Something we really want to do as we kick off the new year is find ways to share more about the topics we’re individually passionate about here at IGN. As things have changed over the years, we’ve gone from being a website that could realistically cover literally every new game towards being this multi-tentacled global media thing covering a corner of pop culture where there are thousands of new games, movies, and TV shows released every year. Consequently, our relationship with you all has changed quite significantly. The enormous growth in the volume of cool stuff means that the work we do has required people in our profession to become knowledgeable generalists – and quite often we now see that word used to imply we’re not actually experts on anything, or truly passionate about the topics we cover. Generalism is actually a strength for any talented reporter or critic with a broad beat, but it does have an unfortunate side-effect: it can inadvertently distance us from those of you that are super-passionate about very specific topics, and it can obscure the love we have for the games and entertainment we talk about every day.
We’ve been thinking about this for a while now, and looking at ways to change how we talk about topics and find ways to connect with you all. Like anyone doing anything anywhere on the internet, there’s obviously lots of data we can look at every day. We use views and engagements and comments and all kinds of metrics that we feed into charts and graphs and spreadsheets to try and gauge what might be top of mind at any given moment, but OMG…how boring does that sound?
We’re very fortunate to have a large team spread around the world, and there’s a phenomenal amount of knowledge and passion locked up inside of us, so how do we let that out? How do we make it so that you get to know us better and get a better feel for what makes us tick?
There’s a phenomenal amount of knowledge and passion locked up inside of us, so how do we let that out?
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The answer (we hope) is something we’re borrowing from the past. Old farts like me came up through magazines and print media – I ran Electronic Gaming Monthly, the Official PlayStation Magazine, and Gamepro among others, before switching to online media – and the way we used to forge connections was with serialized op-eds. Today we’re kicking off our experimentation with the same approach here. There are people on our team that are incredibly passionate about a huge spectrum of topics, including Soulslikes, fighting games, retro games, photo modes in games, science fiction, the value of highly-collectible games, anime, competitive shooters, racing games, Japanese gaming culture, single-player game narratives, and horror – so we’re letting them loose to go as deep and nerdy as they possibly can on all of these topics. In conjunction with this we’ve been making changes to our podcasts so they become the focal points for passionate PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo fandom.
Our hope is that over time you’ll get to know us better and understand what drives us, and that in turn will help build a relationship where you start to recognize more names and faces when they pop up on podcasts, live shows, and other content across all the different platforms where we post content. For me, while I don’t expect an enormous number of people to actually read this From the Editor column, I want to create a place where I regularly update you all on what we’re working on, and how we’re thinking about our coverage.
John Davison is the publisher and editorial lead, and has been writing about games and entertainment for more than 30 years. Follow him on Twitter.