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GameFAQs is a very popular website about video games that has helped gamers through "FAQs" and "walkthroughs" for games since November 1995. It was started and is maintained by Jeff "CJayC" Veasey. It has the second largest database of video games on the Internet [1], second only to IGN. The systems and games range from the 8-bit Atari days to the Next-Gen consoles of today. The site supplies FAQs, guides, images, codes, game saves, reviews, and game data free of charge to anyone who visits the site. Registration opens the extremely active message board community and the ability to contribute.

GameFAQs culture

GameFAQs is noteworthy for its active message board community. Below are minor descriptions of some its more famous boards:

(Note: Karma is a representation of a user's status. One, and only one, karma can be gained per day if the user logs in.)

Current Events (CE) is the oldest social board on GameFAQs. It is usually the second most popular social board on GameFAQs.

Random Insanity (RI) was originally created to shunt the more annoying users off of CE. It quickly became host to text-based roleplaying and "social topics" where people could come in and talk about nothing in particular. Originally RI was slightly hostile towards CE (the origin of "board invasion" being a ToS violation), with the RICE wars being remembered by the "old RIers". RI also has a history of being competitive with LUE; in the early days, users would perform "raids" on LUE in the PM hours. Before the RI Refugee Crisis [2] it usually had twice the number of posts on CE and LUE combined. However, after the incident most of them migrated to LUE and changed the site forever.

RI has many dramas and traditions of its own, including roleplaying, which started on the board and later moved to RP/FF. Roleplaying legends such as Icefall's Observatory and Gaw's Laws originated on RI. RI History is usually divided into epochs such as the "Golden Ages" or the "Summer of '01", and many vets classify themselves as Golden Age vets or summer vets. While most of the Golden Age vets have left RI, many of the Summer vets still lurk on the boards. The end of the Summer vet period was marked with the Gamequeen incident.

Life, the Universe, and Everything (LUE) is the most popular GameFAQs Social Board with usually well over 50,000 posts. The name was derived from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams. It was originally created to shunt the more annoying users off of RI. LUE has been very controversial in GameFAQs history, and is often viewed as one of the worst boards on the site. Discussion today is usually sex-related and has been for years. LUE is also home to many fads, including "y helo thar", which was said on a recent live broadcast of Conan O'Brien.

Though the board used to be open to all members with 30 Karma, it was raised to 75 Karma following the "Scum Wars" around November 2002 (see [3]). A 150 Karma requirement was implemented after the "RevoLUEtion" on May 7th, 2003 [4], and soon after the board was removed from all board listings. To get to it, one has to manually type in the URL.

On December 8th, 2003, following a massive board invasion by LUE, CJayC "sterilized" LUE by forbidding any user with a user ID greater than 888113 from ever reaching LUE. Soon after, from January 4th to January 15th CJayC ran a sign-up for LUE; people that haven't signed up aren't allowed to visit the board. This was done to prevent any new members from visiting and to permanently remove banned users. In exchange, LUE was granted slightly more leeway when it comes to controversial topics. (CJayC's announcement)

The LUE Trinity is the term for the three most commonly posted shock sites on GameFAQs - Goatse, Tubgirl, and the Harlequin Fetus. "Goatse" and "Tubgirl" are autoflagged words, and it is now a major offense to provide links to the sites.

Another Place (AP) is a GameFAQs Social Board created when LUE's user level requirement went up to 31. AP is definitely not a part of LUE anymore, and has somewhat of a tightly-knit community. There are many social topics around and is home to a lot of banned LUEsers who gave up on LUE. Another Place is known by its inhabitants as "Your GameFAQs home for polygamy and wit." Some of AP's residents have made their first names known to the board and ask to be addressed by them. AP also has it's own, semi-official website containing a set of guidelines, quotes, and a member list, or APe list.

The Couch, The Hallway, The Porch, and The Forum are "forum" message boards for general chitchat, with the Couch being the largest among them.

Poll of the Day (PotD) is another social board, similar to LUE, although the topics there are not usually as bad. PotD has nothing particular in common with the Poll of the Day on the main page, and is usually used to discuss women, love, etc.

Secret Boards are hard to find because you have to type their board number (found in parentheses) manually in the address bar. The boards are: Spatula (622), Board 250 (250), Brilliant (-1), Spork (542), Eggbeater (486), Semprini (709), Jenny (8675309), Pie (314159265), Rnd() (123456789), Nine (9), Lame (20040401), and Toaster Oven (909090909). In all of these boards you can usually find topics that are used for karma raising by many users, even though such topics are no longer necessary. Toaster Oven in particular had been rumored to exist for years, and was finally created by CJayC along with Rnd(), Nine, and Lame as the April Fool's Joke for 2004.

Message Board Help is the unofficial complaint forum of the boards. If a user feels something is wrong with the moderation system or staff, or possibly a board error, it is usually reported here. It is also used to ask questions about board features. This board was named Questions and Suggestions until the Karma system was introduced. After that, all suggestions and petitions have gone to Site Suggestions.

War on Terrorism was created soon after September 11th to discuss the War on Terrorism and related conflicts like the Middle East. However, it has quickly evolved into a massive political debate forum populated with trolls.

Site Suggestions is the official petitioning board, though very few ever pass. Usually passed petitions are a new special interest board, though very occasionally a new feature might be added.

FAQ Contributors is the board for all the FAQ writers to talk about common interests. This board has been split to better categorize the discussions on it. It is now composed out of three boards: General, Help and Critiques and Social.

Review Contributors is the board for all the review writers to talk about common interests. This board has been split to better categorize the discussions on it. It is now composed out of three boards: General, Help and Critiques and Social.

Game Design and Programming is a board where people can discuss programming concepts and code. The veterans at this board usually look down on "Game Makers," focusing instead on making the games using OpenGL. There are even a couple of professional video game programmers who hang out at this board.

Summer Contest is the board where people talk about the Summer Character Contest, a huge event at GameFAQs. This board has evolved since 2002 for the most part independently from the other boards mentioned. One well-known event on these boards has happened 2 years in a row, directly after Crono's loss to Mario in both tournaments, each by around 100 votes. Mass account suicides, flaming/trolling, and even accusations of CJayC cheating ensued for days after both times. This board is also known for the constant flame wars between certain groups of users, and the word "fanboy" is horribly overused.

Spring Contest 2004 was created for the start of a new contest that is comparing what game is the so called "Best. Game. Ever.". The contest itself is quite similar to the Summer Contest in that both are popularity contests. The two boards usually share similar characteristics and similar topics.

810-819 Boards were created a few days after April Fool's Day. Originally, CJayC posted on the Icon board (1000 karma requirement) on April Fools Day about making private boards for the first few icons that signed up. Many thought it an April Fool's joke until these boards were actually created. The few people that received these boards also are allowed to name them. So far, the ones that have been named are: 816 (#showarr), 818 (KGB), and 819 (CE Reloaded). In order to access these boards, the founders must send an invite.

GameFAQs history

Note: this is NOT a section for history of the boards themselves. This is for an official site history. All others should be linked to below.

GameFAQs was started on 5 November 1995 by Jeff Veasey. At that time it was called the "Video Game FAQ Archive". It was hosted by AOL and was a clone/spin-off of a popular FTP FAQ Archive.

By December 1996, the site was still young, which the appearance and content showed. The site contained less than 1000 FAQs and guides, combined over all systems. The site also focused on the 7 popular systems of the time - arcade games, the Sony Playstation , the Sega Saturn, the Nintendo 64, the 3DO, the Sega Genesis, and the Super Nintendo. Other systems were also listed. The site was very basic and was not updated on a regular basis.

By early 1997, GameFAQs had a new look. In fact, it had two different looks. One was customized for Web browsers that supported frames and the other was made specifically for browsers with no support for frames. The color scheme used white and black and blue. The content, however, was beginning to grow. By April, the site had 1301 files and codes for over 800 games. New features were introduced that would shape GameFAQs - features such as user requests for information, a search engine, recognition for contributors, and others.

By late 1997, GameFAQs was beginning to take shape. It moved out of AOL servers by this time and was partnered with Imagine Games Network (IGN). Jeff Veasey was hard at work on GameFAQs now. It is assumed that this is when GameFAQs became Veasey's full-time job. Until this time, he had been working in either the radio field (unconfirmed report) or with computer programming/web programming (radio interview). GameFAQs made it through two years and a new aspect of the site began - contests. There were only two winners of the GameFAQs Second Birthday Contest out of 1000 entries, but it was a start.

Throughout 1998, GameFAQs had the same idea. Veasey continued to work on the site and put new FAQs and codes up. In late 1998, the site got another overhaul. Still under IGN, GameFAQs added links to other IGN sites. The content of the site wasn't changed much, but Veasey always kept the users informed of what was going on. There were frequent updates to the site, even if they weren't contribution updates.

In late 1999, GameFAQs had another overhaul. The sidebar and tables on the homepage that show top games were added. The color scheme was also changed to blue and white, but it wasn't exactly the same. GameFAQs was still under the flag of IGN.

In November 1999, things happened quickly. On the 5th, a Quick Search box was added to all pages. The site also celebrated its fourth birthday. On the seventh, the message boards opened as a Beta and a Poll of the Day would be put up at the end of that week. Now, the site begins to change from a FAQ archive to one of the best gaming help sites on the internet.

Things on GameFAQs slowed down over the next few months and years. The GameFAQs chat went Beta, but didn't last long due to administrative issues - it was simply too hard to control.

2001 was the next year of changes for GameFAQs. The site left IGN. To make money, a banner was placed on the site that was sold to non-profit organizations. This was changed by May of 2001, when CNET Networks began affiliating themselves with GameFAQs. Also in May 2001, the Chat feature was completely shut down.

In September of 2001, another change was made to GameFAQs, because of advertising changes at CNET. The ad was moved from the top of the page (horizontally) to a vertical position in the sidebar. This also led the way to navigation of systems at the top of the screen. Changes were also made to links on the side, minimizing them and placing more links in "index" pages in subsections.

Recently, around May 2004, GameFAQs underwent the biggest visual change yet. It partially merged its game boards with those of GameSpot, and radically changed the graphics. The site's webpages have table-less layouts that are powered by CSS. It also converted into a php-based board.

Today, GameFAQs is fully owned by CNET Networks. Jeff "CJayC" Veasey is responsible for working on the main site - e-mails, codes, FAQs, reviews, saves, game data, coding, and updating the homepage. CNET has hired Bethany Massimilla to administrate the GameFAQs message boards and lead the moderators. CNET also supplied new (and faster) servers for the entire site. Although the changeover between the site being run by one man to the site being owned by a company and split into two sections was rough (technical errors, downtime, lost e-mails, and other problems), things have gone for the best.

External links

Official sites

Unofficial sites

GameFAQs board histories

@@ Line 7: / Line 7: @@
 (Note: Karma is a representation of a user's status.  One, and only one, karma can be gained per day if the user logs in.)
+*'''Current Events (CE)''' is the oldest social board on GameFAQs.  It is usually the second most popular social board on GameFAQs.
-*'''Life, the Universe, and Everything (LUE)''' is the most popular GameFAQs Social Board with usually well over 50,000 posts. The name was derived from the [[Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]] series by [[Douglas Adams]]. It was originally created to give the registered message board users a break from gaming and let them talk about whatever they want. LUE has been very controversial in GameFAQs history, and is often viewed as one of the worst boards on the site. Discussion today is usually sex-related and has been for years. LUE is also home to many fads, including &quot;y helo thar&quot;, which was said on a recent live broadcast of [[Conan O'Brien]].
+*'''Random Insanity (RI)''' was originally created to shunt the more annoying users off of CE. It quickly became host to text-based roleplaying and "social topics" where people could come in and talk about nothing in particular.  Originally RI was slightly hostile towards CE (the origin of "board invasion" being a [[ToS violation]]), with the RICE wars being remembered by the "old RIers". RI also has a history of being competitive with LUE; in the early days, users would perform "raids" on LUE in the PM hours. Before the RI Refugee Crisis [http://idea.yoll.net/rihistory/index.html] it usually had twice the number of posts on CE and LUE combined.  However, after the incident most of them migrated to LUE and changed the site forever.
+:RI has many dramas and traditions of its own, including roleplaying, which started on the board and later moved to RP/FF. Roleplaying legends such as Icefall's Observatory and Gaw's Laws originated on RI. RI History is usually divided into epochs such as the "Golden Ages" or the "Summer of '01", and many vets classify themselves as Golden Age vets or summer vets. While most of the Golden Age vets have left RI, many of the Summer vets still lurk on the boards. The end of the Summer vet period was marked with the Gamequeen incident.
+*'''Life, the Universe, and Everything (LUE)''' is the most popular GameFAQs Social Board with usually well over 50,000 posts. The name was derived from the [[Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]] series by [[Douglas Adams]]. It was originally created to shunt the more annoying users off of RI. LUE has been very controversial in GameFAQs history, and is often viewed as one of the worst boards on the site. Discussion today is usually sex-related and has been for years. LUE is also home to many fads, including &quot;y helo thar&quot;, which was said on a recent live broadcast of [[Conan O'Brien]].
 :Though the board used to be open to all members with 30 Karma, it was raised to 75 Karma following the "Scum Wars" around November 2002 (see [http://www.arcn08.dsl.pipex.com/thearchive.htm]).  A 150 Karma requirement was implemented after the &quot;RevoLUEtion&quot; on May 7th, 2003 [http://www.arcn08.dsl.pipex.com/Events/RevoLUEtion.htm], and soon after the board was removed from all board listings. To get to it, one has to manually type in the URL.
@@ Line 14: / Line 20: @@
 :The [[LUE Trinity]] is the term for the three most commonly posted [[shock site]]s on GameFAQs - [[Goatse]], [[Tubgirl]], and the [[Harlequin Fetus]]. "Goatse" and "Tubgirl" are autoflagged words, and it is now a major offense to provide links to the sites.
-*'''Current Events (CE)''' is the oldest social board on GameFAQs.  It is usually the second most popular social board on GameFAQs.
-*'''Random Insanity (RI)''' was originally created to shunt the more annoying users off of CE. It quickly became host to text-based roleplaying and "social topics" where people could come in and talk about nothing in particular.  Originally RI was slightly hostile towards CE (the origin of "board invasion" being a [[ToS violation]]), with the RICE wars being remembered by the "old RIers". RI also has a history of being competitive with LUE; in the early days, users would perform "raids" on LUE in the PM hours. Before the RI Refugee Crisis [http://idea.yoll.net/rihistory/index.html] it usually had twice the number of posts on CE and LUE combined.  However, after the incident most of them migrated to LUE and changed the site forever.
 *'''Another Place (AP)''' is a GameFAQs Social Board created when LUE's user level requirement went up to 31. AP is definitely not a part of LUE anymore, and has somewhat of a tightly-knit community. There are many social topics around and is home to a lot of banned LUEsers who gave up on LUE. Another Place is known by its inhabitants as "Your GameFAQs home for polygamy and wit."  Some of AP's residents have made their first names known to the board and ask to be addressed by them. AP also has it's own, semi-official website containing a set of guidelines, quotes, and a member list, or APe list.