IGN buys Ve3D

Found it on GAF thanks to Ripclawe.

http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/cb_headline.cgi?&story_file=bw.041503/231055210&directory=/google&header_file=header.htm&footer_file=

( BW)(CA-IGN)(IGNX) IGN Acquires VE3D Gaming Site; Premier Gaming News Site Joins IGN Network

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 15, 2003--IGN Entertainment (Nasdaq:IGNX) -- home to IGN.com, the web's largest information and entertainment destination for video gamers -- today announced that it has acquired VE3D, a preeminent online site for up-to-the minute gaming news.
IGN's acquisition of the VE3D web site from BA Ventures, LLC, enhances IGN's reach among hardcore fans of PC games. VE3D (www.ve3d.com) is particularly known for its in-depth coverage of action and strategy PC games, which complements the in-depth coverage of massively multiplayer online role-playing PC games (MMORPGs) provided by IGN's Vault Network.
"We're extremely excited about this addition to our network of gaming and entertainment sites," said Peer Schneider, IGN's Network Director. "VE3D offers quality content and is well known and highly respected in the gaming community. Not only are we expanding our audience, but we are also strengthening the depth of our gaming coverage."
"IGN truly understands the gaming enthusiast and is a good fit for our VE3D audience," said Rob Anderson, Director of Business Development for BA Ventures, LLC. "Our loyal fans will continue to receive the web's best gaming news from the VE3D site while gaining access to a huge breadth of video game and entertainment content from the rest of the IGN network."

About IGN Entertainment

IGN Entertainment (Nasdaq:IGNX), through its flagship network IGN.com, is the Internet's leading information and entertainment destination for teen and young adult gamers. IGN serves its audience by providing both free and subscription-based content and services. IGN's award winning content -- two Webby People's Voice Awards and two Wired Magazine's Readers Raves Awards -- attracts more than eight million unique visitors a month, including over 5.6 million registered users and more than 75,000 paying subscribers. IGN offers its business customers a full spectrum of integrated marketing solutions to reach this large web-centric audience. These products include fixed placement and impression-based advertising, sponsorships, permission marketing, custom publishing, e-commerce, direct e-mail marketing and content licensing. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, with sales offices in New York and Los Angeles. For more information, please visit http://www.ign.com.

VE3D has always been a great news site, but they have had really crap in house content, or a lack thereof, for a long time. Not really sure what to make of all this. Generally I think IGN’s content is all crap, so I don’t know if this is good or bad.

If they fire everyone currently on the VE3D staff, they could be on to something. :roll:

Has anyone else noticed IGN seems to be getting their asses in gear when it comes to review scores? IGN PC at least. I checked a number of recent releases (Postal 2, Vietcong, Devastation,) and noticed fairly low scores. In fact, looking at the last couple months I’m seeing quite a few scores in the 7 range.

:lol:

What exactly constitutes a “great news site?” Really good CTRL-C CTRL-V skills and a really big bookmark list?

None of them really follow up on new stories, fact-checking with publishers when they quote some other site as reporting some rumor or whatever. It wouldn’t take a lot of skill or effort to be a little more thorough, especially since these sites’ primary reason for existing is the news links.

I use the link farms, sure, but I can’t say I think any of them are “great new sites.” :cry:

Honestly I don’t even think it’s that extensive. From what I know they just get news stories submitted to them and they post them. If they had a great big bookmark list you would see more interesting news on some of them. Hell, I’ve submitted plenty of stories I found in just 20 minutes of looking around the Yahoo news section.

Funny story, I submitted a story from my website to several of the major link sites and had a number of them link it, which is cool. The funny part was seeing what sites literally just copy and pasted my original news story, spelling errors and all, haha.

I stopped reading them a little while ago once I got tired of reading the exact same thing on several sites. The only mainstream gaming news I actually read now is Gamespot, Avault, and GameDaily. Hell, I only check those about once a week, so I’m not exactly up to date on the mainstream gaming news at the moment, hehe.

There’s a guy at Evil Avatar that uses the name Spunior. He’s one of the only people I’ve seen that goes out of his way to find real newsworthy bits and present them professionally (for the most part). I’ve always been impressed by his ability to find the obscure site that has some very cool articles or hot news.

Other than that, they can keep the whole lot of them. I took it very seriously when I did news at Evil Avatar four years ago. That earned me a lot of respect and friends back then. If it weren’t for the guy running the site, I may have continued a lot longer.

–Dave

Before I started at BioWare, I considered starting up a site that presented gaming news in a professional manner. I know that if one existed today, it’d be a definite bookmark and regular visit for me.

I guess when I call it a great news site, I mean a place that is basically a 1 stop shop for news. I.E. I can go there and get all the info it would take me hitting 10 or more other sites to pick up on. I dig the comments system there too. It’s no slashdot, but I like being able to read commentary on what has been posted.

Erik and I often played a game where we tried to think of something that could possibly bring down the level of writing at VE3D. We could never think of the winning answer.

Here it is.

I had no idea anyone still read ve3d.

Here is looking forward to the easter message at gaming groove.

Chet

You know what clinched the deal? They threw in a midget, a leafblower, and a six-pack of vaseline.

-wumpus

A key phrase from one of today’s Voodoo Extreme site updates:

‘Got a fair bit of not so thrilling news to post so I’ll get on with it.’

Maybe that’s an exception, but if the VE3D guys think about it, that probably isn’t the best thing to say.

s!

Didn’t you start a games site after you went to BioWare?

Ooo! Ooo! Pimp hoochie-mama man-meat slapdown!

Hey now!
I resent that remark.

Here is the problem, and many folks know of this. Some of these publishers just won’t talk. You can dig, but what happens when you dig, is that they won’t deal with you when you dig it out. They won’t answer eMail or Phone calls. When you are the one to bust it, they won’t talk to you at all.

Or, you get that eMail fom them asking, “Who was the friend of the friend of the freind that told you this?” Dis once with a review, and yer off the list. Now, I admit I’m a n00b and try with my site, but as an indie (independant site) and not an english spelling major that "Edumucawedt " folks have to continously point out most times you have to cntrl-v and cntrl-p hoping to find the info before others, or follow-up with the forgotten story later.

But, come write for me, and all will be good! ;p

Div

It’s not like you’re breaking the story of Larry Froistad murdering his family or something. The big story is a fucking crowbar in an advertisement. Call Sierra (or Activision, whoever) and you’re just going to get a “No comment” from them. So when you write the story you be sure to state that “rumors have it that Half-Life 2 is going to be announced soon”, and that a Sierra representative would not comment on the matter (or that they “did not return our calls at press time”). On my old gaming news site I had news pieces like that pretty frequently. A good thing to do is actually take it upon yourself to followup on the stories, don’t just wait for on eof the big boys to do it.

I remember calling some lawyer constantly (least it seemed that way) in an effort to get an interview, or at least some comments, from one of his clients. It went on for quite a while, but I just kept getting the cold shoulder. Getting an actual sit down interview with Dave Grossman for DIY Games took about 6 months of emails going back and forth, but I think it was worth it in the end. Sure, it sucks getting blown off constantly but that’s how it works. I’ve been trying to get an email interview (and I HATE those) with Joe Lieberman forever, and his team even said yes at one point. But, still nothing has come of it. That’s just the way it goes sometimes.

In the end I think having a little journalistic integrity is worth it. You’re going to be a little behind on some stories, but as time goes on you’ll have more insight. You’ll also have an easier time getting people to talk to you as time goes on because they know you’re not going to turn on them suddenly. If you’re a site that compares their latest game to cock rings and anal probes then you’ve lost, but I believe you can come down heavily on them if you’re intelligent about it.

You don’t have to tell them, so don’t sweat it, hehe. Just be careful about reporting something that would cause them to come down on you like that. Invite them to give their comments on the matter, see what happens.

Now that everyone has had their say on how no one reads VE, let me point out that about half of the news items that make up threads on this forum are posted here about a half hour after they’ve already been wrung-out on VE3D and sites like it. So, whether the writing is terrible, or they don’t search hard enough for “interesting” items, or their comments section is a haven for trolls, or what have you – they still seem to be pretty good at what you’d expect, general gaming news updated frequently and in a timely manner. Whether they do it better than Blues or Gamespy or Shacknews or whatever is debatable.

I disagree, I cover MMO games, and they change constantly. In the MMO community they refuse to answer questions, and most times it’s just a total blow off as opposed to “No Comment.” It’s even become impossible to contact them via phone as they use caller I.D. and screen it.

I’ll agree on the follow-up though. A good follow-up to someone elses half-baked lead that sucked, is better. Most of my content is a day late as opposed to others, as I try to verify “Items” even as trivial as “News Updates” from the source.

When it comes to rumors though, it’s constantly being screamed “Libel.”

I can see your point with this, one guy actually burned my site when he did a review, “Thanks for another fucking treadmill assholes” as the title to his review. I was offline when it was posted, and for three weeks he had written great writes. When I logged in the next morning and saw 400 email messages I was like what the hell happened. Thought I hit on some Hooters grrls from the local college hard and they were pissed.

The guy who wrote that title, and the subsequent article nolonger wrote for my site after that, but that developer has not looked favorbaly on us since. What really sucked was the article hit the key points on the head and players agreed with it later down the road.

You don’t have to tell them, so don’t sweat it, hehe. Just be careful about reporting something that would cause them to come down on you like that. Invite them to give their comments on the matter, see what happens.[/quote]

I didnt. But I also heard that employee’s within the company were told not to discuss it either with anyone, as their jobs were on the line if they did, and were traced back. The person I was following up with, loves the job they have, but also would NOT give me any info on a recent story I posted due to the companies stance on an incident regardign one of thier team members leaving.

Some stories deserved to be aird, dirty laundry or not. Not everyone is a Lum though, loved, hated but respected by all.

Div

[quote=“Anonymous”]

I disagree, I cover MMO games, and they change constantly. In the MMO community they refuse to answer questions, and most times it’s just a total blow off as opposed to “No Comment.” It’s even become impossible to contact them via phone as they use caller I.D. and screen it.[/quote]

That’s kind of funny actually. Anyway, you could try blocking your number, or calling from a payphone. Gotta do what you gotta do. There’s a reason why people dislike news media types in general. They either have so much juice that people accuse them of being in bed with someone, or they’re so far on the outside that they resort to being dicks.

I can understand that. But if you word everything right and have facts to back up your accusations then I’m sure you’ll be fine. If you have a headline that says “Kelly Flock Is a Faggot!” then yeah, you’re asking for trouble. But if you say “Kelley Flock Is A Closet Homosexual” and can actually back it up with something then I doubt there’s much of a problem (legally at least, heh). To my knowledge the rules are a bit more flexible when you’re dealing with a public personality, but I’m sure a lawyer would be the person to ask about that.

Another example would be the Larry Froistad thing. If you had a headline that said “Larry Froistad ruthlessly murders family” and showed the facts that led you to this conclusion then you’re ok.

Don’t get intimidated just because someone calls you to task on something. I knew a dude who ran website that let you play the first three Zork games online. After a while Activisions lawyers came knocking and demanded he nuke the entire site. He didn’t budge until he actually got them and some others on the phones. Turns out they only had an issue with certain parts of the site, he made the proper adjustments and everything was well again.

Yeah, that’s totally understandable. At my work the only thing we’re allowed to say to media types is “Let me direct you to our public relations department.” Because it’s like I said before, the media lives on twisting and distorting facts and details to make for good copy. Knowing someone within a company that is willing to pass information to you is a huge plus, even if they ask that you keep everything off the record.

The funny thing about covering independent games is that although I have certain information not available to the world at large I can’t exactly post about it. And leaks within a company just aren’t going to happen when you only have two people there, haha.

Didn’t you start a games site after you went to BioWare?

Nah, I’d started GamersClick (or a version of it) like three years before I started at BioWare as a sort of hobby site.