Joystiq

• 1. Introduction

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  Joystiq launched with a soft debut in April 2004 and a formal unveiling on June 16 of that year, arriving at a moment when gaming websites were dominated by large corporate entities. Peter Rojas, the founder of Engadget, had concluded that video games were simply too broad a subject for his flagship blog alone. So a spinoff was born, tucked inside the Weblogs, Inc. network, positioned as a smaller challenger against competitors like Kotaku, which launched around the same time.

  For eleven years Joystiq was a gathering point for people who covered, played, and argued about games. It spawned a family of console-specific blogs, launched a podcast that outlasted the site itself, and sent its editors off to build some of the most recognized names in modern games journalism. When AOL shut it down on the 3rd of February 2015, Kotaku called for a moment to reflect on what would have been had Joystiq not helped usher in that age of gaming coverage. What made it matter, and how did it shape what came after?

• 2. A Network Takes Shape

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  Weblogs, Inc. did not treat Joystiq as a single product for long. In late 2005, shortly after AOL announced its acquisition of Weblogs in October of that year, Joystiq began spinning out dedicated blogs for individual consoles. The timing was not coincidental. The Xbox 360 launched in North America that November, and Joystiq met it with Xbox 360 Fanboy on the same day. New hires joined that month, including Jennie Lees, Blake Snow, and Chris Grant.

  The pace was relentless. PSP Fanboy debuted November 28, WoW Insider on December 6, and DS Fanboy on December 12. Revolution Fanboy arrived the 15th of February 2006, later renamed Nintendo Wii Fanboy. PS3 Fanboy followed on March 29. Six specialized blogs in roughly four months. Jason Calacanis, who led Weblogs, justified the expansion by arguing that separate blogs were necessary to fill specialized niches. Not everyone agreed; some observers criticized the practice as fragmenting Joystiq's core expertise.

  One minor editorial decision from that period outlasted the blogs themselves. On the 26th of January 2006, Joystiq coined the phrase "DS phat" to distinguish the original Nintendo DS from the lighter DS Lite. The nickname remained in informal use for decades.

• 3. The Podcast and Its Orbit

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  The Joystiq Podcast launched in 2007 with Chris Grant, Ludwig Kietzmann, and Justin McElroy as its three original hosts. Each week they worked through gaming news stories across recurring segments: "What Have You Been Playing?", "The Big Three" for top industry items, and "The Do It Line!", in which the hosts played humorous voice mails left on the company phone. Listeners could also submit questions for Reader Mail and receive call-outs through Brush with Fame.

  From 2009, the podcast used "Gravity (Don't Let Me Go)" by Jon Black as its theme song. The song narrates the experience of an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper from the Halo franchise. Black himself was interviewed by Justin McElroy in episode 99. Episode 100 brought a notable gathering: Griffin McElroy and his father Clint McElroy both appeared as guests. Justin's wife Sydnee McElroy joined in episode 115 to answer listener questions about the 2009 swine flu pandemic.

  The community around the show became its own small institution. In 2008, a Facebook fan group called The Joystiq Podcast Appreciation Group launched a spin-off called The JPAG Show. Justin McElroy marked the occasion with a short post noting, "Lesser podcasts would probably be weirded out by such meta-admiration, but not us, we kind of expect it. Nay... we demand it." By 2009, a tongue-in-cheek Joystiq Podcast Appreciation Group Podcast Appreciation Group Podcast had also appeared. Chris Grant guest-appeared in JPAG episode 22.

  The original podcast's final episode was recorded live on the 12th of May 2011, and released the following day. Several specials followed, including two for E3 2011 and a holiday edition that October.

• 4. Consolidation and the Futurestiq Era

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  Beginning in January 2009, Joystiq reversed the expansion it had driven just three years earlier. The console-specific Fanboy blogs were rebranded and pulled back into the main site. DS and Wii Fanboy became Joystiq Nintendo; PSP and PS3 Fanboy merged into Joystiq PlayStation; Xbox 360 Fanboy became Joystiq Xbox. For roughly eighteen months these sub-brands continued publishing, mixing specialized posts with material from the main site.

  In June 2010 the arrangement ended. Under an overhaul called "Futurestiq," all three sub-brands folded entirely into Joystiq, and their staff joined the main editorial team full-time. One property was deliberately kept separate during this period: Massively, a blog Grant's tenure had launched on the 2nd of November 2007, to cover MMOs broadly rather than just World of Warcraft. Massively remained distinct throughout Joystiq's remaining years and ultimately had a different ending than the main site.

  By 2007, Joystiq was already drawing industry recognition. Forbes.com listed it in its Best of the Web that year, building on a 2005 appearance at number 19 on the Feedster 500.

• 5. Departures and the Final Years

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  January 2012 brought a rupture at the top of Joystiq's masthead. Editor-in-chief Chris Grant, managing editor Justin McElroy, and reviews editor Griffin McElroy departed together to co-found Polygon under Vox Media. Ludwig Kietzmann, moving from South Africa to the United States to assume the role, became the new editor-in-chief.

  Kietzmann's first major move was a format reset for the podcast. In April 2012 he cancelled The Joystiq Show, a more formal program that had launched in June 2011, and replaced it with the Super Joystiq Podcast. Announced at PAX East 2012 and officially released on May 4 of that year, the new show grouped every editor in rotating configurations, each episode built around an intro, news, preview, or "Joystiq Research Institute" segment. The final episode, covering The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 3D, aired on the 16th of January 2015.

  Readership had been declining for years. By early 2015, it had fallen by at least 18% over the previous twelve months. In January 2015, co-owned blog TechCrunch reported that AOL planned to close underperforming properties to concentrate on video and advertising sales. Re/code reported on January 27 that Joystiq was among the likely casualties. On January 30, the site itself confirmed that Joystiq, Massively, WoW Insider, and TUAW would all cease operations after February 3.

• 6. What the Staff Built Next

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  The Massively team did not wait long after the closure. On the 10th of February 2015, they launched Massively Overpowered, a successor site dedicated to MMO coverage that remains active as of 2025.

  Griffin and Justin McElroy, along with their brother Travis McElroy, had already started the podcast My Brother, My Brother and Me in 2010, roughly a year before The Joystiq Podcast ended. Its early growth came largely on the back of their existing Joystiq podcast audience. After leaving Joystiq, Justin and Griffin also co-launched The Besties in 2012, a video game talk show that included Chris Plante and Russ Frushtick from Polygon. Both McElroy brothers retired from journalism in 2018 to concentrate on podcasting full-time.

  Chris Grant stayed in games journalism. He served as editor-in-chief of Polygon until 2019 and now holds the title of publisher there. Ludwig Kietzmann briefly served as U.S. Editor-in-Chief for GamesRadar+ before retiring from journalism in 2016 to become editing director for Assembly Media.

  The Joystiq web address now redirects to Engadget Gaming, which hosts much of the site's archived content. The podcast episodes were not carried over to Engadget; instead, a complete collection was uploaded to the Internet Archive and remains freely available.