Jon Epstein

Game Spy had a editorial element and also published content about games, but it also had middleware and a software client that was used for matching up players in server-to-server gameplay.

These days, online gaming is par for the course, but back then,

People were playing Quake and Doom and it was kind of hard to find players if they weren't on your land.

And so GameSpy had a really great piece of software that we then ended up licensing into games from folks like Electronic Arts and 2K Games and many other.

Yeah, that's right.

GameSpot was launched in 1995.

It wasn't my first startup.

I had launched the magazine Digital News, and then I had launched the magazine Multimedia World.

But that was sort of entrepreneurship for IDG, which is a great company that, you know, values.

Exactly.

Yeah, so I guess it was, so first of all, I had great partners.

I mean, I think it really starts with that.

People are what matter.

And there were two guys, Vince Barati, who now runs This Moment, and Pete Deamer, who's one of the top agile consultants in the world, I believe.

And these guys worked for me, and they were just a really great team.

Yeah.

game spot right and the original idea came from the two of them they wanted to call it g spot though i like it sign me up i'm the one out there uh selling media to largely female media buyers so um i don't think so so so that was part of it i think the second one it was clear it was clear at the time hey this you know we had started put it we'd put pc world online and multimedia world magazine online it was clear this internet thing was happening

And that if anything, the gamers were ahead of the curve in terms of their use of online.

And then there was this problem.

The problem was, you know, if you look at the individual video game or PC game, their shelf life in the store, it's pretty short.