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1UP layoffs heard...Matt Leone no longer at 1UP

Mr Nash

square pies = communism
Always sucks when people lose their job, but I must say that I haven't paid attention to 1Up since I guess early 2009 when Ziff Davis was in full collapse, everyone was leaving, and eventually UGO bought the site up. It was in the mid 2000s when they were working super hard on those big features that I actually liked visiting their site.
 

Jburton

Banned
1UP's podcasting output is what got me into podcasts, them along with the old engadget podcast and Game theory podcast.

This site has been dying slowly over the past 3 years ....... let it go, its over!

The community is dead, the group has no real personalities and their traffic must be really low.

Sorry for those made redundant, hope you guys get back up on your feet soon.
 
Does he make a living off that, though?

I think he does freelance stuff.

1UP's podcasting output is what got me into podcasts, them along with the old engadget podcast and Game theory podcast.

This site has been dying slowly over the past 3 years ....... let it go, its over!

The community is dead, the group has no real personalities and their traffic must be really low.

Sorry for those made redundant, hope you guys get back up on your feet soon.

John Davison should return and bring this back up ;)
 

Danny Dudekisser

I paid good money for this Dynex!
Thierry and Matt were great :(

Really sad to see the site losing even more of it's really good people. T-Frog and Bob Mackey are the two left that I really like.
 

Neifirst

Member
I'll give you Retronauts. I never cared for Jeremy Parish though. He always sounded like he could care less about anything.

100% agree. Listen to old retronauts episodes - he didn't know nearly as much about games as Shane Bettenhausen and Christian Nutt. On top of that was his complete apathy toward podcasting in the first place. He was, and is, tiresome to listen to.
 

excaliburps

Press - MP1st.com
Tina Sanchez survives yet another round of cuts? How...

Not to be an ass, but I have to ask this too. Is it because Tina's a guuurl? If so, that's kinda shitty. Nothing against her, but I have yet to see something substantial from her that warrants her working for a videogame publication.

I also share the same sentiment with everyone here, that while it sucks to hear people losing their jobs, 1UP has been on the decline (if not outright dead) these past few years. Heck, I stopped paying attention to them ever since they split up with EGM.

There's been absolutely no new exclusives, no exclusive news, no trailers, etc. that warranted people going over there - and with IGN buying them out, it's plainly obvious that the "big" news would be on IGN's doorstep first.

I'd say let the site go or make it so that 1UP has an actual identity. They still have people there with talent and they have that cool domain name to boot!

Sad to hear about the layoffs though. Hope everyone lands on their feet.
 

mleone

Neo Member
Thanks for all the comments. I'd been there almost 10 years, and probably got a little too comfortable for my own good (though of course that's easy to say now). I have no ill will towards those guys -- Jeremy knows what he's doing and if there's anyone left who deserves to be there, it's him.
 

mattp

Member
Thanks for all the comments. I'd been there almost 10 years, and probably got a little too comfortable for my own good (though of course that's easy to say now). I have no ill will towards those guys -- Jeremy knows what he's doing and if there's anyone left who deserves to be there, it's him.

post here if you land a spot anywhere else?
your features were the best part of the site
 

Sonicbug

Member
In the last six months alone, the traffic in that site had come to a halt. I visit it regularly and i'm only making my assumption on comments traffic. I would be surprised to see three pages of articles with 0 comments. Maybe in the end, they could not differentiate themselves from the competition. Its tough.

Traffic on the main page is pretty dead looking. The active blogs see a lot of hits. I think the user blogs are the only thing keeping traffic flowing to the site, new people (that aren't spam bots) seem to join regularly.

Of course, when your users provide the content, why higher staff writers at all when you can just pay the occasional freelancer?
 

skynidas

Banned
Maybe some of these people getting fired are going to GameSpot/Giant Bomb. Jeff did mentioned the possibility of new members on the team.
 

Grecco

Member
So is Jeremy Parish alone in some small office in the IGN headquarters or something? Hes the last one right?


What a shame. The Hearts and IGN purchases were supposed to keep 1UP alive and all it did was kill it.
 

Ryan Scott

Neo Member
That is his job now? huh

Helllllllll no, though I'm trying a little bit each day to turn that into a "yes, yes it is." I'm currently freelancing for the likes of @GAMER, GameSpy (!), Nvision, and some other pubs here and there. And, as of today, trying to help my friends land new jobs! I'm bummed to hear about the layoffs, though I am -- sadly -- never surprised about such awful news these days. :(
 

Vanillalite

Ask me about the GAF Notebook
Sucks for all of these people. Hope they can find jobs somewhere else sooner rather than later!

Can't say I am surprised though. 1up doesn't have near the buzz, and being owned by the same crew as IGN is tough because IGN is the much larger site. So it probably gets all the push and backing from corporate.

Also not surprising who they cut. It sucks because they cut like 80% of the best of the rest of the editors they still had. Those are also the editors that probably making the most $$$ to though so for financial reasons they were on the chopping block. Probably similar to why Jack got cut at IGN. He's been there longer than some of the others on the Nintendo team so he got cut of the crew cause of the pay thing again.

In general though having a good team to do games writing for a site seems like a cluster. The amount of coverage that you can obtain on a daily basis especially with the way publishers handle dev access is all over the place. You can have months of not needing half of your staff to get the daily job then, but then you need everyone when E3 hits of the Fall review friends gets going. Meanwhile in a month like March there just isn't the need for such a full staff everyday.

Not sure how you'd handle this other than a ton of contract workers.
 
It hurts to see 1up lose more of what made it so great. Even after they essentially became apart of IGN, they occasionally had some great features. It was clear though that the amount of original content they put out was dwindling.

I can't see them going anywhere but down at this point. =(
 

Zeliard

Member
Surprising to see Matt Leone gone. I thought he was one of the heavy hitters there as far as his standing in the company, though I guess that says more about the current state of 1UP.
 

Talon

Member
I have to imagine that it makes more sense to have game writers operate on a contract-basis. I worked at a similar trade magazine once, and it was just a staff of five editors and graphics folks with a big list of contractors they sent out to report. Much more cost effective when you can't guarantee a steady stream of news.

I love the 1UP podcasts, and I feel a bit guilty about the fact that I can't pay for it in anyway. When you consider time and effort versus revenue, podcasts are truly a blackhole outside of serving as promotional pieces. Hell, I don't even visit the site.
 
Ex-1up staff should pull a Giantbomb and make their own damn awesome site! Get a kickstarter going....

Remember Rebel FM?

This man knows what's up. People donated money to them (over 20k) to get the same crew podcasting again. What we ended up getting was a horrible podcast, Arthur Gies, and Arthur Gies' 2002 eyebrow ring.

Edit: That doesn't include Matt Chandronait. He's a cool dude.
 

pje122

Member
This man knows what's up. People donated money to them (over 20k) to get the same crew podcasting again. What we ended up getting was a horrible podcast, Arthur Gies, and Arthur Gies' 2002 eyebrow ring.
LOL. What a raw deal...
 

Curufinwe

Member
Thierry and Matt were great :(

Really sad to see the site losing even more of it's really good people. T-Frog and Bob Mackey are the two left that I really like.

I agree, although I'll always remember Matt most for insisting that Edge giving Bulletstorm 9/10 and Homefront 5/10 was evidence that they were biased against towards European games.

Helllllllll no, though I'm trying a little bit each day to turn that into a "yes, yes it is." I'm currently freelancing for the likes of @GAMER, GameSpy (!), Nvision, and some other pubs here and there. And, as of today, trying to help my friends land new jobs! I'm bummed to hear about the layoffs, though I am -- sadly -- never surprised about such awful news these days. :(

Dan Stapleton is a cool guy and a great advocate for PC gaming, but it is kind of a shame that you aren't more involved with the new GameSpy.
 
To be fair, 1UP still got some great cover stories:

http://www.1up.com/features/the-man-who-created-street-fighter
So many good cover stories in recent years, especially in the past 12 months. But the viewers and community has never really come back.
As an example, 1up used to be a GAF darling practically, with cover stories, news pieces, weekly podcast threads and it all fell apart and the site fell to the wayside, mentioned very occasionally.
 
1UP died with the 1UP Show for me.

Absolutely. The David Ellis, John, etc. era was all right, but it wasn't a podcast that I would go out of my way to listen to. When Shane, Luke, etc. left it created a massive wound that never fully healed.

The 1UP Show was awesome and I never fully understood why they stopped doing it. I guarantee you that it brought a lot of traffic to their site.
 
Absolutely. The David Ellis, John, etc. era was all right, but it wasn't a podcast that I would go out of my way to listen to. When Shane, Luke, etc. left it created a massive wound that never fully healed.

The 1UP Show was awesome and I never fully understood why they stopped doing it. I guarantee you that it brought a lot of traffic to their site.

The 1up show probably cost a lot to produce, especially in broadband and they probably couldn't make it a profitable part of 1up.
 

eznark

Banned
Helllllllll no, though I'm trying a little bit each day to turn that into a "yes, yes it is." I'm currently freelancing for the likes of @GAMER, GameSpy (!), Nvision, and some other pubs here and there. And, as of today, trying to help my friends land new jobs! I'm bummed to hear about the layoffs, though I am -- sadly -- never surprised about such awful news these days. :(

Do you still have Patrick on the podcast?
 
The 1up show probably cost a lot to produce, especially in broadband and they probably couldn't make it a profitable part of 1up.

I honestly would have paid for it and I can't believe that they didn't at least consider charging for it. I thought it was one of the coolest things a video game site did. It had its own unique flavor.
 

FStop7

Banned
Not to be an ass, but I have to ask this too. Is it because Tina's a guuurl? If so, that's kinda shitty. Nothing against her, but I have yet to see something substantial from her that warrants her working for a videogame publication.

I don't care that she's a girl. She can't write and she doesn't know a lot about games. What is her value compared to a Scooter or a Matt Leone? It makes no sense.


Why would they lay off a community manager?


In order to retain people who actually contribute?
 

watership

Member
Best of luck to both of them. Love Scooter, hamburgers. Leone never looked excited for ANYTHING. I bet he stared down HR when he was laid of. "Okay. Sure. Is that it? Thanks."
 
It's sad how 1up always separated itself with its different personalities but than it seems like every year more are let go. Hopefully everything works out.
 
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