Hey. This is actually my first topic posted here and while I had been accumulating posts in order to bring up a specific topic, that's not really on my mind right now so let me formally introduce myself - You can call me aLkaLiNE.

I come from Oregon and that 350Z as my profile pic was also my car (drunk driving accident changed that).

Anyway, I started shadowing VGC months before signing up simply because they posted estimates of console sales each week and it was always presented in a nifty graph.  Ironically what led me to this site were the casual links to our front page here from the comment section on IGN.  As a former reader and user of IGN I had always been annoyed by the ignorance of the majority of the user population there, and it always felt like there was a massive bias toward one particular brand on that site but I wasn't invested enough in gaming to try to search for other gaming sites.  What really happened was I slowly, gradually and surely noticed that there was a "Hot Topics" section to the right of the front page here and I began clicking the topics when they were something of interest.  After visiting for a few months I had a pretty good feel for how things flowed here and the users seemed SO MUCH BETTER. There's a large variety of articles posted from all over the internet with bias toward EACH company, and I can dig that.  The social features (you can add friends whaaa?) are actually pretty cool and reminiscent of FaceBook.

So yeah, I haven't looked back since signing up and I happily never visit IGN anymore, instead opting to come here where I can see a much cleaner look on how things are going (Former Sony investor btw so I do still see a bit of business ignorance on here).

Anyway I'm happy to be a part of this community and may you all game on!  (Anyone ever been to Scorehero or Rockband.Scorehero?)

I actually wanted to know how you got your scars.....but then that answer may also be VGChartz. Glad you like it here, aL!

Welcome to VGC! Glad to have you here :D

I also used to be an IGN member/reader until I joined VGChartz last year! Welcome to the site!

yeah, vgchartz did do a good job of facilitating a community here. i remember the days when they actually polled the community for what features they wanted. i contributed a bit to the way the hot topics were layed out.

i wish ioi would continue to invest in this site. honestly just a few features around the displaying data would go a long way to cultivating interesting conversation. but alas he's moved all his efforts to gamewise.

Welcome dude.Hope I see you around xD

I think "Better than the IGN forums" should be our official tagline.

It's fun especially when fanboy wars erupt

eh.  ioi lobbied us quite a bit for a while to convinece us to move and join the gamewise community.  i logged in a couple times but the layout is so prohibitive of community.  the discussions are,.. distributed,.. across all the articles and game pages and peoples personal pages that you really have to look to find things.   ..which means are aren't discussions to join.  i just really hate that layout.

while this site continues to limp on with minimal effort on the numbers and an industry that is moving towards digital distribution and streaming vgc will be at best a great forum and news site.    hopefully he just allows the community to continue and doesn't pull the plug on us when he gives up on numbers entirely.

Regret incoming in 3...2...1..