for games journalism, the gaming industry, the gaming community...and for me.
Let us take a step back in time...
When I was in high school I started reading a magazine called Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM). It was fanatastic magazine. Funny (no, hilarious), well written, and informative. I looked forward to it every single month. I read it throughout highschool, and into college. I read it after college.. my roommate Dan and I would look forward to it every month, and I have very fond memories of the two of us discussing the mag, and laughing histerically at Sean Baby's articles and the often funny Letters to the Editor section. I read it then, and I am still reading it to this day.
Then the internet hit the world... and like all good media outlets, EGM expanded to include online elements, and eventually the 1up Network was spawned. I loved it, and since its inception it has been my go-to source for anything I wanted to know about video games.. be it reviews, news, guides, commentary, humor, anything... and then the notion of blogs hit... and all of these intelligent and talented folks working there had blogs I could read, and were posting in various forums, talking with the community...(and even some of the guys who left the company had blogs I would read) and not long from that point podcasting took off. And over time the 1up Network produced a large number of great podcasts.. 1up Yours, to this day, is the best podcast I have ever listened to. I aslo enjoyed Legendary Thread, EGM Live/1up FM, and Retronuats. Add to that, the fantastic 1up Show, a video podcast they produced every week. An awesome show that I looked forward to more so that most TV... honest, funny and casual discussions about games from a bunch of people passionate about them (filmed right in the offices where all those pages of EGM and articles for 1up were written). Hours of podcasts were brought to me every week. For the past three years I listened to about 3 per week, and watched the 1up Show. I developed quite an interest/hobby in videogame journalism.. I loved reading thoughts on the industry from people on the outside looking in, and people from the inside looking out. And it provided me with much enjoyment. All started and sustained by 1up. After spending so much time reading their words in print (for well over 10 years), online, in formus, in blogs, watching them on the 1up Show, and listening to them in so many hours of podcasts.. you start to feel like you know these guys/gals. And often I felt like these were the kind of people I'd like to hang out and play/discuss/enjoy videogames with (actually, I know thee were the kind of people I would enjoy vidoegame with). And thanks to the 1up Network... I could, in a way. But alas.. the world sucks...
EGM is gone. All of the podcasts are gone. The 1up Show is gone.
And sadly, the poeple who produced all of those are gone as well.
The 1up Network had a strong name, a clear voice and style, and many strong writers and interesting personalities behind it. And now, it is irrevokably altered. It will not be the same.. think I''m gonna have to hunt down a new gaming site to read now... don't think I will really want to visit the "new" 1up very much now. I may pop in there to see if the few that weren't laid off are doing anything interesting... but it will never be the same. Yes, the website is still there.. but the communtiy was made into something special by the poeple behind it, not the URL.
Hey I don't wanna go to work today
Wanna stay home and play all my video games
No I don't wanna take it nice and slow
Wanna get ready to go
On the one up show
On the one up show - You know you'll be a star
On the one up show - You already are
Everyday is like a holiday
So long, good bye
Im gonna run away right now
Game on, All night
I'm gonna be on the one up show
You'll miss me when i'm gone.
Didn't mean to start 2009 off with a bummer of a blog post... but hey... thats life I guess.
(I also would have never discovered Dealership, one my favorite bands, without the 1up Show.)
