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IGN was my first favorite website when I got the internet. It's funny, I first used the site for its DVD reviews, but that slowly changed when they started to combine the DVD reviews and the theatrical reviews as one.
As for video games, I've always been a Nintendo fanboy, and IGN complemented this by an awesome cast of editors who thought exactly like me, unfortunately, those people left the site years ago.
The site as it stand now is the home of incompetence, juvenile, trollish, pathetic, controversial for the sake of being controversial articles by "professional" writers. IGN has lost all the charm I use to love when I was in high school - it's a site for children. Destructoid, on the other hand, is a site for man-children. There's a big difference.
As for video games, I've always been a Nintendo fanboy, and IGN complemented this by an awesome cast of editors who thought exactly like me, unfortunately, those people left the site years ago.
The site as it stand now is the home of incompetence, juvenile, trollish, pathetic, controversial for the sake of being controversial articles by "professional" writers. IGN has lost all the charm I use to love when I was in high school - it's a site for children. Destructoid, on the other hand, is a site for man-children. There's a big difference.
I would say IGN but a couple years ago they overhauled the site and it looks absolutely hideous and is a pain to navigate through. The only gaming site I would honestly recommend is the NeoGaf forums. Outside of threads moving at an incredibly fast pace that it's hard to keep up if you don't constantly check it, it's pretty much perfect.
Many things irk me about IGN. It's not easy to read through comment threads, there are trolls abound, and there's a decent level of idiocy.
I actually tried the community stuff myself, and I gave up after uploading my avatar. There doesn't seem to be a way to really make yourself known easily, and it seems like it would be hard to find friends. The social networking stuff, I actually dislike. It emulates instead of being itself. I love Dtoid's simple comment features, while IGN's new system seems to be a clone of Facebook. Clean and simple wins every time.
One thing I like about Dtoid is how there is no system for street cred. People are just people, like anywhere else.
Also, this pisses me off. YOU ARE THE BIGGEST FUCKING GAMING SITE IN THE WORLD! WHY THE FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK DO YOU NOT HAVE A MOBILE VERSION???
Sorry, that's been held up in me for quite a while.
I actually tried the community stuff myself, and I gave up after uploading my avatar. There doesn't seem to be a way to really make yourself known easily, and it seems like it would be hard to find friends. The social networking stuff, I actually dislike. It emulates instead of being itself. I love Dtoid's simple comment features, while IGN's new system seems to be a clone of Facebook. Clean and simple wins every time.
One thing I like about Dtoid is how there is no system for street cred. People are just people, like anywhere else.
Also, this pisses me off. YOU ARE THE BIGGEST FUCKING GAMING SITE IN THE WORLD! WHY THE FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK DO YOU NOT HAVE A MOBILE VERSION???
Sorry, that's been held up in me for quite a while.
I've been meaning to write a blog about other gaming sites myself
I started out with Gamespot, they have a pretty good community there. Every game has it's stand alone forum and they've remained surprisingly active, so it's pretty cool. If I ever need help with a videogame I go there. As far as a news source they suck, and then their was the whole paying money for good reviews fiasco.
Like Venus said the IGN Nintendo team was badass. I really liked Matt Casamassina & Mark Bozon, they were funny guys who liked Nintendo products, but where not blinded by it and provided criticism when it was due. They left and ever since then it's been downhill. That site is a Nintendo and handheld gamer's bad dream. They did so many editorials on why the “Wii is dieing” or why the “iphone is better than the DS & PSP,” which I always thought was stupid and unfair. Firstly they are two entirely different things and they were comparing a new model of a phone to a system that was released 6 years ago. They also do terrible reviews of JRPG games, the last couple ones I read where from people who hate the genre and were complaining about grinding, how the game is "weird", and that the boys look like girls. I never understood that, you wouldn't get someone who hates sports games to review Madden, that doesn't help anyone. You get someone who likes RPGS to do the review so that way fans of the genre can tell whether it's good or not. IGN isn't a bad site, but the community ruins it, and they spend a lot of time bashing the PSP,Wii, & DS. Which is fine because people are entitled to their opinions, but it would be better if they employed people who actually like those systems instead.
I left when they stopped reviewing and reporting on Wii & DS/PSP games. They let so much news and games go without reviews that I had to find a different newsource.
The meanest communites I've encountered are Gametrailers and Cheap Ass Gamer
If you go watch any Wii video on GT more than half the comments will be from people saying. The graphics are so bad they look worse than a gameboy color game, the game is kiddie shovelware (even if it isn't) & and that the Wii has no games, or that the game doesn't deserve to be on Wii.
I've heard Cheapy D is a really nice dude, but the CAG community is vile. The worst VG community I've ever encountered online. Most deals are followed by people complaining that the deal isn't good enough, that the game sucks, or they'll just start insulting the OP for no reason. I remember once a guy made a thread about some impressive console mods he did, these were really nice mods too (most of them were internet famous) and he received two pages worth of comments of people talking crap to him saying he's a loser who lives in his parents basement who will never get laid. There wasn't a single nice comment. Not all the forums there are mean, but you run into some really nasty people there. Alot of people (myself included) stopped posting because they got sick of getting trolled for no reason. The main forum isn't as active as it use to be, but it seems like people are starting to calm down because they've realized that many deals are going unposted because people don't want to get insulted repeatedly.
I started out with Gamespot, they have a pretty good community there. Every game has it's stand alone forum and they've remained surprisingly active, so it's pretty cool. If I ever need help with a videogame I go there. As far as a news source they suck, and then their was the whole paying money for good reviews fiasco.
Like Venus said the IGN Nintendo team was badass. I really liked Matt Casamassina & Mark Bozon, they were funny guys who liked Nintendo products, but where not blinded by it and provided criticism when it was due. They left and ever since then it's been downhill. That site is a Nintendo and handheld gamer's bad dream. They did so many editorials on why the “Wii is dieing” or why the “iphone is better than the DS & PSP,” which I always thought was stupid and unfair. Firstly they are two entirely different things and they were comparing a new model of a phone to a system that was released 6 years ago. They also do terrible reviews of JRPG games, the last couple ones I read where from people who hate the genre and were complaining about grinding, how the game is "weird", and that the boys look like girls. I never understood that, you wouldn't get someone who hates sports games to review Madden, that doesn't help anyone. You get someone who likes RPGS to do the review so that way fans of the genre can tell whether it's good or not. IGN isn't a bad site, but the community ruins it, and they spend a lot of time bashing the PSP,Wii, & DS. Which is fine because people are entitled to their opinions, but it would be better if they employed people who actually like those systems instead.
I left when they stopped reviewing and reporting on Wii & DS/PSP games. They let so much news and games go without reviews that I had to find a different newsource.
The meanest communites I've encountered are Gametrailers and Cheap Ass Gamer
If you go watch any Wii video on GT more than half the comments will be from people saying. The graphics are so bad they look worse than a gameboy color game, the game is kiddie shovelware (even if it isn't) & and that the Wii has no games, or that the game doesn't deserve to be on Wii.
I've heard Cheapy D is a really nice dude, but the CAG community is vile. The worst VG community I've ever encountered online. Most deals are followed by people complaining that the deal isn't good enough, that the game sucks, or they'll just start insulting the OP for no reason. I remember once a guy made a thread about some impressive console mods he did, these were really nice mods too (most of them were internet famous) and he received two pages worth of comments of people talking crap to him saying he's a loser who lives in his parents basement who will never get laid. There wasn't a single nice comment. Not all the forums there are mean, but you run into some really nasty people there. Alot of people (myself included) stopped posting because they got sick of getting trolled for no reason. The main forum isn't as active as it use to be, but it seems like people are starting to calm down because they've realized that many deals are going unposted because people don't want to get insulted repeatedly.
I had a glance at the site and it still seems very bloated and large. It's hard to actually find the "community" and they seem to be scattered among various console related sections. There is an "all blogs" or "all forums" section that seems quite well hidden, and even then it seems to highlight the "top bloggers" by vote, which is fine, except that new people might never be able to get the numbers older members have if their work is invisible.
I think that the main difference with Dtoid and other gaming sites is that other gaming sites tend to focus on the consoles and games - with news and reviews. Most of the links are all oriented to that - with the community hidden in some dark hole somewhere. Dtoid has 4 main links - Home, Video, Blogs and Forums. Blogs and Forums are entirely community driven and even Home and Video are more community oriented. The entire focus of Dtoid is the gamers - not the writers or finding information on games.
I think that the main difference with Dtoid and other gaming sites is that other gaming sites tend to focus on the consoles and games - with news and reviews. Most of the links are all oriented to that - with the community hidden in some dark hole somewhere. Dtoid has 4 main links - Home, Video, Blogs and Forums. Blogs and Forums are entirely community driven and even Home and Video are more community oriented. The entire focus of Dtoid is the gamers - not the writers or finding information on games.
hehe, go Dtoid!! Yeah, I was just commenting on how much IGN has changed as compared to the past like 5 years or so. Before their new innovations, which have just been instituted this year (you couldn't directly reply to another person's comment for 15 years!!!), IGN's "community" was a complete shitshow, but now it looks perched to make some serious changes, which I think is a great thing for the site. I'm not really worried about the future of Dtoid because the community here is pretty adamant about their love with and participation in this site's features/editors/blogs/etc. but this site still needs marketshare and money and I just hope the behemoth of IGN doesn't cut into Dtoid's moniiiiesss for the editors here who are human and still need to eat donuts and stuff :P
