I'm doing a long video on Giant Bomb right now, a site-as-platform that launched toward the end of TeamXbox's lifespan, a site that definitely had a lot more going for it than our site did. It's hard to believe it, but it's been 13 years since IGN laid Brent off and over a decade (something around there) since htey finally killed the forums, the last bit of the site.
TeamXbox was a fan site. Shockwave a design graduate who made a site that attracted a lot of attention and it was through a number of strokes of luck that the site got as big as it did. TXB was attractive in 2000/2001 and Microsoft was really feeding sites like that exclusive info, attention, consoles, games, etc. because they didn't have to convince them to enjoy the product, they'd just lap it up. This would change a decade later when Microsoft started focusing on bigger sites and then eventually influencers because building an entire web site around a fandom became very uneconomical by then.
Sol at MSXbox wasn't interested in maintaining his site with a lot of very, very good technical briefings at the time (this was how I found TXB in the first place), so he basically gave it to Shockwave. MSXbox had a robust set of forums with quality posters who knew what the f*** they were talking about. So TeamXbox had this pretty site and this robust forum all in one. When they ran into server money issues, EB was happy to give them their affiliate revenue in advance because, I suppose, they were making a lot of money for the retailer, or at least enough to not be lost entirely.
TeamXbox as a site wasn't terribly memorable. There was a lot of news and regurgitations of PR releases, the reviews were overly long and filled with useless crap like control layouts. I remember becoming a mod in early 2003 and one of the reviewers, who was only loosely affiliated with the site (freelance would be too strong a word), was caught plagiarizing, so we all had to sign and send in a document saying that anything we submitted was original content, etc. Bear in mind: I never had access to the CMS, I never once posted anything to the site itself, but we all signed it anyway.
IGN bought TeamXbox and I know that landed a decent windfall for the couple of people who had stakes in the company at that point, but it also began the gradual brainsuck of the site. I know many of us forumers never actually went to the site proper, we just hung out in the forum. But as attention kept getting diverted from the site more and more and Shockwave kept getting pushed around to odd jobs around IGN, the forums began to suffer for it. I remember a lot of discussions about IGN not wanting to foot the bill to upgrade our vBulletin to something modern. Nomb did a lot of work upgrading the site, but eventually he was pulled further up the ladder to do more important things, so the forums just stagnated. Of course, being on a web forum that wasn't part of some much larger ecosystem was getting increasingly outdated by the end of the aughts, we were kinda just the last crust of hangers-on, stubbornly doing so, which I guess in large part which is why this place still exists (<3 @Plainview).
When Shockwave was fired, I remember we were on relatively close speaking terms and I guided him to get the next site going, which was called Gamertype. But he had just been fired and was feeling crappy, no doubt, about doing anything. The others got in there quicker and made their own site and captured a lot of the users who saw that TXB's days were numbered, even if they were the more anarchic people to keep something together and their site vanished years ago. But Gamertype didn't even last that long. I can't even remember what came of Gamertype after the Gamertype FM guys, myself included, left to start our own site when they just couldn't decide to do something with it a full year after starting. We started FEZ almost a year to the day after we hopped over. Naturally, I made an ass of myself the whole way presuming that Gamertype was the way forward because it was Shockwave's next project and the "heir apparent".
All of that is a matter for another post somewhere.
I couldn't hang out at a TXB today, but I really do believe that we could've seen its end coming and we were a bit too optimistic to hang on as long as we did.
TeamXbox was a fan site. Shockwave a design graduate who made a site that attracted a lot of attention and it was through a number of strokes of luck that the site got as big as it did. TXB was attractive in 2000/2001 and Microsoft was really feeding sites like that exclusive info, attention, consoles, games, etc. because they didn't have to convince them to enjoy the product, they'd just lap it up. This would change a decade later when Microsoft started focusing on bigger sites and then eventually influencers because building an entire web site around a fandom became very uneconomical by then.
Sol at MSXbox wasn't interested in maintaining his site with a lot of very, very good technical briefings at the time (this was how I found TXB in the first place), so he basically gave it to Shockwave. MSXbox had a robust set of forums with quality posters who knew what the f*** they were talking about. So TeamXbox had this pretty site and this robust forum all in one. When they ran into server money issues, EB was happy to give them their affiliate revenue in advance because, I suppose, they were making a lot of money for the retailer, or at least enough to not be lost entirely.
TeamXbox as a site wasn't terribly memorable. There was a lot of news and regurgitations of PR releases, the reviews were overly long and filled with useless crap like control layouts. I remember becoming a mod in early 2003 and one of the reviewers, who was only loosely affiliated with the site (freelance would be too strong a word), was caught plagiarizing, so we all had to sign and send in a document saying that anything we submitted was original content, etc. Bear in mind: I never had access to the CMS, I never once posted anything to the site itself, but we all signed it anyway.
IGN bought TeamXbox and I know that landed a decent windfall for the couple of people who had stakes in the company at that point, but it also began the gradual brainsuck of the site. I know many of us forumers never actually went to the site proper, we just hung out in the forum. But as attention kept getting diverted from the site more and more and Shockwave kept getting pushed around to odd jobs around IGN, the forums began to suffer for it. I remember a lot of discussions about IGN not wanting to foot the bill to upgrade our vBulletin to something modern. Nomb did a lot of work upgrading the site, but eventually he was pulled further up the ladder to do more important things, so the forums just stagnated. Of course, being on a web forum that wasn't part of some much larger ecosystem was getting increasingly outdated by the end of the aughts, we were kinda just the last crust of hangers-on, stubbornly doing so, which I guess in large part which is why this place still exists (<3 @Plainview).
When Shockwave was fired, I remember we were on relatively close speaking terms and I guided him to get the next site going, which was called Gamertype. But he had just been fired and was feeling crappy, no doubt, about doing anything. The others got in there quicker and made their own site and captured a lot of the users who saw that TXB's days were numbered, even if they were the more anarchic people to keep something together and their site vanished years ago. But Gamertype didn't even last that long. I can't even remember what came of Gamertype after the Gamertype FM guys, myself included, left to start our own site when they just couldn't decide to do something with it a full year after starting. We started FEZ almost a year to the day after we hopped over. Naturally, I made an ass of myself the whole way presuming that Gamertype was the way forward because it was Shockwave's next project and the "heir apparent".
All of that is a matter for another post somewhere.
I couldn't hang out at a TXB today, but I really do believe that we could've seen its end coming and we were a bit too optimistic to hang on as long as we did.
