1up.com

» see 1up.com as it lived, on the wayback machine

~ the eulogy ~

1up.com was the website that grew out of egm and computer gaming world. it launched on the ziff davis network in september 2003 with a magazine-era staff carried over to the web, and for most of its life it ran a heavy podcast schedule that some readers cared about more than the reviews. by 2007-2008 the podcast wing had its own little ecosystem of shows.

ziff davis sold the property to ugo and hearst in january 2009. that day saw layoffs in the gaming press large enough to have its own wikipedia mention. ziff davis bought the brand back later, and on february 21, 2013 announced 1up.com would wind down alongside gamespy and ugo.com. the domain now points at ign.

1up's peak years overlap with my own gaming years cleanly, but i was not reading the english-language gaming press. in turkey the gaming forum gravity was on donanimhaber and frmtr. when i wanted reviews i would find a turkish writeup or a forum thread with hardware comparisons. i knew 1up existed the way you know about a magazine you saw in an airport.

~ the dossier ~

~ what it actually was ~

structurally it was a magazine's web version that did the early web thing of pivoting to podcasts and blogs as the print side eroded. egm staff like jeremy parish and john davison had recurring presence on 1up podcasts. retronauts started on the 1up podcast network and survived the site itself. that retronauts kept going after the brand died is the tell about where the cultural weight actually sat.

~ the ziff davis wind-down ~

the february 2013 announcement was a clean cut. ziff davis killed 1up.com on the same day as gamespy and ugo.com. the cited reason was strategic focus on ign and askmen instead. by then the gaming-media model was already collapsing under the weight of free youtube reviews and the shift of release-day coverage to twitter. the death itself was quiet in the way late web 1.0 media deaths usually were, a press release on a friday afternoon.

~ the long tail ~

the part of 1up.com that mattered most outlived the site. retronauts kept publishing as an independent show. former staffers moved to polygon, kotaku, ign, waypoint. egm itself made it back as a separate brand. the 1up.com archive is mostly readable through wayback. the part that did not make it was the comments under the reviews, which is what most of the 2000s gaming web actually consisted of.

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