So I thought in the interests of nostalgia, I'd take a quick look around and see where some familiar faces have gone since they departed from GameSpy. GSI isn't what it once was... with GameSpy Arcade/Comrade being bought by GameFly, and more recently GameSpy Technologies being sold to Glu Mobile, the only GameSpy stuff that IGN still owns seems to be GameSpy.com itself. FilePlanet and ForumPlanet were shut down this year.

Anyway, some former staff have been surprisingly easy to find, since they haven't left the gaming industry at all. I'm not doing hyperlinks, since referrers are dangerous. We don't necessarily want current or former IGN peeps getting me sent a cease & desist... paranoid much?

Chris Buecheler - shaithis - Still gaming, but not so much for a living. Writing, web dev, and generally seems to be a bit of a free bird at the moment. Website at cwbuecheler.com.

Dave Kosak - Fargo - All hail the mighty SOCK! Also still doing the same thing he's always been doing since he left GameSpy - working for Blizzard on WoW. I believe he is their lead quest designer, which is pretty major.

John Keefer - Warrior - I think Warrior has done a few things since he left GameSpy, but he's now the news editor over at shacknews.com, so that's isn't a huge departure over his previous role.

Caryn Vainio (nee Law) - Hellchick - Wasn't on GSF much, but more well known to those who frequented PlanetQuake and 3DAP. She still has her site at hellchick.net, and she's now a UI designer for a company called Uber Entertainment (uberent.com)

Jamie Madigan - Thrrrpptt! - This guy is really interesting. And learn-ed! I didn't know at the time but he has had a Ph.D the whole time he was with GameSpy. He nows runs a blog at psychologyofgames.com, so he's still very much in the gaming industry as well.

In Reply To #1
To beef up shai's awesomeness, he's published a few books now, lost a shit ton of weight, got married, brews beer, loves cock(tails).

I inexplicably got added by some of the IGN peeps on LinkedIn (clearly they think I'm more important than I am).

But they're all utter cocks.

In Reply To #3

Well I wouldn't say Love2Play was an utter cock per se. Not only because she was a woman, but rather, once we got to understand the way her mind worked, we could make use of it.

Stupid as she was getting BangBang and Hardflip de-adminned, we learned from those incidents and used them to get NooM de-adminned and a bunch of problematic forums shut down.

In Reply To #4

They do all seem to think they're VP of something or other, though. Even though they blatantly aren't.

*insert that VP of caretaking joke I made earlier*

I would. And did. And do.

Gonna have to jump on the utter cock wagon. That sounded much dirtier than I intended, which almost never happens to me.

In Reply To #7

Not that your clean, per se. But you always come across exactly as dirty as you intend to.

Yeah I'm an active Shacker and he's doing a decent job over there. Although they're run by Gamefly now, so it isn't as good as it used to be.

Snap, I didn't know GameFly owned the shack.

I guess that means Love2Play and Warrior are colleagues again now.

He used to tweet some of his cocktail recipes. Maybe he still does.

Yeah, I used to see Fargo quite often on gaming websites and the like talking about WoW. It was all from his Flitlocke stuff I believe.

I think I have seen Thrrrpptt! on another forum or two, but can't remember where (I have been on so many forums).

I also get a PM through Seriously! from DrFoxy wanting to game every now and then. Usually a game I don't have...

I met Alginon from Planet Dues Ex at the Statue of Liberty (intentionally, we didn't bump into each other at random, which would have been totally awesome).

Cyrris - I wouldn't worry about cease and desists, but I also won't link this place anywhere, just to keep you comfortable.

Holliday sent me the link -- fun to see! :)

I am indeed out of the gaming industry at the moment and have been since Crispy Gamer imploded in early 2010 (yes, the website still exists though it hasn't been updated since February - no, it's not using any of the work that I did during my time there, so don't blame me that it's shitty and hideous).

I'd love to get back in but I only work for startups, and there aren't many gaming startups these days. Industry's too cut-throat. Also much of that whole scene is on the west coast, and I'm in Rhode Island for at least another five years while my wife gets her PhD. Perhaps if my current startup makes me rich, I'll put together a gaming site. I own a couple of gaming-related domains that'd work.

We had two other PhD's -- Tungsten (still at GameSpy, heads up the tech division I believe) and Silverdawn -- both of whom were science guys. I think Tungsten was Chemistry and Silverdawn was Biology, but don't hold me to that.

Caryn's no longer at Uber. She works for Z2Live, a mobile gaming company.

Fargo was the lead designer on the Mists of Pandaria expansion that just debuted. He's involved not just w/ quests but with basically everything relating to the content. Couple other former GameSpy folks are at Blizzard too.

I could give lots more info on various GameSpy-ers and what they're doing, if people have any particular names they're curious about. We don't all still keep in touch constantly, but a good chunk of us still communicate pretty often. :)

BTW, "shaithis" died with GameSpy, which for me died in March 2004 -- my gaming handle these days is CaptainHomeless. You can find me on Xbox live and Steam (I'm cwbuecheler there), but I don't ever play multiplayer or coop, so ... not really a ton of point in it.

Later,

-chris

Yeah, a few of us have tried to change our handles over the years. The old ones never let you leave them behind completely.

One thing I am curious about is what actually exists over at GameSpy these days. So much has been sold off or shut down, I am not sure what remains besides GameSpy.com itself.