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MCV 04/09/09 27
10 YEARS OF EUROGAMER
Euro stars In 1999 two brothers started a community games website as a hobby. Ten years later and Eurogamer is Europe’s leading independent games media specialist, with a network of websites and events. Christopher Dring speaks to founder and MD Rupert Loman on ten years of success…
September 4th 1999 Eurogamer is launched at ECTS by Rupert and Nick Loman, The website’s editor is John Bye. September 2001 The first advertising campaign runs on Eurogamer June 2002 GamesIndustry.biz is launched September 2002 Kristan Reed joins as Eurogamer editor
So talk us through how Eurogamer came to be... My brother Nick and I used to be hardcore gamers and played a lot of Quake 2 online. But as we rarely won games we started organising LAN parties and online leagues instead. Later, together with some friends from the online community we decided we should set up a website to start talking about games other than just Quake – and Eurogamer was born. It wasn’t started as a business or with the intention of it being a job for us – there weren’t even advertising spaces on the website. But as the community took off we started attracting interest from publishers who wanted to advertise their new games to our readers. Once some money started coming in we were able to hire some writers and keep growing and we haven’t looked back since. You’re now one of Europe’s biggest video game websites, and you cleaned up at the first two Games Media Awards. What do you feel has been the secret to Eurogamer’s continued success? Basically, we created the website that we wanted to read and we haven’t compromised our editorial credibility as we’ve grown. We were lucky to attract great writers like Tom Bramwell and Kristan Reed in the early days, and because talent attracts talent this led to us bringing on all kinds of fantastic staff and contributors, including the likes of Ellie Gibson, Oli Welsh, Johnny Minkley, Patrick Garratt, Kieron Gillen, Dan Whitehead, Chris Donlan and so on. We’ve also had hugely talented people in our technology and sales teams who are passionate about creating great products. I am proud of everything we do as a company and hopefully that attitude runs through the whole company.
A BRIEF HISTORY….
Eurogamer exhibits at ECTS for the first time March 2004 Patrick Garratt joins May 2005 Eurogamer gets a design overhaul, which has lasted until this day July 2005 Eurogamer registers with ABCE – the first gaming site to do so April 2005 Ellie Gibson joins November 2005 First ABCE audit released - 977k unique users December 2005 Eurogamer TV launches April 2006 Johnny Minkley joins as Eurogamer TV editor May 2006 Eurogamer TV is made available on Xbox Live – the first website to do so in the UK. August 2006 Eurogamer extends reach beyond the UK with the launch of Eurogamer Germany April 2007 Eurogamers community site launches May 2007 Greg Ingham joins as Chairman October 2007 Eurogamer launches in France
Eurogamer sweeps the boards at the inaugral Games Media Awards January 2008 Tom Bramwell becomes editor after eights years with the company March 2008 Eurogamer launches its dedicated MMO channel
In ten years managing director Rupert Loman has turned Eurogamer from a bedroom project into one of Europe’s biggest and most successful video game websites
May 2008 Eurogamer Portugal launches