Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to present, the father of New Games Journalism

[Spaff]

Just look at that nouveaux knife holding.

Kieron was kind enough to pose for this photo yesterday at dinner, just after Marek and myself told him we were the founders of Idle Thumbs, at which point he exclaimed (hopefully) jokingly 'Idle Thumbs? You slagged me off!!' referring to this I assume

Also look at this

Edited October 12, 2008 by Spaff

[Jake]

Secret fact: Gillen's New Games Journalism piece was one of the many original sources of inspiration the whole staff was kicking around on the pre-launch staff forum when we were starting the site in 2004. We then thankfully forgot that we were at all referencing that piece as well as anything else we were pointing at excitedly at the time, as it allowed the concepts to blend and mutate into their own thing, hopefully free of any overly direct lines pointing at any one particular site or article. That said, we forgot so much that we'd all read that article, that when NGJ became some sort of thing for a while, with those top ten articles, and UKR trying to beat it to death, we somehow managed to avoid the whole conversation entirely.

I was surprised at the time that nobody pointed to thumb as a site which practiced some elements of NGJ either as an example of a bunch of wankey assholes (eg UKR who managed to not notice that we had all sorts of un-scored reporter-centric stories describing the experiences of playing in a virtual world, or whatever), or as a positive example of anything written with those concepts in mind, but hey. I guess it means that either we somehow fortunately dodged a bunch of retarded crap, or nobody was reading the site. Most likely both.

[Chris]

Secret fact: Gillen's New Games Journalism piece was one of the many original sources of inspiration the whole staff was kicking around on the pre-launch staff forum when we were starting the site in 2004. We then thankfully forgot that we were at all referencing that piece as well as anything else we were pointing at excitedly at the time, as it allowed the concepts to blend and mutate into their own thing, hopefully free of any overly direct lines pointing at any one particular site or article. That said, we forgot so much that we'd all read that article, that when NGJ became some sort of thing for a while, with those top ten articles, and UKR trying to beat it to death, we somehow managed to avoid the whole conversation entirely.

I was surprised at the time that nobody pointed to thumb as a site which practiced some elements of NGJ either as an example of a bunch of wankey assholes (eg UKR who managed to not notice that we had all sorts of un-scored reporter-centric stories describing the experiences of playing in a virtual world, or whatever), or as a positive example of anything written with those concepts in mind, but hey. I guess it means that either we somehow fortunately dodged a bunch of retarded crap, or nobody was reading the site. Most likely both.

This is a remarkably accurate recollection of the periods in question.

[Wrestlevania]

Mr Gillen apparently lives in or around the fair city of Bristol, home of gainful employment for one Wrestlevania. I am, however, still a-vexed by having never bumped into this person as I would very much like to.

I may begin practising stalking--although KG seems to waft about the globe now on a regular basis. This could become a painfully expensive obsession...

[Nachimir]

I gather he moved to london recently.

[Wrestlevania]

Arse-biscuits.