Forums > Site Announcements > HonestGamers is currently celebrating 25 years of existence

I keep meaning to sit down and write something about HonestGamers now being 25 years old, but I never quite do. Today, with a rare moment of downtime as I wait for a game to download, I thought I would finally undertake that task. It’s important to celebrate life’s milestones, I feel, and 25 years is a big one.

25 years is longer than a lot of people playing games today have been alive. The site being 25 years old makes it older than my marriage, and around the same age as Google. Think about that for a second: when I built the first version of the site, I’d never even heard of Google. The search engines I targeted were Altavista and Yahoo! and even the old Yahoo! Directory. When I built the site and tried to optimize how it would look to visitors, I had Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator in mind. Times change.

I graduated high school in mid-1998. My dad bought me a PC to take with me to college in the fall. I had a few months to get acquainted ahead of then, so I paid for dial-up internet using some of the wages from my first job: pumping gas at a gas station in town. I lived 30+ miles out of town at the time. We were lucky we had access to dial-up internet at all. I had barely even managed to go online by that point, because the internet was still a fairly new thing. When I went online to find information about video games, there weren’t a whole lot of options.

When I went to college that fall, the Geocities site I had started about video games received much of my focus. I came up with a proper name for it: Honest Gamer. It seemed like one of the only good names left, and I had swore I would post honest reviews of games. It seemed to me like all the good video game names were taken for sites, even though they very much weren’t. I had a limited imagination. IGN and GameSpot were among the only major sites around, and I realized that if I wanted to write for one of them someday—and I did—I would probably need to prove I had something to bring to the table. I set about making Honest Gamer the best site I could.

Over the years, that effort became all-consuming. I would go months at a time without even thinking about writing for IGN, because I was so addicted to building Honest Gamer. I found friends in Yahoo! Chat to help me. And then, things really took off when one of them suggested that I check out GameFAQs. I had never heard of that site at the time. It was pretty new. It had a more lively community than Honest Gamer, though. I became active in that community, where there was a lot of discontent over a failure to be responsive to what the review community wanted. Reviews were my jam, so I became a regular poster on that board and then some of the leading participants got involved and there was a bit of an “exodus” to Honest Gamer.

Other things happened over the years, and the order of everything is lost somewhere in my fuzzy brain. I lost the rights to the Honest Gamer domain name, so the site became HonestGamers. That was fine with me, since the ‘s’ on the end better reflected the community the site had now become. Along the way, I also started writing for Hardcore Gamer Magazine, helped along by the fact I had done so much work with HonestGamers. And I’ve written for a lot of other leading sites since then, even though my networking game isn’t especially strong.

HonestGamers has given me more opportunities than I ever dreamed it would. It has allowed me to spend something like 1/3 of my adult life making money writing about games (not from HonestGamers itself, unfortunately, but because of the windows that opened along the way). It has allowed me to learn a great deal about the craft of writing reviews and guides and covering the news. The site has functioned as a workshop for motivated writers for years, and I have learned so much more than college ever could teach me. It turns out that when you want to learn how to write for people, it’s REALLY useful to have a platform. For me and for numerous others, HonestGamers has been that specialized platform.

There have been some amazing people involved in the site over the years, people who volunteered more of their time than I ever could have asked for. I’m grateful to have known and worked with each of them, and I’m happy to work with those of you who still come around the site and contribute so much to its present and future. Thank you for following me on this amazing 25-year-journey, and I hope we’ll be able to continue sharing our passion for games for years to come.

The medium has never been more vibrant than it is these days, but a lot of places seem determined to look only to the future while forgetting so much of the great stuff that formed the necessary foundation. I’m proud that even as we continue to cover newer stuff, we happily dissect old classics and current indies that all too often get lost in the shuffle.

I’m rambling now, so that’s a good reason to end this post. But if you have questions about the site and its history that I haven’t answered here, or if you have comments or good memories you’d like to share, this is the thread for all of that. Thanks again to each of you!

Jason

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." - John F. Kennedy on reality

"What if everything you see is more than what you see--the person next to you is a warrior and the space that appears empty is a secret door to another world? What if something appears that shouldn't? You either dismiss it, or you accept that there is much more to the world than you think. Perhaps it really is a doorway, and if you choose to go inside, you'll find many unexpected things." - Shigeru Miyamoto on secret doors to another world2

Response coming, hopefully tonight. This is assuming I'm not stuck at work again...

The only thing my milkshake brings to the yard is a subpoena.

Jason, this site is amazing and you're amazing. Thank you for everything.

I came to HG in 2010, right as my life was changing in a lot of ways. I was a year into working at the local hospital, I was about to get married, I had just moved in with my now-wife, and I had a lot of time on my hands because there were no kids in the picture yet. The only thing that hadn't changed--and I really wanted to change--was my writing. Part of that want extended to getting back into reviewing games, mainly because I felt my run at GameFAQs was lackluster and I wanted to prove to myself I could do better.

...and I eventually did.

I'm very thankful for this site's existence because it doesn't only focus on the relevant, the well-known, or the "high-profile" offerings of the medium. There's so much more out there and a lot of it slips through the cracks, and some of the stuff that goes unnoticed is actually worth a look. More than that, though, I was able to hone my writing abilities here in a way I never thought possible before, mostly through the workshop-like community we had way back. So for all of that, thank you HG Community, and thank you most of all, Jason!

The only thing my milkshake brings to the yard is a subpoena.

Thank you for the kind words, Joe, and thank you for being part of that incredibly beneficial workshop phase!

I would be happy to see that side of things stage a triumphant comeback, but it takes a lot of the right people deciding all at once that they want to participate in such an environment and do the work. A handful of people carrying the torch isn't enough, as we have found.

The internet has changed so very much since the site opened its virtual doors, and even since 2010. We still have a lot we can learn from each other, and a lot of great games to play, so I hope that can continue to happen well into the future.

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." - John F. Kennedy on reality

"What if everything you see is more than what you see--the person next to you is a warrior and the space that appears empty is a secret door to another world? What if something appears that shouldn't? You either dismiss it, or you accept that there is much more to the world than you think. Perhaps it really is a doorway, and if you choose to go inside, you'll find many unexpected things." - Shigeru Miyamoto on secret doors to another world2

This is something to be proud of, Jason.

I remember checking in at the GameFAQs RC board which was under the tyrannical rule of Dark Fact and his henchmen, and being inspired to write very short, stream-of-consciousness fanboy ravings about favourite games, when one day, the same Dark Fact offered me some words of encouragement and my game reviewing 'career' was born.

Then you went to GameFAQs to poach its finest writers in what would become known as The Great Migration. You went from having a tiny collection of reviews to an impressive library as the Retrofreaks and Bloomers set up shop on your site.

I dabbled at Thunderboltgames, GameSpy, Game Critics, etc, and still haunted GameFAQs for a time - but Honestgamers endured.

7 million Toxic AIM chats and Reviews of the Week and RC World Review Championships and Emp comebacks later, and we are where we are.

I'm glad you started this place. I'm glad I came.

I don't have to prove I'm refined - that's what makes me refined!

Thanks, Marc! There were some great times back in the day, when everyone was still learning what the internet could do for us all. I'm not sure much has come along to top those moments. I appreciate everyone (including you) who was around for some of those amazing moments. I learned a lot of stuff they just don't teach in college, stuff that has made me a better writer. I wish more people still cared about the craft of writing reviews today and would continue to assemble here, because I feel like the site still has a lot to give in that area. But even if that never happens, we have a huge backlog of great content to go back to and learn from. The archives are a record of literally decades of game fandom, and I'm super pleased the site can still host all of that!

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." - John F. Kennedy on reality

"What if everything you see is more than what you see--the person next to you is a warrior and the space that appears empty is a secret door to another world? What if something appears that shouldn't? You either dismiss it, or you accept that there is much more to the world than you think. Perhaps it really is a doorway, and if you choose to go inside, you'll find many unexpected things." - Shigeru Miyamoto on secret doors to another world2

I kept meaning to post here, but I guess it took the new year post to kick me back towards this one, since a reply is more relevant here than there.

I was posting my reviews on MobyGames until the redesign, which "modernized" that place and also threw reviews under the bus, turning them into the same free-for-all user comments you can see anywhere, no longer going through approvals and also no longer granting contribution points in themselves (with a future plan for the points to be granted according to how many vote each review as useful, double gah). So, after it was clear that they won't go back on that, and on various other changes, I had to give up that place as a lost cause.
However, while I'm also posting them on my blog, I also still wanted a site that takes user reviews seriously, requires quality from them, and most preferably is also very old school, with functionality and design that comes from a time when the Internet was much simpler but also far more serious, when the actual content, mainly in written form, was king and users were expected to actually have attention spans, before social networking, trending topics, mobile-centered and otherwise "modern" design and the ever more heated battle for ever briefer and shallower definitions of "engagement". And some years ago, before clashes with an approver made me get fed up of it, my main contribution on MobyGames was critic scores, and I remembered Honest Gamers as a rare place that seemed to be what I was looking for... At least at the time, since those memories were old and, while I was pretty sure that the site still existed, I feared that it had also followed the same trend as the rest.
Well, I'm so glad that those fears were unfounded... At least so far. I mean, when among the first things I saw when I checked was the announcement about the change of ownership, I feared the worst, thinking that if I'll "immigrate" here, I'll be just in time to see it either fall or get "redesigned". But that doesn't seem to be happening, at least at the moment, and as time passes I'm getting my hopes up that it won't, and that the place will truly remain this rare beacon in the storm for many more years to come.

Not pleased with myself for not copying all my reviews here yet though. Had 36 on MobyGames and initially thought that I'll have them all here as well within three months or so, but I only copied 26 so far, with minor changes for a few of them, and maybe a little more for the one for Risen which I just put up last night, since the first and last parts of that one really didn't work in their original form, if posted in the present time. At least I only posted the two new reviews written this year here (and on my blog, but not on MobyGames, I mean)... As for the remaining ten old ones, let's see, though there's probably no point to post at least one of them anymore at all, referring to the one for Forsaken World written when I gave up on it, just a couple of months after the public release (but while still listed as in beta), when that's a MMO that doesn't even exist anymore, or at least not in that form.

Anyway, I rambled way too long, and too little of it was about the site itself...

PS: As for the small community, it's a niche community, built around an ever more niche interest. If it'd be larger, it'd be likely to fall apart, get pulled into the mainstream, or most likely both. But a small community with a common, niche, interest, can stick together much better.

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There are benefits to staying somewhat small, certainly, but we're the smallest we've been in a good long while. There's a lot of lurking, as we all get busy with life. So, I'd like to see some fresh life come in, while retaining what makes the site special. Time will tell whether that happens, but if it doesn't, at least we're continuing to build the site into an ever better resource. Interested parties can go through and enjoy a lot of high-quality reviews they just won't encounter elsewhere, and that's something to be happy about. Thanks for finding the site and for adding to the mix!

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." - John F. Kennedy on reality

"What if everything you see is more than what you see--the person next to you is a warrior and the space that appears empty is a secret door to another world? What if something appears that shouldn't? You either dismiss it, or you accept that there is much more to the world than you think. Perhaps it really is a doorway, and if you choose to go inside, you'll find many unexpected things." - Shigeru Miyamoto on secret doors to another world2