''Crispy Gamer'' was an American

video game website This is a list of video gaming-related websites. A video game is an electronic game that involves human interaction with a user interface to generate visual feedback on a video device such as a TV screen or computer monitor. The word ''video'' i ...

that published news, culture, reviews, comics, and videos. It launched on October 26, 2008, as an independent website after being in beta for six months. Founding staff included former employees of

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eMusic eMusic is an online music and audiobook store that operates by subscription. In exchange for a monthly subscription eMusic users can download a fixed number of MP3 tracks per month. eMusic was established in 1998, is headquartered in New York C ...

, and gaming website GameSpy. In January 2010, one month after acquiring

gamerDNA gamerDNA Inc. was a social media company for video game players founded on September 21, 2006. The company was part of Live Gamer ( Emergent Payments). Members may tag themselves with information on games they have played, server names and guild ...

, the editorial staff was laid off by the authority of the board of directors, with the company's CEO resigning in protest. The website continued to operate, with gamerDNA being acquired by Live Gamer in 2011. It was stated in 2012 that the website became defunct.

History

''Crispy Gamer'' was created by Chris Heldman, head of media entertainment at

; John Keefer, editorial director of GameSpy; Chris Hoerenz, chief marketing officer from

; E2open engineer Andre Srinivasan; and Aldis Porietis. The website was first conceived by Chris Heldman under the idea of "The Game Trust", a chosen group of some of the finest writers in the industry. He pitched the idea of creating a new gaming website to John Keefer at the E3 2007. Keefer, initially adamant, agreed with the stipulation of a "separation of church and state" in terms of being in the pocket of video game companies. The company was based in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

, setting up office in October 2007. The site was in beta for six months before launching on October 26, 2008, with twenty employees, ranging from ''

Entertainment Weekly ''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, and popular cu ...

'' to ''Wired''. The website announced the same day that it raised $8.25 million in

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to start-up company, startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth poten ...

from

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's Constellation Ventures. In February 2009, ''Crispy Gamer'' signed a syndication deal with

Tribune Media Services Tribune Content Agency (TCA) is a syndication company owned by Tribune Publishing. TCA had previously been known as the Chicago Tribune Syndicate, the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate (CTNYNS), Tribune Company Syndicate, and Tribune Media S ...

, McClatchy Tribune Information Services, and

. The website decided against showing video game advertising. Despite reaching a million in monthly unique visitors, it failed to generate ad revenue. Heldman blamed it on the

2009 recession The Great Recession was a period of marked general decline, i.e. a recession, observed in national economies globally that occurred from late 2007 into 2009. The scale and timing of the recession varied from country to country (see map). At t ...

, which he described as "a

perfect storm A perfect storm is a meteorological event aggravated by a rare combination of circumstances. The term is used by analogy to an unusually severe storm that results from a rare combination of Meteorology, meteorological phenomena. Origin The Oxfor ...

". In September 2009, John Keefer left the website to write for GamePolitics.com. In December 2009, the company acquired gamerDNA, Inc. One month after the acquisition, the editorial staff and most of the management on authority of the board of directors were laid off. The editorial staff included former ''

Joystiq ''Joystiq'' was a video gaming blog founded in June 2004 as part of the Weblogs, Inc. family of weblogs, now owned by AOL. It was AOL's primary video game blog, with sister blogs dealing with MMORPG gaming in general and the popular MMORPG ''Wor ...

'' writer Kyle Orland, Scott Jones, former associate producer of ''

The Daily Show ''The Daily Show'' is an American late-night talk and satirical news television program. It airs each Monday through Thursday on Comedy Central with release shortly after on Paramount+. ''The Daily Show'' draws its comedy and satire form from ...

'' John Teti, Evan Narcisse, James Fudge, Ryan Kuo, managing editor Elise Vogel, and Chief Marketing Officer Anne Mischler. In response to the layoffs, Chris Heldman resigned as CEO in protest. Original gamerDNA CEO Jon Radoff mentioned he only learned of this through inquiring journalists. The day before, in a meeting between ''Crispy Gamer''s

videographer Videography is the process of capturing moving images on electronic media (e.g., videotape, direct to disk recording, or solid state storage) and even streaming media. The term includes methods of video production and post-production. It ...

John Teti and member of the board and representative of Constellation Ventures Tom Wasserman, Wasserman mentioned his displeasure of the site's underwhelming traffic and ad revenue. The board of directors decided to take the website to a "gaming focused ad network" direction as a result. In July 2011, gamerDNA was acquired by Live Gamer. At that time, the company was still operating ''Crispy Gamer''. Kyle Orland stated in January 2012 that the website was defunct.

References

External links

* {{webarchive , url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110106085429/http://www.crispygamer.com/ , date=January 6, 2011 , title=Official website Defunct websites Internet properties established in 2008 Video game websites