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IGN.com is a multimedia news for each of the major videogame consoles, PCs, movies, and more. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites, each occupying a subdomain on IGN. These sites, commonly known as "channels," cover three generations of video gaming: PC Games , PlayStation 2 , PlayStation 3 , PSP , Xbox , Xbox 360 , GameCube , Wii , Nintendo DS , Game Boy , Wireless , N-Gage , PlayStation , N64 , Dreamcast , and Cheats & Codes . IGN.com channels also include Movies, DVD , Music, Comics , Gear, Sports, Cars, Anime , Babes, and Sci-fi Brain, among various other services. Each channel consists of various subsections, such as Game/Movie Profiles, Product Lists, Previews, Reviews, Features, News, Mailbag, Editor's Choice, Release Dates, Guides, Cheats and FAQs As of June 2005, IGN claimed 23 million unique visitors a month, with 5 million registered users through all departments of the site. IGN is ranked among the top 300 most visited websites according to . CORPORATE DETAILS IGN originally stood for Imagine Games Network. However, IGN spun off from Imagine Media on February 1 , 1999 to form an independent, online-only business, and the acronym is no longer used. Its corporate name, Affiliation Networks, was changed to Snowball.com soon after the break from Imagine Media. IGN runs on a combination of advertising and subscriptions. IGN Insider is IGN's premium subscription service for approximately 20 a year, although it has been known to fluctuate. Subscribers, who are also known as "Insiders," get special benefits, such as higher resolution videos, and full access to the message boards. IGN relies mostly on advertising to generate income. Each page on the network has at least one ad, typically a "banner" or the smaller "billboard." There are also interstils between some pages. IGN also uses tracking cookies from both itself and partners such as DoubleClick , Overture , TribalFusion and Claria Corporation . However, tracking cookies are widely regarded as being the most benign of observation mechanisms, since they can be easily removed, or blocked outright with a few clicks in browser settings. IGN has substantially grown due to the various mergers and buyouts it has conducted. While still known as Snowball, IGN acquired the Vault Network and its message boards in 1999. In March 2004, IGN Entertainment acquired GameSpy Industries. For three months it was called IGN/GameSpy before formalizing their corporate name as IGN Entertainment. In June, IGN bought the popular movie review site Rotten Tomatoes . For a short time, IGN Entertainment was the only major independent gaming website in the stock market (IGNX). However, its stock is no longer publicly traded. In February 2005, they acquired the popular download site, 3D Gamers. IGN announced on March 4 , 2004 that they had completed the acquisition of GameSpy. In June, they acquired AskMen.com . On September 8 , 2005 , News Corporation announced that it had bought 92.3% of total stock of the company for 650 million, giving it a controlling stake of IGN. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4226170.stm SITE EDITORS
IGN RATINGS The five ratings categories stand in this order:
''Readers Review'' All reader reviews and reader ratings create an aggregate score, although this number may not be indicative of the gaming community's opinion, if an insufficient number of people have voted. For example, if IGN rates Unreal Tournament 2003 an 8.9/10 while only 5 readers rate the game a 2/10, all score will be added up and form an estimate of a 3/10 or 2.9/10
MESSAGE BOARDS IGN is also known for its active message boards. They were created in late June 2000 and originally intended for video game discussion. However, like many other message popular boards, it has since expanded to forums for discussion about cars, movies, politics, photography, and various other interests. On IGN, members have "celebrations" for personal milestones in posting, such as 5,000 posts. IGN Community Board The IGN Community Board, often shortened to IGNCB, opened on September 11 , 2000 for "non-video game related content" that was beginning to appear on the video game discussion boards. The board is particularly renowned for its high-brow wit and perceived elitism, although this is less true now than it was in the board's heyday in 2000-2003. It has now been likened to a slower version of The Vestibule . The Community Board features the highest moderators-normal users ratio, primarily because users of the IGNCB have generally been around longer than others. Other Community Board The Other Community Board, or the '''OCB''', was created on August 10 , 2005 . Its users are comprised of both IGNCB and The Vestibule users, as well as users from the "Other" cateogry. It is a very gated community, but welcoming to users at the same time. The Vestibule On February 20 , 2002 , the boards were made subscription-only (IGN Insider members). In response from protest from long-time members, The Atrium was created on March 8 , 2002 as a means to experience the IGN community without having to purchase a subscription. This name was later changed to '''The Vestibule''' for unknown reasons. One of the features of the board system is WULs (watched user list), which is essentially a Buddy List to keep track of your favorite users' posts. However, users of the Vestibule especially feel a need to be on as many users' lists as they can, raising their WUL count. The system is now effectively a currency of its own - people offer WULs for information and favors. The Vestibule has no topicality; anything may be posted as long as it falls within IGN's Terms Of Service . The discussions tend to be of a frivolous nature, but current events are largely discussed; from politics to sports and television and video games. The Vestibule is also known for its popular fads, the contemporary vestibule has some form of fad constantly. One of the original and most memorable by the Vestibule user base is the Orel Hershiser fad of 2003. Users spammed a picture of baseball player Orel Hershiser holding up a copy of his biography, ''Out of the Blue'', because his name resembled the word "oral." These fads reflect the bizarre humour of The Vestibule, despite how childish it may be perceived by others outside its community. Other fads, often originating from other parts of the internet, include Fuiste?, Simon Cowell , teh buttseckz, Vin Diesel and the video. Most in the Vestibule claim that other forums are too rigidly defined to doctrine and topic and prefer the freedom The Vestibule offers. As of 2006 , the Vestibule has over 27 million posts, and is one of the fastest growing boards on the internet. Sometimes, the users of the Vestibule seek out to take over other boards such as Gamespot, FOX, ABC, and a few KKK boards. These users call this Vestibulism, which is like Manifest Destiny except on the internets. In addition to this, every year on April 1st, the IGN Administrators open up a board call the "Spam Board." The Spam Board can contain numerous names such as "The Spamibule", "The Pussibule", "The Crapibule", and a list of other whacky names. This is the only day where users can go on a crazy binge of spam posting without the fear of being banned. Board riots Board riots usually consist of user(s) deliberately flooding the forum in a short amount of time with similar topics and posts. Occasionally, script riots occur on the boards, when more technologically knowledgeable users code javascripts to take advantage of the board code and attack the forums with spam. Members of the Vestibule are particularly prone to rioting, which consists of users flooding the forum in a short amount of time with similar topics and posts. Those participating in a "riot" receive a temporary suspension of their user accounts.
Eventually, over 100 users were banned for deliberately contributing to the 2005 riot. To stop the flooding, IGN administrators changed it so only admins could post topics. Two of the three original scripters were permanently banned from the IGN board system; however, the main scripter remained unbanned and later took part in several other endeavours to the point where IGN threatened to take legal action. Due to alterations to IGN's board code, it is unlikely that such script riots will occur again. Now a user has his or her own unique post-key that is automatically submitted in each post. Without the inclusion of this postkey, the post will not go through, stopping streak rioter scripts. However, each users postkey is still viewable, so scripts can be altered to reflect this change. IGN has prevented this by requiring users to log in on a secure server, preventing the log-in-log-out scripts from running. Although this caused many temporary board glitches, it has hopefully ended a long era of IGN board script riots. Minor non-script riots are still often started without warning, but mostly lead to nothing more than a few locked threads that are only witnessed by the users who were there during that hour. It should also be noted that April 24 has become a date synonymous with mayhem on the Vestibule. In 2004, one of IGN's main administrators Tal-IGN flooded the Vestibule with 'stickies' (threads which remain at the top of the board and replace those below it) so they would fill the entire viewable pane and make all new posts appear on the second page. This resulted in the Vestibule becoming virtually unusable. Moderators added to the mayhem by unnecessarily editing threads. The steak riot of 2005 also occurred on this date, meaning that many of the userbase have come to associate it with a 'festival of rule breaking.' Adoptions Another large part of The Vestibule is "adoptions" – someone can buy another user an IGN Insider subscription as a gift. Adoptions are almost like WULs insofar as they are used to Barter with, but these hold more value. There have been adoption contests from time to time and some people will even adopt purely because they find the user to be a good part of the community TRIVIA
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