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GameFAQs is a popular gaming website that has given gamers the chance to find help (through "FAQs" and "walkthroughs") for their favorite games since November 1995. It was started and is maintained by Jeff "CJayC" Veasey. It has a large database of video games, perhaps one of the most complete in the world. The systems and games range from the 8-bit Atari days to the Next-Gen consoles of today. The huge amount of FAQs, cheat codes, and reviews are all submitted by dedicated gamers just trying to help others with their knowledge. Even the site owner contributes plenty. If you ever have a question on a game or need some extra help or even have something to share, come to GameFAQs and the community will listen to you.

Along with the large database of FAQs, codes, and reviews, it also contains one of the largest message board communities on the web. Every single game on the site has its own board to discuss the game or ask questions or answer them about the game. All FAQ, code, and review contributors automatically get a message board account to waste plenty of time posting at.

History of GameFAQs

GameFAQs was started on 5 November 1995 by Jeff Veasey. At that time it was called the "Video Game FAQ Archive". It was hosted by AOL and was a clone/spin-off of a popular FTP FAQ Archive.

By December 1996, the site was still young, which the appearance and content showed. The site contained less than 1000 FAQs and guides, combined over all systems. The site also focused on the 7 popular systems of the time - arcade games, the Sony Playstation , the Sega Saturn, the Nintendo 64, the 3DO, the Sega Genesis, and the Super Nintendo. Other systems were also listed. The site was very basic and was not updated on a regular basis.

By early 1997, GameFAQs had a new look. In fact, it had two different looks. One was customized for browsers that supported frames and the other was made specifically for browsers with no support for frames. The color scheme used white and black and blue. The content, however, was beginning to grow. By April, the site had 1301 files and codes for over 800 games. New features were introduced that would shape GameFAQs - features such as user requests for information, a search engine, recognition for contributors, and others.

By late 1997, GameFAQs was beginning to take shape. It moved out of AOL servers by this time and was partnered with Imagine Games Network (IGN). Jeff Veasey was hard at work on GameFAQs now. It is assumed that this is when GameFAQs became Veasey's full-time job. Until this time, he had been working in either the radio field (unconfirmed report) or with computer programming/web programming (radio interview). GameFAQs made it through two years and a new aspect of the site began - contests. There were only two winners of the GameFAQs Second Birthday Contest out of 1000 entries, but it was a start.

Throughout 1998, GameFAQs had the same idea. Veasey continued to work on the site and put new FAQs and codes up. In late 1998, the site got another overhaul. Still under IGN, GameFAQs added links to other IGN sites. The content of the site wasn't changed much, but Veasey always kept the users informed of what was going on. There were frequent updates to the site, even if they weren't contribution updates.

In late 1999, GameFAQs had another overhaul. The sidebar and tables on the homepage that show top games were added. The color scheme was also changed to blue and white, but it wasn't exactly the same. GameFAQs was still under the flag of IGN.

In November 1999, things happened quickly. On the 5th, the a quick search box was added to all pages. The site also celebrated its fourth birthday. On the seventh, the message boards opened as a Beta and a Poll of the Day would be put up at the end of that week. Now, the site begins to change from a FAQ archive to one of the best gaming help sites on the internet.

Things on GameFAQs slowed down over the next few months and years. The GameFAQs chat went Beta, but didn't last long due to administrative issues - it was simply too hard to control.

2001 was the next year of changes for GameFAQs. The site left IGN. To make money, a banner was placed on the site that was sold to non-profit organizations. This was changed by May of 2001, when CNet Networks began affiliating themselves with GameFAQs. Also in May 2001, the Chat feature was completely shut down.

In September of 2001, another change was made to GameFAQs, because of advertising changes at CNet. The ad was moved from the top of the page (horizontally) to a vertical position in the sidebar. This also led the way to navigation of systems at the top of the screen. Changes were also made to links on the side, minimizing them and placing more links in "index" pages in subsections.

Today, GameFAQs is fully owned by CNet Networks. Jeff "CJayC" Veasey is responsible for working on the main site - e-mails, codes, FAQs, reviews, saves, game data, coding, and updating the homepage. CNet has hired Bethany Massimilla to administrate the GameFAQs message boards and lead the moderators. CNet also supplied new (and faster) servers for the entire site. Although the changeover between the site being run by one man to the site being owned by a company and split into two sections was rough (technical errors, downtime, lost e-mails, and other problems), things have gone for the best.

Today, GameFAQs is the number one site for free help with video games on any system. Anyone can find (without having to sign up), FAQs, guides, images, codes, game saves, reviews, and game data from GameFAQs. Anyone can also find links to the partners of GameFAQs (mainly GameSpot). Registering for the site opens up the message boards (both gaming and social) and the ability to contribute something. All for free.

GameFAQs Culture

• Life, the Universe, and Everything (LUE) is a GameFAQs Social Board created to give the registered message board users a break from gaming and let them talk about whatever they want. LUE has been very controversial in GameFAQs History, and is often viewed as one of the worst boards on the site. Discussion today is usually about offensive topics, such as sex. LUE is also home to many fads, including "y helo thar", which was said on a recent live broadcast of Conan O'Brien. From January 4th to January 15th there was a sign-up for LUE, and people that haven't signed up aren't allowed to visit the board anymore.

• Current Events (CE) is the oldest social board on GameFAQs.

• Random Insanity (RI) was originally created to shunt the more annoying users off of CE. It quickly became host to text-based roleplaying and "social topics" where people could come in and talk about nothing in particular. Pikadeth's Playhouse, one such topic, has come to dominate the board. RI has a history of being competitive with LUE; in the early days, users would perform "raids" on LUE in the PM hours. It is also home to Pigwater, an infamous troll who has gone through literally hundreds of banned accounts and yet still manages to stay on the site.

• Another Place (AP) is a GameFAQs Social Board created when LUE's user level requirement went up to 31. AP is commonly seen as almost as bad as LUE, as the topics there are usually quite similar to those made on LUE.

• Poll of the Day (PotD) is another social board, similar to LUE, although the topics there are not usually as bad. PotD has nothing particular in common with the Poll of the Day on the main page, and is usually used to discuss women, love, etc.

• Secret Boards are hard to find because you have to type their board # manually in the address bar. The boards are: Spatula, Board 250, Brilliant, Spork, Eggbeater, Semprini and Pie. In all of these boards you can usually find topics that are used for karma raising by many users.

• Message Board Help is the unofficial complaint forum of the boards. If a user feels something is wrong with the moderation system/staff or possibly a board error, it is usually reported here. This board was named Questions and Suggestions until the Karma system was introduced. After that, all suggestions and petitions have gone to Site Suggestions.

• Site Suggestions is the official petitioning board, very few ever pass, however if they do it usually is a new special interest board.

• FAQ Contributors is the board for all the FAQ writers to talk about common interests. This board has been split to better categorize the discussions on it. It is now composed out of three boards: General, Help and Critiques and Social.

• Review Contributors is the board for all the review writers to talk about common interests. This board has been split to better categorize the discussions on it. It is now composed out of three boards: General, Help and Critiques and Social.

LUE History

• BlackLUEsday & RevoLUEtion

After a lot of account suicides, ToS violations, and other hell that raged through LUE, CJayC gave LUE a choice of either destroying the board or raising the karma limit from 75 to 150, and the LUEsers opted for the karma. LUE was really getting out of hand at this point. This offensive occurence is seen by many to be the worst incident in LUE's history.

A well-known troll known as Dark Cobra was bringing LUE down to its lowest standards of all time, and the board became full of dozens of topics expressing their detest of him. Several LUEsers were also getting warned and having very severe moderations in which they felt unfair, and then many people who generally came to LUE got sick of what was going on, and then left it forever, and that was when the LUEsers decided to create perhaps the greatest disturbances for moderators of all time, in which they later dubbed the Black LUEsday.

Many LUEsers agreed to post hundreds of ToS violations at one time, and commit account suicide so they could make it hell for the moderators. Before Black LUEsday began, several LUEsers were then banned for board invasion. For example, one user was forced by another one to make a topic on the Pokemon board about why Pikachu was yellow, and then they were both banned. Another user was banned for making racist comments about Dutch people. Dark Cobra himself also made an account suicide, insulting CJayC and his wife Shadotak, comparing the mod WallyWest80 to Goatse, making very racist comments, and attacks toward the mods RaptorLC and SBacon. Dark Cobra took his brother's account with him, and then topics got out of hand at MBH, demanding that something be done about LUE. Although many people were happy about Dark Cobra's suicide, some of them copied it and also got banned too.

Even more LUEsers copied Dark Cobra's suicide. For example, a user named Silver Moraine asked the user mrduckbear3 to give him his password for one of his accounts. Silver Moraine then used that account to commit suicide, giving Duckbear a usermap axe, although his account was later restored. A LUEser named Darkness Falls also created a similar account suicide to Dark Cobra, only this one was full of racist comments against religion and Christians, several porn links and censor bypasses, insults to Duckbear, sexual insults toward CJayC and Shadotak, as well as attacks toward Jews.

It wasn't yet that CJayC had done the act of RevoLUEtion, however. There was a small downtime. Something went wrong, but CJayC was not there at the time. All of the LUEsers knew that their topics wouldn't be deleted for a while, so that's when the worst part came in. LUE, RI, and CE all created major ToS violations. Censor bypassing, flaming, SPIs, insults toward all of the moderators and CJayC, as well as tons of porn links and Goatse were posted. When CJayC got back, he didn't yet decide to do something, but he was getting tired. The user Umaro, later to become the most famous user on LUE, then created another board invasion.

Umaro took an offensive picture of himself and his wang inside a sock, which got him warned, but then he proceeded to the Zelda Social Board and talked about his tattoo. To his surprise, he was then flamed about LUE, as most of the people on ZSB despised LUE. Umaro then got angry and went back to LUE and complained, and then LUEsers and ZSBers created an immense flame war. The flaming got so intense, that not only did CJayC ban Umaro (who later got his account restored though) and dozens of other LUEsers, but he gave out his punishment to LUE. They had either a choice of raising the board level or removing the board. They opted for the user level, and then LUEsers called this event RevoLUEtion. CJayC then made LUE and ZSB "special". Of everything that ever happened on LUE, this was the worst.

• SteriLUEzation

On November 15th, 2003, a punishment was made to LUE called the SteriLUEzation. What happened was that any user with a User ID higher than 888113 would never be able to access LUE, ever.

The reason for LUE's sterilization was this: the user y2k once linked to the LiveJournal of a girl named Shana who committed suicide, apparently by jumping off of a building. However, her parents had kept her LiveJournal open, so they could reflect on her life, and use it to write poetry. Soon after, the LiveJournal was spammed with LUEsers sending out comments into the LiveJournal such as: "SUICIDE'D", "You don't even deserve to be parents if you can't stop your own daughter from committing suicide", "She bought an N-Gage, didn't she?", "In Soviet Russia, building jumps off of you!", pictures of the Trinity and the Pain series, etc.

Soon after, several petitions were made on Site Suggestions to close LUE, and when CJayC saw this, he made a topic on LUE that hit 500 posts in 13 minutes and put everyone who was involved in the incident in purgatory. The board had been sterilized, and anyone after the most recently created account at that time, Lunarhawk99, could never access LUE. Which meant that if you got banned, you wouldn't be back.

An hour after that, several LUEsers searched through several boards to learn who User 888113 was. Eventually, one found him on an Xbox Star Wars board, Lunarhawk99. He was then harrassed by several LUEsers, deeming him as "The One" and "God". Everyone told him what LUE was like and begged him to come there when he hit 150 Karma, but Lunarhawk99 didn't care about it and disliked what he heard about it.

Lunarhawk99 soon grew to hate the praise he was getting, and eventually e did something with his account that is unknown. He may have gotten himself banned, given his account away, sold his account, or gotten hacked, but it is unknown. A week later though, Lunarhawk99 returned with a complete personality change. He made a topic on the board Random Insanity announcing his AIM name, and then he seemed to love all the praise that he got. Whether Lunarhawk99 got to love the praise or someone else was posting under his name is unknown. Despite the personality change though, he still hates LUE.

See Also

FAQ, Internet troll

External Links

• GameFAQs
• GameSpot (Sister Site to GameFAQs)
• CNet (Parent Company to GameFAQs)

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