture That Will Soon Spin Out". TechCrunch. Retrieved May 5, 2017.
  9. "IGN Entertainment sold by News Corp to publisher Ziff Davis". Digital Spy. Retrieved February 4, 2013.
  10. "IGN hit with layoffs; 1UP, Gamespy and UGO shutting down". Joystiq. Archived from the original on March 26, 2014. Retrieved February 21, 2013.
  11. Robert Lemos (September 28, 1999), "IGN.com will buy the Vault Network", www.zdnet.com
  12. "IGN Entertainment acquires TeamXbox website (Press Release)", corp.ign.com, IGN, October 21, 2003, archived from the original on December 12, 2007
  13. "IGN Acquires VE3D Gaming Site; Premier Gaming News Site Joins IGN Network", www.allbusiness.com, AllBusiness.com, April 15, 2003, archived from the original on July 1, 2010
  14. "IGN/Gamespy merger creates one of the internet's largest game and internet-focused company (Press Release)", corp.ign.com, IGN, March 5, 2004, archived from the original on July 1, 2007
  15. "IGN Entertainment acquires Askmen.com (Press Release)", corp.ign.com, IGN, June 1, 2005, archived from the original on November 18, 2007
  16. Graser, Marc (January 4, 2010). "Flixster buys Rotten Tomatoes". Variety. Retrieved February 7, 2014.
  17. "Humble Bundle is Joining Forces with IGN!". Humble Mumble. Archived from the original on October 13, 2017. Retrieved October 13, 2017.
  18. "IGN Ratings and Reviews Policy". IGN. Archived from the original on April 20, 2009. Retrieved May 25, 2009.
  19. j bendickson (September 13, 2012). "Reviews 2.0 - The Future of Reviews Starts Now  — Blog by kami casey". IGN. Retrieved October 27, 2012.
  20. Stapleton, Dan (February 13, 2014). "IGN's Re-Review Policy".
  21. Stapleton, Dan (January 2, 2020). "Announcement: IGN's Review Scale Just Got Simpler". IGN. Retrieved January 2, 2020.
  22. "Television – Best of 2011". IGN. Retrieved July 7, 2016.
  23. "Internet Wrestling Organization". Archived from the original on May 19, 2000.
  24. "Get the FAQs". IGN. July 9, 2002.
  25. "IGN: Playing With the Past: IGN Retro". Uk.games.ign.com. January 11, 2008. Archived from the original on March 12, 2012. Retrieved August 26, 2009.
  26. "IGN Podcasts". IGN. Retrieved July 2, 2015.
  27. Jaffar Ali, Abbas (May 16, 2012). "IGN Entertainment and T-Break Media launch IGN Middle East". IGN Middle East. Retrieved November 17, 2012.
  28. Hashmi, Faisal (September 2, 2012). "ME-Movies Has Now Merged With IGN Middle East Movies". IGN Middle East. Retrieved November 17, 2012.
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  30. Sanz, David (October 9, 2012). "Bienvenidos a IGN España" (in Spanish). IGN Spain. Archived from the original on December 12, 2013. Retrieved December 3, 2012.
  31. "Ziff Davis launches IGN Africa". GamesIndustry. November 18, 2013.
  32. "IGN Africa is live! Why is NAG excited?". NAG Online. December 3, 2013.
  33. "IGN India Goes Live". medianama.com. December 17, 2013.
  34. "S-a lansat IGN România". July 1, 2015.
  35. "Koniec plotek i domysłów. Właśnie ruszył polski IGN - AntyWeb". AntyWeb (in Polish). Retrieved February 1, 2016.
  36. Dring, Christopher (April 11, 2016). "IGN launches Japanese website". MCV UK. Retrieved April 12, 2016.
  37. Ansari, Noman (April 12, 2016). "Welcome to IGN Pakistan". IGN Pakistan. Retrieved April 12, 2016.
  38. Mendez, Alex. "Announcing the IPL weekly Shootmania Cup". IGN. Retrieved November 2, 2012.
  39. "IGN cancels IPL6 eSports tournament". GameSpot. Archived from the original on March 2, 2013. Retrieved March 2, 2013.
  40. "IPL6 eSports tournament officially cancelled – refunds available for ticket holders". PC Gamer. Retrieved April 9, 2013.
  41. "IGN Pro League "technology and assets" purchased by Blizzard". PC Gamer. Retrieved April 9, 2013.
  42. Hernandez, Patricia (August 7, 2018). "IGN pulls game review after YouTuber's plagiarism accusations". The Verge. Retrieved August 12, 2018..
  43. Tyrrel, Brandin (August 10, 2018). "Dead Cells Review". IGN. Retrieved August 30, 2018.
  44. Tamburro, Paul (August 15, 2018). "IGN Removes "Pretty Much Everything" by Filip Miucin Following Plagiarism Controversy". Game Revolution. Retrieved May 12, 2019.
  45. Leri, Michael (August 10, 2018). "IGN Dead Cells Reviewer Disputes Plagiarism Allegations". Game Revolution. Retrieved August 12, 2018.
  46. Schreier, Jason (August 11, 2018). "Former IGN Reviewer Responds To Plagiarism Allegations: 'Not At All Intentional' [UPDATES: Third Review Questioned, Video Removed]". Kotaku. Retrieved August 12, 2018.
  47. Schafer, Jason (August 15, 2018). "IGN Pulls Ex-Editor's Posts After Dozens More Plagiarism Accusations Surface". Kotaku. Retrieved August 15, 2018.
  48. FILIP (April 19, 2019), My Apology., retrieved April 25, 2019
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