In Memory of Joystiq
Operating for 29170 posts across ten and a half years, Joystiq has been a force in the games industry. A few of us at 1 More Castle wanted to press “x”, and some other keys, to pay our respects to one of the greats of game publishing.
Andrew Carreiro
Co-founder and Site admin
On February 13th 2015, Joystiq ended. It’s still there, though: all the puns, Dead Space Girl, the podcasts, and the years of event coverage. Every single word of content exists as it was authored. Etched in platters spinning in datacentres around the globe, the Joystiq archives appear to be immutable, but the site is an end-of-life MMO.
There are no new zones on the horizon. All the quests have been completed. The largest guilds have been abandoned; friends have parted ways, leaving Twitter handles and IM accounts in an attempt to maintain relationships. The thought of recapturing the intensity of the glory days fades soon after login: the areas are mechanically identical, yet devoid of warmth.
Joystiq had several expansion packs throughout its life. WoW Insider, Massively, the branching and merging of the Fanboy sites, the layout updates, and the shifting leadership took the site in new directions, but the core gameplay loop remained constant. Present the gaming news in a entertaining, lighthearted, and honest way.
While the suits upstairs have decided to fire the GMs and devs, and while we don’t know how long the servers will be up, we’ll /drink to the good times had on a mysterious oil tanker, somewhere in the mid-Atlantic.
Chris Owens
Back in 2008, I had a brief stint in the game industry as a QA tester for a couple big releases for a now defunct mid-tier publisher. I remember as our first game was getting close to launch, I heard we had scored a big preview on a video game blog called Joystiq. At the time, I had no idea what video game blogs were about. In my mind, we needed coverage in the major gaming magazines of the day but the producers were really excited about the Joystiq coverage. Once we got to read the preview, it was clear that the writer truly cared about the preview and it read like a real gamer was writing the preview and not just a magazine editor with 1000 other things to do. That’s when I realized that Joystiq gave a real voice to the players and would change the way games would be looked at in the future. I also became an instant follower of the site at that point. Joystiq was always my go-to game blog over the other blog sites because always seemed to write with real passion and enjoyment of the hobby compared to other sites that always seemed to have a more snarky and sarcastic point of view. While I haven’t followed them as much in recent years, they have always been a place to find quality writing and information and their closing will leave a big hole in game coverage going forward.
Jason Lamb
Nintendo 64 Dr Frankenstein and Podcaster
Joystiq,
You were my go-to resource for videogame news articles. Why? You stuck to the news. There was no Kotaku-style filler, no IGN-styled sponsored articles, and you didn’t embrace the hyperbole that websites such as Polygon suffer from. You covered the latest news about games, and you did it well.
AOL has spun you off into “Joystiq x Engadget”, but it won’t be the same. But maybe that’s where game sites are headed, where articles dealing with the newest Mountain Dew™ promotion are more important than the games itself.
I hope not.
Eric Bailey
Editor-in-Chief and Podcast host
Joystiq holds this distinction with me: It was the one blatantly incorrect misspelling that I did not mind in a brand.
Who can blame them for that informal stylistic choice? Just “Joystick” is so bland, boring, non-distinctive. Besides, it has that big “k” sticking off the end there, all hostile with its jagged edges and sharp angles. If you want to convey warmth and appeal, you have to go with the alluring curve of a “q” instead.
Joystiq, indeed, projected warmth and appeal. I will be the first to admit that I did not follow them passionately; but, then again, I have never been one to follow any particular site that way. I did keep an eye on Joystiq from afar, though, and always found it to be a friendly and fun destination. I mean, read the farewell post from their Editor-In-Chief and I would hope you would detect a difference in tone from some of the stiffer outlets out there. That is not to say that JoyStiq was not capable of hard-hitting editorial; but, c’mon, look, there’s even a horrible Nietzsche/niche pun in there. Those are my kind of people.
You have to understand: With other websites, I found myself grimacing at some of their choices, and keeping a safe distance from their social media, if not outright blocking them entirely. With Joystiq, I was always glad to find another resource on Twitter, whether in @JessConditt‘s eye for witty imagery or @sliwinski‘s front-lines approach to news direction (did you catch the unforgettable “Joystiq reports on rumor of its own closure” story?). One of the kindest rejection letters I ever got for a feature pitch was from @SusanArendt, prior to her JoyStiq days; so when she did join ‘Stiq, I remember thinking, “Oh, cool, good for them.”
I will still follow them (@Xav, too, and others) on Twitter. Because I think I just figured out what I like in their “informal stylistic choice” I alluded to earlier — With Joystiq, their contributors were always sure to retain their humanity in their work. These people are more than just pixels on a screen, and they will keep being human beings wherever they go next in their journey.
I admire any one person who can maintain a human angle and personal voice when contributing content on a subject matter that can seem so inhumane at times. To achieve this feat on across a united team is certainly noteworthy.
So let us note Joystiq, then, and may their spirit persist in further works for games.
