IGN announces year-long celebration to mark 30th anniversary

Entertainment website IGN has announced a year-long editorial celebration to mark the brand’s 30th anniversary, including a series of longform interviews with key figures from the games and entertainment industries, the return of LA event IGN Live, and a games and retro merchandise partnership with Humble Bundle. Humble Bundle and GamesIndustry.biz are both owned by IGN parent IGN Entertainment.

The content plan includes anniversary-themed editions of established IGN series like Art of the Level and Art of the Scene, and IGN30: Icons is a series of longform interviews with “industry luminaries from across gaming and entertainment to learn more about what they were doing in 1996, get their take on the last 30 years of groundbreaking changes, as well as their look ahead at the next 30 years,” said Justin Davis, SVP of Commerce and Editorial at IGN.

The site traces its history back to September 23rd, 1996, with an article on what was then N64.com in which the then-chairman of Nintendo of America Howard Lincoln discussed the company’s decision to drop the price of the N64 to $199 to match the PlayStation and Sega Saturn. The brand was launched as the Imagine Gaming Network, a group of five sites operated by Imagine Media, a US subsidiary of UK games magazine publisher Future Publishing. The company has changed hands several times and is now operated by IGN Entertainment, a division of Ziff Davis.

Peer Schneider, who started as Editor-in-Chief in 1997 and remains with the brand as EVP and Chief Development Officer at IGN Entertainment, said the original ambition was to “go beyond the monthly magazines with long lead times and share daily content about N64, PlayStation, and Saturn.”

“Creating content for YouTube, podcasts platforms, and social media has ensured that IGN has continued to grow over the years even as the way people browse the “internet” has fundamentally changed.”