Game Revolution

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Game Revolution

URL	http://www.gamerevolution.com
Commercial?	Yes
Type of site	Video Games
Owner	Net Revolution Inc.
Created by	Duke Ferris
Launched	April 1996
Current status	Active

Game Revolution (formerly Game-Revolution) or GR is a gaming website created in 1996. Based in Berkeley, California, the site includes reviews, previews, a gaming download area, cheats, and a merchandise store, as well as webcomics, screenshots, and videos. Their features pages include articles satirizing Jack Thompson, E³, the hype surrounding the next-generation consoles, and the Video game controversy. Cameo writing appearances include Brian Clevinger of 8-Bit Theatre and Scott Ramsoomair of VG Cats.

1 Company history
2 Style of reviews
- 2.1 Member Reviews
3 GR Mailbag
4 Jack Thompson controversy
- 4.1 Article regarding video game violence and youth violence
5 Community
6 References
7 External links

[edit] Company history

Net Revolution, Inc., a California corporation was founded in April, 1996 by Duke Ferris as a holding company and as publisher of the Game Revolution website. Ferris served as president of the company until it was acquired in 2005 by Bolt Media, Inc.

[edit] Style of reviews

One of the site's most acclaimed attributes are their style of reviews, often blatantly insulting the game and developers of the game itself^[1]. Game Revolution, through their roughly two-page reviews come to a summary in the American A-F Grading system. Game Revolution claims rightly that they have never given an "A+", and their "A" is awarded to very few, very select games. Such games include Metroid Prime, Okami, Grand Theft Auto III, and Halo: Combat Evolved. On the opposite side of the spectrum, when faced with games they consider to be terrible, the site's reviewers often choose to make the actual reading of the review humorous. For example, when reviewing Survivor: The Interactive Game, multiple drop-down boxes that serve no logical purpose were added to poke fun at the game. To this day, the writers for Game-Revolution insist that The Crow: City of Angels is the worst game they have ever seen. One problem with the grading system is that it causes problems when meta review sites have to convert the score to a numerical value that doesn't quite reflect the grade that GR gave it.

[edit] Member Reviews

Recently, members have been given the ability to write their own reviews on the website, for any game in Game-Revolution's database. This has caused problems where some user reviews have written reviews about games still in development, but are in GR's database (such as when GR releases a preview, or screen shots of the game). Due to the websites smaller staff, a number of games do not have reviews for them; the member reviews fill this void.

Some GR members have been creating reviews akin to those of the main GR staff, including a mimic of GR's summary +/- system, and copying GR's somewhat humorous style and paragraphing.

[edit] GR Mailbag

Game Revolution also has a GR Mailbag (previously "Moron Mailbag"), a way of showing their personal responses to the numerous hate-mail they receive. However, the mailbag is not limited to hate-mail, and has included junk and complementary mail as well.^[2] Almost every response Game Revolution posts is intended to be humorous in nature, usually poking fun at the sender or the e-mail's contents. The Mailbag is updated the least out of the site's content, which is often pointed out be the creators as a running gag.

[edit] Jack Thompson controversy

Duke Ferris' art featuring Thompson being devoured.

Sometime in August 2005, Jack Thompson contacted the Lou Kerner of Game Revolution and requested he remove an ´offensive´ AIM buddy icon from an affiliate site of Game Revolution known as Bolt.com. Kerner complied and had the offending icon removed immediately. However, Thompson saw the removal as an admission of guilt and contacted the NYPD to have Kerner arrested. However, no such action was taken. Duke Ferris, another employee of the site, wrote an article[1] on the matter and humorously pointed out the ridiculousness of the entire situation. To drive home this point, he even chose to present a primitively drawn image which had Thompson being devoured by a crocodile, and then challenged Thompson to go ahead and have him arrested. It is unknown if Thompson responded to the article.

[edit] Article regarding video game violence and youth violence

Perhaps Game Revolution's most revered article (as evidenced by its consistent referral by various video game websites^[3]^[4]^[5]) was Duke Ferris's composition regarding the current public controversy with video games and its connection with violent youth. Snakes openly criticized the matter, and offered several bits of data to prove that there is no discernible connection between two. In fact, he points out that this year's youth has been the least violent in several years, yet political figures and the media have made it a point to make the issue seem the exact opposite. As with the style of the site, the article can be considered humorous in nature. The original article can be found here.

[edit] Community

Game Revolution hosts a small but vibrant community of users on its message boards and live chat room.

The forums have boards for specific systems, broken down by company (Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft), PC gaming (Windows, Mac OS and Linux), classic/vintage gaming systems, and role playing games. In addition, the popular "Misc" board in which just about anything can be discussed. This forum has consistently shown itself to be the most popular on the site, with regular discussions about movies, religion, politics, philosophy, music, etc.

The live chat room is primarily intended for discussion of a gaming nature, but for the most part other topics of conversation dominate.

Unlike other major gaming websites the Game Revolution forums has a relatively small community; membership exceeds over 1,100 people, and of those roughly 200 members on the message boards and chatrooms are frequent posters. Because of this, the forum members of Game Revolution share a stronger bond of camaraderie, detest console war talk and random flames, and engage in insightful debates over a broad range of topics.