Mr. Nash gets nostalgic about the first five years of The Armchair Empire

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Looking Back

Every year around this time Omni writes up an article looking back over the history of the site. He can be nostalgic that way, but I’ve never been able to get myself worked up enough about AE anniversaries to say anything. However, this year we hit the five year mark, so I’m going to get off my ass and yammer on a bit about the first half-decade that this dandy little site has been around, thoughts to the future, and all that junk. So, here are some random thoughts in point form, looking at some of my personal highlights of the last five years.

Initially Getting the Site Up and Running:

As Omni said in his article, the main reason that AE even exists is because he and I’s plan for a radio show were quickly dashed when we found out it would cost upward of $10,000 in secured advertising in order to get the ball rolling. After we heard that, we started to think of other ways to hop up on a soapbox and say what we have to say about games, eventually deciding on a web site.

The month or so leading to the site going live was pretty nuts, because it was just myself and Omni desperately trying to make a back catalogue of articles for the site, so that it wouldn’t look horribly naked when it launched. No one else had joined our merry little band yet. Between us, we must have written close to 100 reviews just for the games. Everyday I would be writing those articles out by hand on a pad of paper on my incredibly bumpy bus ride to work. I’m still not entirely sure how I managed to keep those articles legible with all the potholes that bus would go over each day. Meanwhile, Omni wasn’t just worrying about game reviews, as he also had a huge collection of action figures that he was trying to write reviews for in our gaming goodies section. These two areas took up the lion’s share of our time, and we still had to get a few previews ready to go, not to mention anime, classic games, and at least one or two features. When all was said and done, the two of us must have put together at least 200 articles, which somehow still managed to stay somewhat coherent and entertaining. I think we deserve some bonus points for that, too, since we did it without the aid of uppers.

Naming the Site:

One question we get a lot at AE is where we came up with the name, since it’s so different from most of the other gaming site names out there. There’s actually quite a bit of logic behind it. First and foremost, Omni and I really didn’t want to have the word “game” in the name of our site, since there were probably a few thousand sites out there already doing that, not to mention going that route completely lacked in imagination.

There were quite a few front-runners going in, but my two favorite were The Propaganda Machine, and The Ministry of Propaganda. These two were great, since they could help to encapsulate the sense that a lot of the “news” in this industry is packaged, and wrapped so neatly by PR that it can never match the hard news of places like the BBC, International Herald Tribune, and so forth. Unfortunately, any URLs related to those two names were already taken, so we were SOL there.

Then one night while sitting on the porch, having a smoke, the name Armchair Empire sprung into my head. “Armchair” came from the idea of armchair quarterbacks / generals / detectives, and the like, and how games let people become an armchair anything, with all of the virtual worlds that are out there. “Empire” helped to drive home this expansiveness, while also signalling our ambition to be one of the biggest game sites out there, not to mention that it also sounded pretty cool. I took this name to Omni, he said he liked it, we slapped a “The” on the front, and that was that.

Way to Many Site Re-Designs:

Back when the site first started, there’s no denying that the place looked like crap. I was in charge of the art, and barely knew my way around any of the image editing software on the market. Every time I look at an old version of the site I just wonder why I thought it looked okay. Ah well, in time I’ve figured out how to do much of what I want to, and if I don’t it’s not like there aren’t a small army of tutorials floating around the web that can help.

Even today, the site still keeps a simple look that I’m really proud of, though. I’ve never been one for fancy-pants flash stuff on the site, nor have I been a big fan of the gargantuan, difficult to follow navigation bars that have appeared on a lot of the big corporate sites in recent years. I say keep the razzle-dazzle for the games, the sites should be more minimalist, while still maintaining a pleasing aesthetic.

However, we shan’t be seeing nearly as many re-designs for the site in the future. I think I’ve overcome the worse of the learning curve to get the site looking presentable, but more importantly, the site is way bigger now than it was five years ago. I’m looking at around 7,000 pages that need transferring to a new layout if we decide to give AE a facelift, a far from appetizing proposition for me since I’m the guy that has to slowly but surely switch everything over. It would be a lot easier if I switched AE over to Perl, and just had templates to deal with, but the site is positioned quite well in the search engines now, and that sort of switch could hurt us bad with Google and the gang. The last thing we need is to suddenly lose half a million of our visitors.

Another Go at Radio:

Despite our earlier attempt at radio meeting a premature end, Omni never gave up on that dream. In time, a new radio station opened up in Vancouver called Mojo. It was a talk radio station targeting a male audience. One day while listening, Omni heard the show host and producer talking about video games, so Omni fired off an email to see if we could work something out to come on the show once per week to discuss games, take calls, and whatnot. Eventually we met one of the execs in charge of the station, and we started hammering out a plan. In the meantime, we had the chance to come on the show a couple of times. Paul Myers, one of Mike Myers’ older brothers, hosted the show. The first time I saw him, I was really surprised by the family resemblance. To this day I have a sneaking suspicion that the Myers clan may have been running a cloning lab out of Ontario in the 1960s.

The first time was a bit of a surprise, because we thought we were just going to be sitting in and watching the guys do their thing on air. Then suddenly Paul invited Omni to take one of the spare mics so they could yak about games for a while. Omni was a bit nervous at first, but he got comfortable with the whole thing in no time. The second time we went on the air was extremely fun, though. We were on for a full half hour, talking about what was coming out for Christmas, taking phone

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calls, and all that good stuff. I was a bit nervous going in, but after a couple of minutes I realized that there was nothing to be scared of, and settled into a comfortable groove.

Unfortunately, a few months after Omni and I had started getting close to possibly getting regular radio spots going. The station decided to completely change its format, and go the all sports route instead, and with that our hopes of radio stardom were dashed once more...

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Can i rite 4 u? i hav pS2!!!!!!:

Ah, the stream of illiterate requests to write for the Empire that I can only assume were slapped together by knuckle-dragging troglodytes. Anyone who knows me will tell you I’m the farthest thing from a grammar nazi, never one to point out comma splices, semi colon, and the like, but if you want to write for AE at least run a basic spell check. Please. See those red squiggly marks under some of the words in your document? That means fix them. It’s not that hard. Hell, 90% of the time all you need to do is right-click on the word in question and the computer will even give you a slew of possible spellings. It's really quite worrisome, this very basic lack of good sense. I’ve really got to start saving these emails so I can compile them into a feature showing the kind of stupidity that lands in our inbox on a regular basis.

In Closing…:

I’m sure there are a hundred other anecdotes about the site that I could spout off about the trials, tribulations, and triumphs AE has experienced over the last five years, but they all sort of mooshed into a large, non-descript blob of ooze which may or may not actually be my brain. It’s been a fun go so far running this site. I’ve got to meet a lot of spiffy people, even if only via email and / or phone. Our writers have been fabulous (thanks a million guys, I don’t know where we’d be without you!). We’ve come a bloody long way from the 3 or four visitors per day this place got when it first opened up, now sitting comfortably over the one million visitors per month mark. While we do the game review, preview, and news thing like so many other sites do, I’ve always felt we did a much better job in the writing department. A lot of the big boys out there are about as much fun to read as bludgeoning one’s self in the crotch with a rusty steak knife (for the record, that’s a bad thing, kids!). For the next five years we’ll keep doing what we’re doing, while expanding in a bunch of different ways. Considering how much we’ve grown in the first five years, it makes me giddy to think how much more we’ll grow over the next five years.

Mr. Nash

(August 30, 2005)