IGN Africa is live

Yep, Tarryn is like the lead journo there in my understanding. She'll be herding the interns. They couldn't have a better person for the job :)
 
Watch IGN’s Naomi Kyle mangling some South African expressions. “Lekker speel julle.”
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Actually wasn't half bad the pronunciation. Sounds like they got a dutch oke to assist in working it out though based on the "speel".
 
Someone on MyBB said something that really got me thinking - do we really need an IGN Africa? The shittiness of IGN aside, we've got a gaming journalism industry in SA that can still be considered a developing industry. Do we really need a corporate giant like IGN muscling its way into the market and making things harder for the handful of online publications we already have?
 
Clive Woofer said:
Someone on MyBB said something that really got me thinking - do we really need an IGN Africa? The shittiness of IGN aside, we've got a gaming journalism industry in SA that can still be considered a developing industry. Do we really need a corporate giant like IGN muscling its way into the market and making things harder for the handful of online publications we already have?
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Need it, no
Is it nice to have, yes
Will it cripple MG, doubt it, it might even raise our standards
 
Heheh, good jokes.

Big media organisations getting a foothold in SA can be good and bad. I'm optimistic about it being good.

It depends on how well (Tide Media/Instance Media/NAG Magazine/whatever they are calling themselves now) approach the marketing side of things - with a big name like IGN behind them, they could break ground in terms of online marketing via gaming websites in SA. Broadened awareness and exposure of the gaming pastime and its demographics among the marketing agencies benefits all the decent local sites. They may yet have a few things to learn about the online space, as NAG has not really played in this field until now.

It remains to be seen how their entrance affects the current balance of marketing in SA - NAG has some good marketing relationships established, and they can augment their magazine offering by providing "bonus" advertising on the IGN side, and they will likely have full-scale online advertising campaigns going as well.

I'm of course not privy to the details of the deal between IGN and NAG - so it would be speculation to say IGN gives them some money for operations here, or perhaps the syndication is payment enough and NAG foots the bill for all local operations costs, also pocketing a portion of the advertising profit. IMO the magazine will remain the money spinner for the time being.

When it comes to editorial, MyGaming can't compete with the syndicated breaking news content and exclusives - they have a massive team of international journalists pumping out all the content, while MyGaming is just me and good old freelancing Wesley at the moment. However, this isn't much different from the situation pre-IGN Africa.

We'll continue to filter the most important news and put an interesting local spin on the news as we do - we have the advantage of knowing our audience well.

Part of za.IGN's mandate will be to produce locally relevant news. They might break ground in this area, or find it challenging - that remains to be seen. This is where I see their editorial competing with us directly, and driving us to improve as well. In this regard, competition is a good thing.

MyGaming's traffic continues to grow, indicative of our successful strategy as well as a slowly growing local gaming market, IMO. Ideally, I'd like to see our marketing revenue rise significantly so we can expand the team. To that end, get your friends to register and hang out on the forum ;)

What I really want to know, and it remains to be seen if I'll get to see it, is some accurate traffic stats from IGN Africa so I can measure MyGaming against them.
 
IGN Africa sounds like it's really going to be IGN South Africa... or NAG with a better online platform.

I WANT SOMEONE TO REPORT ON RWANDAN INDIE GAMING!!! :p

I do think this is progress though, a step in the right direction whichever direction that may be.
 
I do like the idea of localized content and events/competitions for SA. It also means that IGN and their parent company sees SA as a viable market, which can only be a good thing for everyone. I like to follow IGN because they seem to be one of the only gaming sites that also has something to do with comic books (they have a pretty cool weekly round up with comments and reviews), something that isn't really a focal point in this country...yet.

I also don't see them as a replacement for any of the local sites, because we have some good ones that I follow daily. This has just expanded the amount of (local-ish) sites that my eyeballs get to see everyday.
 
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TheAvenged87 said:
I do like the idea of localized content and events/competitions for SA. It also means that IGN and their parent company sees SA as a viable market, which can only be a good thing for everyone. I like to follow IGN because they seem to be one of the only gaming sites that also has something to do with comic books (they have a pretty cool weekly round up with comments and reviews), something that isn't really a focal point in this country...yet.

I also don't see them as a replacement for any of the local sites, because we have some good ones that I follow daily. This has just expanded the amount of (local-ish) sites that my eyeballs get to see everyday.
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^ This and the Movie news is the main reason I too visit IGN
 
Venom said:
^ This and the Movie news is the main reason I too visit IGN
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Good point. But then again, the movie news also has a lot of noise in there. Which can get really terrible, especially if you don't want to know anything about that movie.

Now I need to go find a website that only shows me stuff I like...
 
I'm not really worried about it replacing any other site, but more about how it will affect traffic to other sites. If there's a single large site covering most of the news, the need for visiting other sites starts diminishing. I suspect the bigger sites like MyGaming and Lazygamer are not likely to suffer too much here, but smaller sites like eGamer or DoGaming might definitely feel the hit.

I guess, as James said, the best thing at the end of the day is to wait and see how everything turns out. I'll be happy as long as IGN is willing to collaborate with the other sites to some degree.
 
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