1Up.com was a special place for a select group of the gaming community. Launched in 2003, it provided gamers with a place to get gaming news, communicate with other gamers, and share experiences through web logs. Today, we call them blogs. Moreover, 1Up provided gamers with a place where we could express ourselves and our opinions. This topic hits close to home for me, since I have been a member of 1Up since the Summer of 2004. I blogged fairly often when I could. Today, I’m an Evil Genius with a Gamerscore of 106,721. Back then, I only thought of it as a video game-themed MySpace. On a weekly basis, I would post about anything: things I have been doing, video game reviews, my school situation, games I’ve been playing, weekend plans – just terrible, douche-chill inducing blogs that I couldn’t bring myself to read again. I didn’t see it at the time; but back then, something was stirring at 1Up.
My peers at 1Up were doing something crazy. They were actually writing about games. My neighbors in the 1Up community were posting retro-video game reviews. Reviews were being written about games that were anywhere between weeks old to years old (retro-reviews are so DIY/Punk). No one had the luxury of having pre-release copies of new games. As lowly members of the community, they had to make the best of what they had. Honing their craft. 1Uppers were reacting to things: games, podcasts, news, each other. Members posted on message boards, providing topics for the 1Up staff to discuss on their podcasts (see: 4 Minute Warning). 1Up Yours became Theory and Current Events. When NPDs were discussed, you were sitting in on Economics. Retronauts became History lecture, and the GFW Podcast became Philosophy 101. We listened to the podcasts, and the staff listened to us. 1Uppers were learning to voice and write their opinion. They were honing their craft. Today, UGO owns 1Up. A big piece of the site disappeared when Ziff Davis sold 1Up to UGO. After the lay offs, it didn’t take long for the podcasts to go away as well. I met Jeff Grubb during my first few months at 1Up. Honestly, the reason why I sent this man a friend request was because he had a fun blog up about taking hallucinogens. He was one of these 1Uppers, though. He was a member of the community who thought that making a living as a games writer isn’t as crazy as it seemed. After all, 1Up taught us everything we knew about games writing. Jeff and his 1Up friends moved on to create their own gaming website. Today, they are the writers at Forwards Compatible.
Forwards Compatible consists of ex-1Up bloggers Jeff Grubb, Matt Spayth, Matt A., Dustin Rodgers, and Matthew Mason. The format of Forwards Compatible is simple, yet unique. For one week, a topic will be discussed. The discussion has three phases: The Spearhead, Second Take, and the Roundtable. The Spearhead acts to initialize the conversation. One such Spearhead poses the question, “Did Gaming Waste Its Rebellious Years?” Here, Jeff asks the Forwards Compatible staff if gaming should have been doing something better during the years in which it was it was on the rise, instead of forcing its own acceptance. Is gaming that quiet, sketchy-looking kid in high school, who played in a terrible punk band, went to college, cleaned up his act, got laid, and continued on to major in English? Did that kid have something important to say in high school? Was there something important hidden in the lyrics of the songs he performed? Oops, sorry, I got a little carried away for a second. As I was saying, once the Spearhead is posted, another Forwards Compatible writer responds through Second Take. As lunch nears, I can’t help but liken the Spearhead to a bucket of fried chicken. The act of opening the bucket would be your Second Take. This post might be the most important one, as it takes the Spearhead and opens it up to expose various angles in which the question may be tackled. As a response to Jeff, Matt Spayth writes, “the industry is young, but today’s generation of video games is capable of achieving far more.” Matt Spayth argues that it is not too late to achieve great things through gaming, and that perhaps we will be seeing these milestones soon. The final phase of the weekly discussion is the Roundtable. The act of eating and sharing our mind-stretchingly tastey fried chicken… with our friends! The Roundtable is exactly what it sounds like; it serves to give everyone a chance to say their piece about the original Spearhead, the Second Take, or tackle the question from a completely different angle. The best part is that you don’t have to be Forwards Compatible staff to participate. The reader has the opportunity to jump into the conversation via the comments section.
Did I mention that they have a podcast too? The Forcast is Forwards Compatible’s podcast and is available through iTunes. It’s a nice listen, and I absolutely recommend it. It’s a good way to hear the voices of 1Up’s best, see what they’re playing, and feel involved in the discussion (it’s especially nice if they bring up a comment you made at the Roundtable).
When approaching Forwards Compatible, I think the most important thing to appreciate is that these writers respect the games. They enjoy what they do, and they do it well. The depth in which they talk about gaming culture and the gaming industry is impressive. At one point in time, they were some of the more elite bloggers in the 1Up community. When UGO bought 1up, they wanted to make sure they still had a table to gather around. Today, they’re doing it without 1up. I think that today, the Forwards Compatible writers have realized that 1Up was nothing more than a table cloth and that the roundtable (as well as the chicken) would always be there. Have at it, boys.
With that said, I’ll leave you with this week’s Spearhead by Dustin Rodgers, “Why Does Forwards Compatible Exist?”
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