The Armchair Empire 5th Anniversary - Features

Aaron "Omni" Simmer doing his best Dave Halverson impression

Newsletter

Be notified of site updates. Sign-up for the Newsletter sent out twice weekly.

Enter E-Mail Address Below:

Half a Decade and Still Eating Spam on a Regular Basis

Original Armchair Empire Banner, August 2000

As with 95% of the world’s problems, The Armchair Empire was born out of boredom.

Well, not complete boredom, but it was definitely involved. I was sitting at my desk at work, with my mind devoid of any thought back in July of 2000. Then there was a small spark and I was suddenly thinking, “How can I get action figures for free?” This quickly led to questions about getting more free stuff, like video games and computers. For the moment they remained questions without answers. At least realistic answers.

On my way home I struck on the idea of having my own radio show – reviewing games, playing game soundtracks, talking to industry greats. It would be awesome! I called a good friend from high school, Jeff Nash (aka Mr. Nash), and laid out my idea of a radio show that concentrated on video game reviews. He responded with his usual enthusiasm.

“What do you think? Are you in?”

“Mmmm, sure.”

A couple of weeks later we meet with the marketing manager at the local talk radio station. We quickly learned that the harsh reality was that we’d have to pay for airtime. It would be up to us to seek out sponsors for the once-a-week, 60-minute show. My hopes of becoming a successful radio personality were dashed. (And smashed later on when I attempted to actually get a few sponsors.) But coming away from that meeting, as Jeff and I walked back to my car he said, “We should have a website for people to check out.”

After that we sketched out what the website would look like, what platforms we should cover, etc. It took us a long time to decide on a name.

Here’s a quick sample from the list of names I doodled in my notebook at the time:

Out of the Box

Action Gaming

CAN GAME

Killer Gamers

We Love Games

Gaming All the Way

We talked about it in-depth. We nixed any form of “gaming” or “game” because the number of websites already using it was enormous. (It still is.) We wanted our website to stand apart from the crowd with an original name. I’m not sure what the logical progression was but Jeff – possibly drunk or hooped on the strong coffee he swills – threw in Armchair Empire.

Tossing the name around for a while, we finally agreed to add “The” as a prefix to the whole thing. The Armchair Empire was born.

Of course, we still had to overcome a few obstacles. Namely, getting the website up and running. The radio show idea now completely abandoned, we threw ourselves into creating content and figuring out how create a website. Jeff went into full tech mode – that place where everything else fell away as he got cozy with HTML. I went into full writing mode, writing reviews of my limited library of games and action figures. I also began the very slow difficult process of making contact with game publishers.

The Armchair Empire circa (left to right) 2000, 2001, 2002

Currently, when I see a game that The Armchair Empire just has to review I dash off a quick email to the appropriate PR contact or open my folder of business cards and make a phone call. But starting out, I blindly… In retrospect, I cringe when I look at the blunders I committed and just how annoying it must have been to get an email from me. (“I run a gaming website. Can you send me a free copy of your game?”) Over time I honed my approach and finally we got a review copy of a game: Star Trek Elite Force (PC). It was a major coup – it was possible!

But I’m leaping ahead.

The Armchair Empire went live at the end of August 2000 and recorded a whopping 81 unique visitors. “Unique” is a bit misleading because 74 of those visitors were Jeff and I making sure the website was still there.

The Armchair Empire circa (left to right) 2003, 2004

Reviews and previews, as great as they are, aren’t exactly exclusive content. Jeff said that the key to success was seeking out good Q&As and offering original features that couldn’t be found anywhere else. We started writing editorials to fill the void but we also approached some “personalities” for interviews. Our first Q&A was with Jeff Green (then just the back-page guy at Computer Gaming World), which was quickly followed by an interview with B-movie star Julie Strain. We always try

Advertisement

to have some kind of game tie-in with our articles – never mind how tenuous the tie-in may be. If you remember, Julie Strain was involved with FAKK 2 released back in 2000 but after the telephone interview I started to rethink who we should be approaching for interviews. Not because the interview was that bad but because the interview seemed too far removed from games. Of course it didn’t have much of an effect – we interviewed Bruce Campbell (Evil Dead) a month later.

Advertisement

While traffic to the site was increasing – it wasn’t just me and Jeff – we hit gold late October 2000 when I took part in a teleconference with the creative team behind Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, which included Shigeru Miyamoto. My heart pounded for the full hour of the call and I thought I would swallow my tongue when it came to my turn to ask a question. I spent three hours afterward transcribing the call and posted it the next day. I didn’t realize its significance at the time, but during the call there was complete confirmation of a new Zelda game for GameCube. Suddenly we had a lot of traffic from Japan, then Gamespot got wind of the story and traffic went up again. (It rankles me now that no one at Gamespot asked for permission to use the text and didn’t link up to The Armchair Empire.) We had scored a real exclusive! A global exclusive! Instead of really reveling in the success, my pessimism set in, “It’s all downhill from here. We’ll never score something as big as this again.”

Jeff’s reaction was the opposite. He kicked into high gear in an effort to bring the site out of the Stone Age and look more professional. The site design changed every other week and I was never really sure what to expect when I visited the site.

Success breeds success. Our small victories in scoring PR contacts and getting some good interviews, made us “reputable.” Suddenly we were getting games and action figures – too many games and action figures. We needed help and we needed it now if we would have any chance of staying on top of the pile instead of being buried by it.

I turned to Mike “Tazman” Siewert, also a buddy from high school but (then) living in Denver, Colorado. It didn’t take much convincing. In fact, I don’t think I got past the word “game.”

“Hey, Mike. Jeff and I have started a game–.”

“I’m in!”

With his irreverent sense of humor and a PC that could handle the games, he fit right in. And along with the game reviews, he pitched in with an occasional Anime review. (At this time, I hadn’t quite cracked the PR shell of the Anime industry.)

Almost simultaneously, two figures stepped out of the mist: Tolen Dante (a.k.a. Danny Webb) and Lee Cieniawa. It didn’t seem to matter that they were both about 3,000 miles away – they were keen to write and they seemed to have a wealth of gaming knowledge. (And compared to some applicants – “I owne PS2. I right for U” – they were a small step down from Einstein.) And strangely enough, of all the writers that have come and gone I have only met four of them face-to-face – almost without exception the writers are scattered all over North America. Most recently I met Kurt Kalata at E3 2005 and being able to put a face to the name is something I don’t get to do a lot. I could run into Mark Leung or Siddharth Masand and never know it.

And I’m constantly amazed that I can still trust faceless “strangers” because the Armchair Empire been burned a number of times when it comes to writers who write and run. In one case, one “trusted” writer whom had been with the site for about a year and a half went to E3 using the Armchair Empire press credentials, racked up a number of marketing and PR contacts, then lo’ and behold the bastard started his own gaming site. A smack in the face like that is hard to forget. However, it was a learning experience and I’ve learned to let go of my bitterness and animosity.

Some writers just dropped clear off the face of the Earth. Eric Lahiji, an enthusiastic writer and gamer, vanished; Tolkiemingway, a succinct and humorous writer, vanished at the same time the trusted writer was starting his own site; Shocka, our man in Aussieland, vanished. The list of ex-writers extends well beyond that – and there’s only ever been one “firing.”

I put “firing” in quotes because no one at the Armchair Empire is paid. “Will work for games” is an accurate description of the kind of payment the writers receive.

Anyway, the story of the firing is convoluted and it’s possible the writer in question lacked a firm grasp on reality, so I don’t think I’ll recount it here. (I’ll save it for the Armageddon Address.) At any rate, I received a whole lot of profanity-laced emails and I was taken to task for (imaginary) “slander” and an organized smear campaign.

As strange as some of them may be – I’m thinking of D.D. right now – the writers are really the backbone of the Armchair Empire and I don’t think I’ve ever publicly thanked them for all the hard work they’ve put in. And some of them have consistently put in hard work over a number of years. So, right here and now, I’d like to thank the writers – present and past, but mostly present – for the blood, sweat and tears that they’ve put in. I’ve never been good with this kind of thing and what I’m about to write may seem limp as a proper way to say “thanks”, but thanks guys!

Without exception, the writers have written some memorable stuff over the years. Who can forget Tazman’s review of Undying? Or Lee’s collection of “X” articles and his “Kill the Haitians” editorial? D.D. Nunavut’s reason for the lateness of her Catwoman review? And not to blow my own horn, but my Q&A with Erik Wolpaw of Old Man Murray fame is still a major highlight.

Something else that has intrigued me these last few years is the fact we’ve had a Q&A with Jeff Green every year since our launch. If I were Mr. Green, I’d be seeking some kind of restraining order against the Armchair Empire. Why should we be so interested in him that we just need to talk to him every year? But Mr. Nash said so recently he’s “soooooo dreamy” – mystery solved.

The format of the website has certainly changed over the last five years. You can thank Mr. Nash for that. Basically, the man’s a perfectionist when it comes to manipulating HTML code to suit his own ends. The same way some people roll snot, Mr. Nash does it with HTML. He’s on a continual quest to root out the best nuggets then streamlining the rest to load faster and better. However, he’s slowed down a bit lately for the simple reason that every time he implements a site re-design it basically knocks him out for three months while he converts articles to the new format. (And he got married recently, too, so that must have something to do with it.) We’ve done more than 1,200 reviews in the last five years – by itself a big number of articles in need of transferring. But we’ve also done a truckload of action figure reviews, Anime reviews, and game previews, which is to say nothing of the feature articles and classic reviews. So, every time you see a change in the format, just know that Mr. Nash is slowly going insane as he transfers articles.

The relative success of the Armchair Empire hasn’t lessened the same thrill I get after scoring an exclusive or sitting down with a developer and chatting about their game. My recent interviews with J Allard, the team behind the upcoming Turok game, and Eiji Aonuma still ended with a rush. The same kind of rush I got on my first visit to Nintendo’s Canadian headquarters. It had been a boyhood fantasy to actually go in the place – we drove past the building often but we never stopped – so when I finally got an invite (to see the Wavebird and Eternal Darkness) it was hard to contain myself.

Which brings me to PR people and Marketing folk. They have a thankless job. As it relates to the media, it’s the job of PR and Marketing to get writers and editors interested in a game. A front page cover story or a feature spread in a magazine helps boost exposure, thereby boosting potential sales. They do this any number of ways. My favorite, with exception to free trips, is small items sent along with press releases. I still have a Giants: Citizen Kabuto t-shirt from Interplay, an Armed and Dangerous bottle opener (which I actually use), and so many numerous bits and pieces that I don’t know what to do with. (Anyone want an Arc the Lad paper weight?) Do these freebies affect opinion? Does a free t-shirt mean a positive review? Does a neat-o gadget result in a glowing preview? Does a really good meal affect my opinion of a company? I’d say, “No” unless it was a really good meal. (I’m talking smorgasbord and endless pints of Canadian ale.) If anything, a few freebies heighten our senses to be on the lookout for a stinky game. But PR people and Marketing folk are doing their job and it’s always fun to meet them in person – they know how to have a good time!

Another lesson learned over the last five years is: try to proofread everything, particularly when it comes to titles. The most classic example of this was a slip-up with our classic review of “Police Quest I: In Pursuit of the Death Angle.” It was in the early days of the website so not many saw it, but it was still a little embarrassing even if it was kind of funny. (“Somewhere between 90° and 75° there is the Death Angle!”) We still commit grammatical errors and spelling infractions, but the number hopefully isn’t so great as to be distracting.

So where does the Armchair Empire go from here? Up, sideways, or down? Could be a combination of all three – sometimes it feels like we’re on a roller coaster. On the positive side, we have a stable set of writers now and most seem willingly to remain onboard, and the website is making enough dough now to pay for itself. Postage is hideously expensive and there are server costs to consider but we’re at a stage now when Mr. Nash and I aren’t digging into our own pockets to pay for things and we even have the chance to squirrel money away to pay for a trip to E3 for a few of the writers so we might actually have a hope of covering the event properly. It’s an indication of how far the Armchair Empire has come – from a vague idea of a radio show to picking up the travel tab for writers attending an orgy of lights, cleavage, and thundering sound. It’s taken five years to get this far, but it makes my mind boggle at what the next five years might bring.

- Aaron "Omni" Simmer

(August 3, 2005)


PC \| Gamecube \| DS \| Wii \| PlayStation 2 \| PlayStation 3 \| PSP \| Xbox \| Xbox 360
News \| Reviews \| Previews \| Features \| Classics \| Goodies \| Anime \| Forums