Gaming Intelligence Agency
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The GIA as it looked on its last day of updates. |
The
Gaming Intelligence Agency (
GIA) was a website active from November 22nd, 1998, to April 1st, 2002. It covered mainly
RPGs, although it would occasionally range outside that genre. It featured reviews, retrospectives, and news on what was going on in the gaming world. One of the major hallmarks of the GIA was a witty sense of humor that pervaded many of its articles.
The Gaming Intelligence Agency was formed when a few disaffected
RPGamer staffers left that site to start their own. These staffers were: Andrew Vestal, Brian Glick, Brian Maniscalco, and Allan Milligan. Jeremy Parish (creator of
ToastyFrog) designed the site. The GIA officially launched on November 22nd, 1998. Along with news and game reviews, it featured a letters column, fanart,
fanfiction, and occasional special features, like contests and interviews with members of the game industry.
The site developed a large, loyal readership over time. The GIA's most popular feature was their letters column, "Double Agent," which was hosted by, in succession: Allan Milligan, Drew Cosner, Chris Jones, Brooke Bolander, and Erin Mehlos.
The GIA's staff grew throughout the years. Some of the original staff left in time, but the site picked up many new recruits along the way. Getting a job writing for the GIA was notoriously difficult.
On April 1st, 2002, the site's staff declared that the GIA's run was ending, effective immediately. Because the site had a tradition of updating with joke articles on April Fool's Day, and because there had been no prior warning, many readers interpreted the news as an elaborate hoax. Others felt the staff's goodbyes (part of the larger "The End" feature) were far too elaborate for an April Fool's joke. As the days passed and the GIA received no further updates, it became apparent to everyone that the staff was serious. In their goodbyes, the writers thanked the site's fans for supporting it through the years, and explained the site's shutdown as a desire to move on with their lives.
The GIA's influence on subsequent gaming sites is considerable.
After it disappeared, a fan-made, fan-funded archive of the contents of the site surfaced. It is nearly complete as of August 2006.
Some ex-GIA staffers still cover the game industry today. A few write for the
Ziff Davis family of sites and magazines (including
1UP.com and
Electronic Gaming Monthly). A few work in the game industry itself.
As the GIA was shutting down, a few of its members founded
Gameforms.com, a sort of spiritual successor to the original site. The new site, which launched in May of 2002, had the stated intent of exploring the idea of videogames as art, and had roughly the same format and features as the original GIA. Soon after launch, disagreements about running the site broke out between one staffer and the rest, and the episode ended with most of the ex-GIA members leaving. New writers were brought in, and the site continued to operate, but it never came close to attaining the sizeable readership the GIA had enjoyed. Many felt, additionally, that the quality of game coverage was not up to par with that of the original GIA. The site eventually shut down in 2005, long after updates had slowed to a trickle. The Gameforms project was (and is) considered somewhat of an embarrassment.
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GIA Mirror
