A History Lesson Is Needed: Ziff Davis and the Internet

F

FortNinety

Member
Okay, I don't consider myself a noob. I've been following all the major print gaming mags for the past 13 years or so, and all the connections in between (EGM produced EGM 2, which then became Expert Gamer, then GameNOW, or how many from Game Players, then Ultra Game Players found themselves at Next Gen, and later PSM, and so forth).

But there's one thing I've always been very unclear, and it's Ziff Davis' ventures on the world wide web. By my account, they've been behind a ton of different web presences, from NUKE.com. to videogames.com to Gamespot.com to gamers.com to today's 1UP.com (I apologize if I included one that doesn't below, or maybe forgot something). Why the constant changing? What conditions led to this? Any significant events? I was hoping some of the ZF vets around here could please shed some light.

And perhaps a totally different note, anybody remember Hero, EGM's take on Wizard? I recall liking it... any thoughts?
 
SyNapSe said:
Ziff Davis is some kind of internet media mogul type. They own a lot of news/reporting websites I've noticed. www.eweek.com is ziff media. I think Cnet maybe also.
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Well we all know that.... hell, I write for them! I'm just curious as to why they've gone through so many different sites. I have tons of smaller questions as well like, was gamers.com really started by one rich kid? Or why would anybody give up a site name like videogames.com? That's like the perfect name!
 
FortNinety said:
Well we all know that.... hell, I write for them! I have tons of smaller questions as well like, was gamers.com really started by one rich kid? Or why would anybody give up a site name like videogames.com? That's like the perfect name!
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If you write for them, then why can't you just ask your boss or whoever the owner is?
 
SyNapSe said:
If you write for them, then why can't you just ask your boss or whoever the owner is?
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I have, but most seem unclear themselves. But ZF is a big company with many writers, many of them here, hence why I'm asking.
 
Ziff was very slow to embrace the internet (NUKE was Sendai, I believe, before Ziff bought the gaming mags from them), for better (when the web bubble burst) and for worse (the years while the web bubble was inflating, and after where they are now stuck without a known internet property).

So they have partnered up with various other co's in the past: gamespot, gamers, etc. to hedge their bets.

They finally decided to do their own game web presence with 1up. End of story...WarPig or one of them could probably go into muych greater detail.....
 
SyNapSe said:
Ziff Davis is some kind of internet media mogul type.
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Just to clarify the issue, ZD's roots are firmly, firmly in print media. They've been around for a very long time.

Also:

ZDTV -> TechTV -> G4TechTV
 
Gamespot was Ziff until the summer of 2000, when Ziff sold the entire ZDNet fiasco to CNet. Which is funny, because not long after, Ziff decided to dive back in the stupid Internet again.

They kinda got out when the getting was good, missed the bust years in late 2000 and 2001.

Gamespot and Videogames.com were always pretty much the same thing. The transition to calling it Videogames.com sorta represented the mixing of more console content with Gamespot's PC focus -- that was in 1998 or 1999, I forget. Eventually they just let the Videogames.com moniker go by the wayside after a while, because it was a good URL for drawing traffic back in the day, but they (CNet, I mean) wanted to focus on just promoting the Gamespot brand.

Gamers.com was never owned by Ziff. It was and still is owned by GX Media, Thresh's old company. Ziff sorta leased it as a platform to promote its stuff online, but it never owned the trademarks or the technology or any of that shit. I think the current incarnation of Gamers is part of the Gigex empire.

There was a lot of crossover between Gamers and Ziff, though, because the original 2000-vintage Gamers.com bought most of its senior editorial staff away from Ziff (Dan Hsu, Che Chou, John Ricciardi -- the only non-Ziff guy in a top editorial position was Dave Hodgson, I think). Then, after the original version of Gamers ran into the ground, those guys all went straight back to their old jobs at Ziff and went on to give work to a lot of the folks they met at Gamers (Kevin Gifford, Christian Nutt, Shane Bettenhausen, etc.).

I take that back, Ricciardi didn't go back to Ziff, he'd scammed his way to Japan with Thresh's money. Nice one, John ^_^

1UP is Ziff's somewhat late realization that "wow, you can make money with a game site on this Internet now." It's kinda hard to compete now against the entrenched outfits that survived the bust years, but we try.

NUKE, by the way, is indeed from the Sendai era, I think. It was where Chris Johnston broke in, though, and he was one of the longest-running veteran staffers at Ziff-era EGM until he went to work for Newtype USA last year.

DFS.
 
WarPig said:
Gamers.com was never owned by Ziff. It was and still is owned by GX Media, Thresh's old company. Ziff sorta leased it as a platform to promote its stuff online, but it never owned the trademarks or the technology or any of that shit. I think the current incarnation of Gamers is part of the Gigex empire.
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I don't really have much of value to add, other than to back up this part of the history. GX basically leased the domain to ZD, and the current gamers is currently a portal for Gigex/GameDAILY.
 
ahhh, the salad days of gamers.com... when the company bought us free lunches daily and had weekly beer busts. (no joke). and who could forget the ferrari in the lobby.
 
chespace said:
ahhh, the salad days of gamers.com... when the company bought us free lunches daily and had weekly beer busts. (no joke). and who could forget the ferrari in the lobby.
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They had free Snapple! Free Snapple! At Ziff I have to pay 75 cents for vanilla Coke like a normal schlub!
 
chespace said:
ahhh, the salad days of gamers.com... when the company bought us free lunches daily and had weekly beer busts. (no joke). and who could forget the ferrari in the lobby.
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And people wondered why this shit didn't survive.

But hey, Uncle Ziff welcomed everyone back with open arms ^_^

DFS.
 
all I have to say is that, oh how the mighty have fallen. even since Ziff took over EGM, the magazine has been mostly shit. except for a few years from 1996 to 1997. I quite reading EGM altogether around 1999. I don't even read my free copies.

gawd I miss the old Sendai EGM. Steve Harris, Ed Semrad, Martin Alessi, and some of the others. I miss EGM's spinoff mags like Mega Play.

the era of the magazine is over for me. I use the internet these days.
 
chespace said:
ahhh, the salad days of gamers.com... when the company bought us free lunches daily and had weekly beer busts. (no joke). and who could forget the ferrari in the lobby.
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you're (slightly) exaggerating. there was free dinner once a week!

but, yeah.
 
Kobun Heat said:
We have free bagels every Friday! I guess that means we're rich!
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IGN used to lay the bagels on us, too. I forget exactly when that stopped, or if it even did. I never much liked bagels.

DFS.
 
I remember shuffling around the Ziff offices, and seeing Tasos Kaiafas type furiously away at something that didn't look like Word '95 on the finest computer Ziff offered to its employees in late 1996. I didn't realize at the time that I was watching the magic that was Nuke.com West Coast Edition.
 
FortNinety said:
Thanks for sheding light guys. I find all this info pretty interesting myself.
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No offense meant, dude, but that probably means you need to find a new hobby.

I recommend bowling!

DFS.
 
ferricide said:
you're (slightly) exaggerating. there was free dinner once a week!

but, yeah.
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the free lunches were before you got there, kid. :)

and it ended about a month after i got there.
 
What I love most about Ziff is how they take 3 months or so to pay a freelancer invoice. It's awesome. (sarcasm off)

Guess I ought to be glad they pay any of 'em, considering how many layoffs they've done in the past couple years.

(FYI--Kappa Publishing was my "favorite" for invoice-to-check waiting. They'd get a check out between 4 to 6 months after an invoice. Sometimes, I'd just forget I had money coming and I'd check the mailbox and be like 'woah! cash!')
 
mosaic said:
What I love most about Ziff is how they take 3 months or so to pay a freelancer invoice. It's awesome. (sarcasm off)
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Hey, that's any freelance job. As my ZD checks, it takes just about a month. I guess I have Carrie Shepherd to thank for that. :)
 
You could always be doing freelance work for old Gamers' Republic. I think the average back there was something like "six to eight months, if at all."

DFS.
 
FortNinety said:
Hey, that's any freelance job.
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True, although with rare exception, CNet processes and cuts checks within 2-4 weeks. And my bank account and creditors sure do appreciate it. So, big props to CNet.

I'm amazed at how many people stick to the freelance thing for so long, myself included, just because it takes so long to actually see the money for your work. A few years back, I did some work for a magazine, invoiced for it, and the parent company frigging declared bankruptcy a month later. That sucked, even if ultimately it got written off on my taxes. (after much documenting of attempts to collect, which was the really sucky part)
 
WarPig said:
IGN used to lay the bagels on us, too. I forget exactly when that stopped, or if it even did. I never much liked bagels.
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I can confirm that the free IGN bagels live on.

25 cent beverages, too. Good for empty calories.
 
Oh, they still have the 25-cent pop machines at the new building? Good on 'em. I used to abuse the hell out of the 25-cent lime-flavored mineral water things.

DFS.
 
Gazunta said:
I miss gamers.com's money.
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For all the money they had, they didn't offer me shit. Although it's not like I had any skills to recommend myself at the point. I believe I got a job offer from Gamers primarily because Hoagy thought the circumstances of my firing from GR were funny.

In retrospect, I've occasionally thought I should have taken their offer. At worst, I would have wound up with some severance cash with which to get the fuck out of town.

DFS.
 
To be fair, if I was living in the states at the time I was at gamers.com i could have (quite seriously) made more money being a garbage collector (I checked, boy that was depressing)

But thanks to the appalling state of the Australian dollar at the time, and the great cost of living, I lived like a big fat king...ah bliss.

Geez it sucked when it died and I had to go back to freelance. God freelance sucked. Mos, Fen, I don't know how the hell you guys do it.

And yeah, big props to John for scamming the move to Japan, you fiendish bastard :)
 
Incidentally, I should have also mentioned the minor Gamespot exodus to Ziff in early 2000 or so, when James Mielke and Sam Kennedy hopped from the Spot over to EGM (and from thence to GMR and OPM, respectively).

DFS.
 
WarPig said:
Incidentally, I should have also mentioned the minor Gamespot exodus to Ziff in early 2000 or so, when James Mielke and Sam Kennedy hopped from the Spot over to EGM (and from thence to GMR and OPM, respectively).

DFS.
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That was still when it was all one big happy Ziff family as I recall...wasn't it?

When SamK jumped from GA it was a far bigger move - rawked the industry. :D He did some good stuff on GameSpot news back in tha day.
 
WarPig said:
Yeah. ZD as a company in some form or another is like 50 years old or something.
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I bought this old, trashy used SF paperback by Zelazny that turned out to be copyright '73 Ziff Davis Publishing. Who knew of Uncle Ziff's lurid past in the fantasy pulps?!

Also, I scammed my way to Japan on the Japanese government's dime! Not quite as impressive as bilking Thresh, true, but a good close second. The JET Program: for people who like Japan and don't like work!
 
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