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Revision as of 02:39, 23 February 2005 by 67.85.170.206 (talk) (→The Vestibule)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)IGN is the oldest and most visited general gaming website, and runs one of the most popular forums on the Internet. IGN is ranked among the top 400 most visited websites according to Alexa.
Introduction
Founded in 1995, the part-free and part-subscription site attracts 8 million unique visitors a month and has 5 million users registered through all departments of the site, including reviews, previews, walkthroughs, codes, and other media.
IGN runs on a combination of advertising and subscriptions. IGN Insider is IGN's premium subscription service at $20/year. Insiders get benefits like the ability to disable some ads, access to Insider only forums, and can read Insider only content.
IGN Entertainment used to be the only gaming website in the stock market (Nasdaq: IGNX), however as of 2003 IGN's stocks are no longer publicly traded.
IGN originally stood for Imagine Games Network, until Imagine Media was acquired by Snowball Inc. Snowball is now known as just IGN Entertainment, thus the IGN acronym has no real meaning.
In March 2004 IGN Entertainment and Gamespy Industries merged, and was briefly known for 3 months as IGN/GameSpy before formalizing their corporate name as IGN Entertainment.
In June 2004, IGN bought the popular movie review site, Rotten Tomatoes.
Message Boards
IGN is also known for its extremely active message boards. According to Big-boards.com, the RPG Vault Network boards are ranked #3, general IGN boards #4, and theforce.net (Star Wars special interest boards) #10. All together, the three communities have almost 200 million active posts. IGN Boards contains many forums on topics ranging from the 3 major video game systems, to cell phones, to DVDs, and gear.
The IGN boards were created in late July 2000 as a place of videogame discussion for members of IGN.com.
The IGNCB
The IGNCB, or IGN Community Board, opened on September 11th, 2000, as the first community board on IGN. It was created for the "non-video game related content" that was beginning to appear on the video game discussion boards.
I-Boards
When IGN Insider was created, special Insider Boards where created for subscribers. These included boards for different systems, a multiplatform board, and a community board for general disccusion.
In February of 2002, IGN changed it so that all IGN forums required membership in its insider subscription program, including the popular IGNCB. This controversial move left a lot of loyal "regulars" unable to access the boards. The special Insider Boards were temporarily named the Asylum Boards, and later the I-Boards, which is their current name.
The Vestibule
Due to popular demand, on March 8th The Vestibule was created as a means of allowing non-subscribers to use the boards. It was originally intended to be a trial board, but it was frequented by both subscribers ("Insiders") and non-subscribers ("Outsiders"), and soon became the most popular board on IGN. As of 2005, the Vestibule have over 16 million total posts and hundreds of daily users. They are the busiest board on IGN as well as one of the busiest boards on the Internet.
The Vestibule has developed its own internet subculture. The proliferation of debatable topics such as religion, culture, and drugs makes the Vestibule one of the most accessible of the IGN forums.
As The Vestibule because busier and more popular, some regular users would say that the quality of the forum has declined. The forum has been inclined to have spam messages.
Avatars
Unlike many other message boards on the internet, avatars must be submitted and approved in a submission thread. Avatars must be 80x80, under 5K, in the GIF format, and with a transparent background. Avatars also can not be square, cuttoff at the top, pixelated or be "assy" in other ways. Only Insiders can use avatars.
Closed sections
As the site has evolved, several older sections of it have fallen into disuse.
IGN Sci-Fi
Largely dead since 2002, this section of the site included movie news, comic book reviews, and other associated items. It has since fallen into disuse. It still exists at ], where its front page offers, among other things, the latest news on Terminator 3.
Criticisms of IGN
Like many popular gaming sites, IGN has its detractors. The most contentious issue is their ubiquitous advertisements. IGN was one of the first sites to use interstitials. Originally these ads were designed to show up after a set number of page links; currently, they now appear more often. Also, for a brief time, IGN's entire website was significantly changed to add Coca-Cola and McDonald's logos everywhere.
IGN has been criticized for displaying advertisements for its Insiders, who pay a yearly fee to receive added benefits. Many sites with subscriptions disable all ads for those who pay. After many complaints from Insiders, IGN gave them the option to disable the most intrusive of the ads. Banner ads, including Flash ads, are still shown to Insiders.
IGN defenders say that they should be given credit for developing a business model which allowed them to survive the dot-com crash of the late 1990s.