This February 20, Gameblog celebrates its 16th anniversary. The site can therefore drive a car, but it is above all an opportunity to take stock of its present and its future.
THE February 20, 2007a small group of mental geniuses who made the golden hours of the video game press, mainly through two cult magazines for an entire generation, joystick And Playstation Magazinepress a button, and boom, it goes Shocks… an independent and broke site (the norm) but full of desires: Gameblog.fr !
For more than two years, the founders of the site Nourdine Nini, Grégory Szriftgiser, Julien Hubert, Angel Davila, Arnaud Chaudron, Julien Chièze (whom we all greet warmly), are growing their baby voluntarily, bringing together an ever-growing community around one of the very first large-scale French video game podcasts, which then became the site’s signature. With Olivier Guyon as supreme webmaster, Benjamin Cornu as video maestro and the reinforcement of extreme freelancers over the months (Mimic, Fumble, Pia, Yann…), the site then takes on another dimension, that of professionalization, thanks to Ankama in 2009. Then, in 2014, Gameblog passed under the flag of the company E-Borealis, to this day still the majority shareholder of Gameblog and which thus ensures its sustainability (still relative of course).
This is how this February 20, 2023to celebrate the site’s 16th anniversary, it’s intern number 2, who arrived in 2010, “TigerSuplex_002”, then TigerSuplex for years as a freelancer and now simply Julien Inverno (that’s me!) who writes this message inherent to the editor-in-chief he became in June 2022, without ever having considered occupying this role.
Because that’s how life is, nothing ever really goes as planned. You have to know how to adapt, seize opportunities, listen, observe, but also assert yourself, assume choices that may not be understood by those who will never have to make them. And if I tell you all this, give you the history of Gameblog that you may already know, it’s to remind you that the life of a company is never a long calm river, especially in these times of constant upheavals for the media, in which brave and talented brothers and sisters have already left their feathers, when they have simply hung up their aprons or are now just as much journalists as tightrope walkers to ensure that they stay upright their publication. We also welcome them warmly.
Gameblog is alive and kicking!
Congratulations and thank you for making it this far, and before moving on to the team presentation, a word from Marco, CEO of E-Borealis:
Yes, Gameblog is alive and well. The economic difficulties of the sector, aggravated by the Covid crisis, no longer allowed us to cope with the economic losses caused by the Gameblog SAS structure which had been accumulating for several years. A legitimate confusion has arisen in the minds of our readers, between the economic closure of Gameblog SAS and the Gameblog.fr site. Others rejoiced too quickly at their far too approximate conclusion. Due to the duty of discretion in the current procedure and the negotiations around the assets of the company being liquidated, we have decided not to communicate. We preferred to work on building a new team, looking for new partners. We have built the foundations of a renewed Gameblog. Time will be the final judge, but we share with you today facts that allow us to believe in a bright future. Before the difficult decision in many respects, to separate ourselves not only from all the editorial teams of Gameblog SAS, but also from the internal people at E-Borealis in charge of the site, we had hit rock bottom in terms of audience with a last quarter of 2021 which saw an average of sessions per month around 1.6 million! Negative record of the site for more than 10 years! Since then, thanks to everyone’s work, to the precious advice in the reconstruction of former benevolent people like Trazom or Julo, we have gone from the worst to the best by achieving the record quarter in the history of Gameblog at the end of the year 2022 AND the best month in Gameblog’s history in December 2022 with 5.5 million sessions over the month (source Google Analytics)! From worst to best.
The Gameblog team is now made up of three “newcomers” who have not been there for a long time in the landscape of the specialized video game press on the web. Under their respective pseudonyms, a tenacious tradition in the profession, Noëllie, Yohann and Jérémy constitute the Triforce that animates Gameblog on a daily basis. Camille, obviously already well known to loyal Gameblog readers, takes on the role of deputy editor-in-chief. And then there are the two old guys at the back, the graphic designer / videographer / Poufy, and myself, to manage all that and much more.
To conclude, you will find that for the anniversary of the site, it is we who are offering you a gift with our partner Zen Market: a Nintendo Switch OLED Pokémon and a game of your choice!
Happy birthday Gameblog, and to all those who made it grow, to you dear readers, dear readers, thank you!
