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GameFAQs is a popular website about video games that has helped gamers through "FAQs" and "walkthroughs" for games since November 1995. It was started and is maintained by Jeff "CJayC" Veasey. It has the second largest database of video games on the Internet, behind IGN (). The systems and games range from the 8-bit Atari days to the Next-Gen consoles of today. The site supplies FAQs, guides, images, codes, game saves, reviews, and game data free of charge to anyone who visits the site. Registration allows access to the extremely active message board community (which has posted over 180 million messages in over 17 million topics by over 2 million users) and the ability to contribute.
GameFAQs history
GameFAQs was started on 5 November 1995 by Jeff Veasey. At that time it was called the "Video Game FAQs Archive", and was hosted on AOL. It originally served as a clone/spin-off of a popular FTP FAQ Archive.
By December 1996, the site was still young, which both the appearance and lack of content demonstrated. The site contained less than 1000 FAQs and guides, combined over all systems. The site focused primarily 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 NES - although other systems were also listed. The site was very basic to every degree of the word, and was not updated on a regular basis.
By early 1997, GameFAQs had a new design. In fact, it had two different designs. One was customized for Web browsers that supported frames, and the other was made specifically for browsers with no support of frames. Despite these changes, the color scheme consisted of only white, black and blue, and looked somewhat amateurish. The content, however, was beginning to grow. By April, the site had 1301 files and codes for over 800 games. New features were introduced by Veasey that would shape GameFAQs' future - such as user requests for information; a search engine; recognition for contributors; and more.
By late 1997, GameFAQs had moved off of the AOL servers and was partnered with Imagine Games Network (IGN). During this period of time, Jeff Veasey was working on GameFAQs more than ever before. It is assumed that this is when GameFAQs became his full-time job. Until this time, he had been working in either the radio field (unconfirmed report) or with computer/web programming (evidence taken from a later radio interview). GameFAQs had made it through two years and a new aspect of the site began; user contests. There were only two winners of the GameFAQs Second Birthday Contest out of 1000 entries, but it was a start.
Throughout 1998, Veasey continued to work on the site and post new user-submitted FAQs and codes. In late 1998, the site received another design overhaul. Still operating as an affiliate of IGN, GameFAQs added links to other Snowball partners to its menu bar, and had a number of aesthetic changes applied to it. The actual content of the site hadn't changed much, but Veasey always kept the users informed about the latest events and news. There were frequent updates to the site, even if they weren't always contribution-related. This continued for some time.
In late 1999, GameFAQs had yet another new layout. The sidebar and tables on the homepage which showed the top games were added. The color scheme was also changed, still remaining predominantly blue and white, but these shades weren't exactly the same as before. GameFAQs was still under the flag of IGN.
In November 1999, several things happened very quickly. On the fifth, a Quick Search box was added to all pages, at which time the site was also celebrating its fourth birthday. On the seventh, the message boards opened as Beta and a Poll of the Day would be implemented by the end of that week.
Between December 1999 and late 2000, GameFAQs slowed down in terms of the addition of new features. The GameFAQs chat went Beta, but did not last long due to administrative issues - it was simply too hard to control.
2001 was the next year of major change for GameFAQs. Firstly, Veasey decided to dissociate the site with IGN. To continue generating revenue, a banner was placed on the top of each page that was sold to non-profit organizations. This changed by May 2001, when CNET Networks became an official affiliate of GameFAQs. In this month, the chat feature was completely shut down due to the issues mentioned previously.
In September 2002, another change was made to GameFAQs because of adjustment of advertising policy 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 the navigation of systems at the top of the screen. Changes were consequently made to the links on the side, namely minimizing them and creating subsections in "index" pages. In terms of contributions, GameFAQs continued to grow larger and larger, and Veasey - who was still the sole operator and administrator of the site - dedicated hours upon hours of his time to ensure that GameFAQs remained up-to-date, popular, and above all, successful.
On June 3 2003, Veasey announced to general GameFAQs users (moderators of the boards had previously been alerted) that its long-standing affiliate and sponsor, CNET, had acquired the site and all of its assets (minus user-submitted guides/FAQs, due to obvious legal issues). He assured the worried public that GameFAQs would undergo no major change in terms of administration, and that the 'GameFAQs the users saw today would be the one they saw tomorrow'. This seemed true to a certain extent, as the only change viewable by general users was a discreet CNET footer.
However, in April/May 2004, GameFAQs underwent its biggest visual and administration change yet. At the demand of CNET(And at the dislike of countless Gamefaqs users), it partially merged its game boards with those of GameSpot, and radically changed the graphics to those of which we see today. The site's webpages have a table-less layout that is styled by a CSS. GameFAQs also converted from Microsoft ASP to a PHP-powered system. However, its lack of XHTML compliance and easy editability angers both aspiring web designers and average users alike. On December 1, a site-wide login button was introduced and a "Universal Account" system was introduced, which meant that GameFAQs users could also use their usernames on MP3.com or GameSpot, which are also owned by CNET.
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 somewhat 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), GameFAQs appears to have settled into its new status; and with the addition of long-time message board moderator Sailor Bacon to the administration team has regained a level of stability after initial fears, critics and doubts.
GameFAQs culture
GameFAQs is noteworthy for its active message board community. Because of the high volume of posts it recieves each day, messages on the boards are purged daily, keeping the total number of posts to a reasonable level.
GameFAQs spinoff/clone boards
Many people have created their own sites based upon the GameFAQs look and feel. Most of these simply copy the GameFAQs boards; these are commonly referred to as GameFAQs spinoffs. Some go further, emulating GameFAQs' contribution systems as well.
The first spinoff was called GameFAQs Hell, created by Chuck "NeoGenesis" Sakoda in 2002. His first attempt at cloning the boards was performed in ASP and MS Access database services. After giving up on that, he made a new version in PHP and MySQL. He released the source code under the GNU General Public License. It has been confirmed by CJayC that he had a link to GameFAQs Hell in the board help section for promotion of the source.
Since the GameFAQs Hell time, there have been dozens of other spinoffs opened up, and more sources appeared, including:
- GameFAQs Hell-based
- GameFAQs Hell - GameFAQs Hell was the first spinoff. Originally it was thought that only 3 or 4 releases of the code still existed; since then many more have surfaced. The boards were originally writen in ASP but were never finished and then were abandoned and rewritten in PHP, and were run on a server owned by the boards' creator, Chuck Sakoda. The server (rhn.skwerl.net) contained several source code downloads up until some time in Spring 2004, but later all of the content was deleted.
- GameFAQsInfo - GameFAQsInfo is one of the newest GameFAQs spinoffs. The original site was started up in April 2004 and hosted by Angelfire. However, the site's owner, Easter Eggs, declared the Angelfire as a "bad host" and in May of the same year moved to a .net domain. The site offers information on the happenings at GameFAQs, although most of the users that register there simply use the boards (which are flooded with racism and other offensive material).
- Mediarchive - Mediarchive was one of the more feature-full spinoffs. It contained a contribution system similar to GameFAQs'. The source code was leaked toward the end of its days. The creator, Jay, claims that he would have released it two days later if it weren't leaked by Counteray, the guy who paid for and hosted Mediarchive. The leak of Mediarchive led to many more spinoffs popping up and others adding more features and fixes to MA code.
- Outboards - The oldest spinoff remaining in existence, founded in August 2002. It currently uses a heavily modified version of Mediarchive by Jay and Outbreakorn. Over time, it has been the subject of controversy due to staff-encouraged 'invasions' of other spinoffs as well as controversial discussion content.
- Special Ops - The owner of Special Ops, Anthony "Ant P" Parsons, started hacking at GameFAQs Hell in April 2003 to make it more GameFAQs-like and remove severe exploits and bugs in the original GameFAQs Hell. It contains several major new features and is XHTML-compliant, The site design is noticeably biased against Internet Explorer users, with its extensive use of modern web standards such as CSS 2/3 and transparent PNG images.
- Twisted Legacy - Twisted Legacy is the third oldest spin-off still in existence, created in late September 2002 as a refuge for GameFAQs "The Couch" members. It has flourished since then, with many source improvements, made formerly by Aquatakat and now by Insder. While the source still has some bugs in it, it has been drastically changed since its Outboards 2 (GFH-Based) beginnings.
- whiteFyre - whiteFyre is the second oldest spinoff in existence, started in September 2002 by ultimategamer00. It is the first spinoff to truly have the appearance of the actual GameFAQs boards, as much of the GameFAQs HTML was directly copied. The source code was leaked following a break-in using code exploits on August 8 2003 (a similar attack was made exactly one year later), and ultimateGamer's official release followed six months later in February 2004.
- LUE2 - One of the many LUE2 spinoffs that exist. This particular LUE2 appeared in an article on Something Awful in December 2004.
- Original Source - This is a list of spinoffs not based off of GameFAQs Hell (most are closed-source, thus derivatives of them are few, if any)
- Archetype Zero - A very feature-rich spinoff that contains several features from Special Ops, whiteFyre, and some unique to Archetype Zero. It was started in January 2004 and became open source in July 2004. The boards closed down at the end of September 2004.
- Eugenic GameFAQs Clone - Written by the creator of Archetype Zero, this was intended to be as complete a clone of the new PHP GameFAQs as possible, except using valid XHTML and CSS code. The creator had a conversation with CJayC about it and was given the possibility of having it advertised in the help files as GFH was (see above), but since then work has been discontinued. There are downloads available from the author, as well as on a few other sites below.
- Flying Turkey - A spinoff that is very user-friendly. It has a lot of options that normal users can do and even more through the shop and higher levels. Flying Turkey is a spinoff with an origin of The Couch made by Magus.
- GameFAQs Clone X - The first working spinoff written in ASP, although not the first attempt (see section intro). GFCX was the closest to a true GameFAQs spinoff there is, until GameFAQs itself changed from ASP to PHP. The original set of boards were hacked because the owner left the database path in the released source code, and the passwords were unencrypted. The source is available for download at various sites.
- GameFAQs Clone 2 - A board with an original ASP source that uses the new GameFAQs layout.
- LUElinks - A private site with boards created by LlamaGuy, strictly for members of the message board LUE only. It has since developed into one of the few spinoffs that offer more than simply boards. The interface is similar to that of GameFAQs, but several features are added, most notably the abilities to vote on links and receive tokens for adding good links. There is a running joke among LUELinkers that whenever someone asks for the URL for the board, they all claim that the site does not exist.
- LUE2 - First GameFAQs spinoff to use the new GameFAQs layout. Originally created by Tsietisin in November 2003 on the day of SteriLUEzation (see site history), for three days it was the largest GameFAQs spinoff to ever exist. After Tsietisin resigned, programmer Mark Lin revived and took over the community in January 2004. After two hackings and numerous shutdowns due to bandwidth overconsumption on the outdated and inefficient Mediarchive software, a new and efficient source code was developed by August 2004 while the original user and post databases were retained.
- Metaboards - A source code made by U.X.O (also known as Fish and radfox). The purpose was to create a new and "properly coded" version of GameFAQs Hell. It was very active in development for the first three months, however it hasn't received much attention since February 2004, and at version 0.4 has been considered abandoned. All versions of the source have been preserved, some of which still exist on the site's FTP.
- Radiance - This is an original spinoff with layout similar to Aquatakat's boards. The source is currently moving from MySQL to SQLite under the name of Radiance Revolution.
- Solar Conflict Message Boards - This is an original spinoff written by Sasha Slutsker using PHP and MySQL. The code has not been released.
- Slate Boards - An original spinoff that uses one PHP file. The source code is stable with no known exploits, but the administration system is lacking compared to others.
- The Flux Network - The first active spin-off to be based on an OOP design, ns1987 made it because he was tired of the whiteFyre source. Based on GameFAQs Hell Lite, by Ant P.
- Thunderboards - An almost completely original spinoff still relatively new and the first released spinoff to use SQLite. The owner, lancelott, is more concerned with code perfection than adding more features, so the source is very secure and stable though a bit bare.
- Turkeybot - The owner of Turkeybot, Tonglebeak, wanted to make "the best spinoff there ever was", with more features and better speed than others. It contains customizable CSS themes like most other spinoffs, added account security, many other features, and claims to never have been hacked.
Anthony Parsons keeps a small archive of free sources for download. A much more complete source collection (though without descriptions) is available at lancelott's directory. There is a list of sources and reviews to accompany them at Slate Boards, however this list is censored to show only negative opinions of other spinoffs. There is also another user-submitted list at Aquatakat's site. The former site of Archetype Zero contains an archived spinoff board listing for historic purposes. None of these sites are entirely up-to-date, due to the rate at which new boards appear and others disappear.
A large former spinoff, Darkside Legion, was a banned word ("darksidelegion") at GameFAQs after receiving a notorious reputation, because its members were said to contact unsuspecting people and persuade them to give his or her password away. Many Mediarchive-based spinoffs have been hacked by spinoff coders. There has been long-standing tension between Outboards and whiteFyre, the two longest-running spinoffs.
GameFAQs spinoff/clone feuds
There have been many feuds between spinoffs, their owners, and their users. whiteFyre has been victim to two hackings - both on August 8th, and in 2003 and 2004. On the first one, the whiteFyre source code weas leaked. Six months after, ultimategamer00 officially released the source code. When whiteFyre was down in 2004, uG posted Archetype Zero source code because he had a feud with Batteries.
The LUE2 Fuse
When LUE was Sterlized on November 15, 2003, for invading a Livejournal of a girl who committed suicide, LUEsers panicked. Tsi rose to the occasion and created LUE2 and ran it on an unpatched MA source. Thousands of LUEsers flocked to the boards, spending up Tsi's bandwidth and costing him hundreds of dollars. Other spinoffs, the Outboards in particular, overran LUE2 with numerous flooding attempts, false virus messages (it was the famous "echo j" and "format C" which casues Norton Antivirus to sound a false virus alert), as well as exploiting the message boards' code. It culminated when EvilPrimate sent a letter to LUE2's hosting company and it got shut down. That was the first major confrontation between LUE2 and other spinoffs.
The other confrontations involved iGenesis's LUE2. iG created another LUE2 after the shutdown of Tsi's. It was better-managed, having learned lessons from the spectacular rise and crash of Tsi's LUE2, but still fraught with problems. Outboarders found out that Tasdoom and iGenesis were the same person and still continued to attempt to shut it down.
Another famous (still on-going) feud is deciding the real LUE2. LUE2.com claims it is because it has the users and the domain name. LUE2.info claims it because they have an original source code and was around first, yet LUE2.com argues that LUE2.info was down for a long time.
JunkieZnat
Junkieznat's boards was also a explosive fuse of spinoff showdowns. It got hacked in May 2003. Junkie got it going soon, but after a month, it got hacked again in July (the story was that Jay sent Junkie an SQL exploit that shut them down). Seizing upon the popularity of LUE2, Junkie started LUE3. Again, it got hacked by spinoff coders. The battle only lasted five months, but it was an ultimatium to other spinoffs - "If you don't know how to code, we will hack your boards."
Darkside Legion
Darkside Legion, as mentioned above, was a very infamous spinoff. Users like girlgamer were accused of informing CJayC of plots on DSL to invade or damage GameFAQs. DSL opened in April and shut down shortly afterwards. DSL v2 was opened in July; the owners KOSed everyone that they didn't know so they couldn't squeal on CJayC, until EvilPrimate lifted all of them a couple of months later. The draconian measures that DSL took to protect from both GameFAQS and other spinoffs highlight how secretive and paranoid they were.
Further, there has been discord and disagreement between its owners. Supposedly, rancid milk deleted the DB, the boards were taken down on random times, and other, uncertain events.
See also
External links
Official sites
Unofficial sites
- Kirby Still On Top's Secondary Boards FAQ - KSOT's Secondary Boards FAQ is recognised by many users as a comprehensive guide to the features and works of the GameFAQs message boards, answering questions and giving factual information that cannot be already found in the Help Files.
- GameFAQs Photo Album
- GameFAQs Archive - The GFA is a collection of saved humourous, interesting, and noteworthy topics and messages posted originally on the GameFAQs message boards themselves throughout their illustrious history between the years 1999 and 2004. The Archive was coded and designed by Roaddhogg, originally to serve as a follow-up to ColdFusion's "Nostalgia Project", which became defunct in late 2002. The GameFAQs Archive currently stores in excess of 1,000 pages and has over 300,000 hits. User submissions are encouraged.
- SCk24 - A site devoted to covering the GameFAQs contests
- GameFAQs Users Site Made by moderator Crono Lvl 99, this is similar to the photo albums. The site is dead at this stage.