Welcome to NowGamer, read on for a brief history and explanation of our site

We probably don’t need to tell you that the internet is almost saturated with videogame websites. Its digital highways groan under the weight of millions of reviews, previews, news stories, blogs, and features, all jostling for your attention. In this rush for gaming-related information nearly every niche is catered for. You want a blog dealing with feminist perspectives on games? You got one. One that examines racial minority game characters? Check. Top ten polygonal gusset shots? It’s probably there if you look hard enough. So given the already vibrant and bustling community of gaming sites out there, why should you care about us? What new ideas does NowGamer bring to the table? Well, hopefully after reading this slightly egotistical feature such questions will be answered, and you’ll have a better sense of who we are, where we came from, and why NowGamer isn’t ‘just another gaming site’.

The minds behind NowGamer, trying their best not to look cliched

But before we get onto what makes NowGamer different, lets first give you a little history. NowGamer was born in the offices of Imagine Publishing, a UK-based publisher comprised of individuals who have decades of experience producing gaming magazines, as Imagine’s co-founder and managing director Damian Butt explains:

“The founders of Imagine have been involved in videogame magazines ever since videogame magazines were created,” says Damian. “Although Imagine itself was formed in 2005, the people who make up the company have been in the game magazine business right from the beginning. I started my career back in 1991, on magazines like SegaPro, PC Power, Console XS, Super Gamer, and have launched mags like games™ and 360. Games journalism is in our blood - which is why when we formed Imagine games magazines were some of the first launches we did. ”

In mid 2007 Butt made the decision to start work on a new gaming portal, one that would be able to leverage the vast amount of content from Imagine’s back catalogue, as well as the plethora of reviews, previews and features continually produced by Imagine’s team of gaming journalists. Lee Groombridge, Imagine’s Interactive Media Manager explains, “With a project as large as this it was important to get all the planning and ideas set right from the beginning” To get things started two of the company’s senior editors convened for a series of meetings that would go on to sow the seeds of the site’s development. Editor in chief Nick Jones, who started his games journalism career writing walkthroughs “in a bedroom above a dodgy Chinese import shop”, was a part of these early brainstorming sessions.

The Imagine Publishing office, where all the action takes place

“The brief was that the site needed to be something different,” says Jones. “It needed to be something fresh. So Damian told us to come up with some USPs for the site, some hooks that are going to get gamers to come to our website instead of the big ones like IGN or Gamespot.”

The first idea put forward at this early stage concerned the site’s aesthetic. Taking their cue from the design philosophy behind Imagine’s print publications, Nick, Damian and games™’s editor-in-chief Rick Porter all wanted to make sure that NowGamer would be as clean and readable as possible, eschewing what they perceived as the cluttered and loud homepages of many other gaming sites, in favour of something more restrained and subtle.

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