Evil Avatar

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**Evil Avatar**

‎ "Daily gaming news.... with attitude!"
URL	http://www.evilavatar.com/
Commercial?	no
Type of site	Video game news
Owner	Philip Hansen
Created by	Community-written
Launched	1997
Current status of site	Active

Evil Avatar ([1]) is a video game news internet forum. Founded in 1997 as "The Weakly Web News" by Philip Hansen, Evil Avatar was one of the earliest blog-style game-centric news aggregation sites. Since then, the site has been through many changes and evolved into a forum with collected video-gaming related news on the front page. With the promise of delivering "daily gaming news.... with attitude," the site continues to be updated and read daily by numerous fans, developers, and critics.

1 News
2 Staff
3 Wall of Fame
4 Evil Avatar Radio
5 Evil Avatar Comics
6 Community
7 External links

[edit] News

Front page news content on Evil Avatar is user-submitted. News posts can be written by any registered user. From there, forum moderators/news editors sift through the submissions and post them to the "front page." While the site is predominantly concerned with news from the computer and video game industries, coverage has expanded into other fields, from general technology to comic books.

[edit] Staff

Evil Avatar - Webmaster: Started the site in 1997
bapenguin - Editor-in-Chief: Joined the staff in April of 2003, Member since 2001.
fitbabits - News Editor
Kefkataran - Editor/Podcast Host
Everlost_MI - Editor
Dr. Finger - Associate Editor/Comics
Liquidize105 - Associate Editor/Interviews
Jetherik - Editor: Joined the staff in May of 1999. Wrote for three years the Wednesday Night in Norrath (WNiN) after Alustyalien. Also wrote game reviews and currently does the "Weekend Gamers."
GunnyMo - News Editor/Erstwhile Pink

[edit] Wall of Fame

Certis - A previous site editor who went on to found GamersWithJobs.
fitbabits - Appeared as an unlockable character in Infected on the PSP.
bapenguin - Featured on XBox.com's Gamer Spotlight segment in August 2006. (Link)
The Community - Listed near the top of the credits for the "Our Colony" viral marketing campaign on the XBox 360. (Video)

[edit] Evil Avatar Radio

Evil Avatar Radio (or "EAR") was started early in 2006 by Philip Kollar, known as KefkaTaran on the site. The show is broadcast live from the University of Minnesota, Morris' radio station, KUMM. The show takes place every Friday from 9:00pm until Midnight CST, and is rebroadcast on allgames.com every Wednesday night at 9:00pm CST.

A normal episode of EAR consists of three "sections" - from 9:00 until 10:00 an interview is played (usually someone involved in video games or comics). If there is no interview, music is played during this hour. From 10:00 until around 11:00, Phil and whoever is joining him go over the week in video game news. And then from 11:00 until the end of the show, Phil opens the phone lines to let members of the Evil Avatar community call in. In the podcast version of the show, the first hour is cut out.

Reoccuring segments on EAR include:

New Releases - A list of the games coming out in the following week.

Price Watch - A run down of games that have dropped in price in the past week.

Comic Talk - Whether it's Marvel or DC, usually someone does a rundown.

The Two-Minute Hate - A listener is given 2 minutes to rant about whatever they want.

Gaming Confessions - Listeners reveal deep, dark, game-related secrets.

The show has it's own website, where anyone can listen to current and past episodes in-browser using Odeo. EAR is also available for subscription on the iTunes Music Store.

The show's cast consists of Phil, along with his co-host/fiancee Amanda Ochsner (site name: "FaceItTiger"). Joining them on the news most weeks is the Podcast Producer, Justin Heeren (site name: "pseudopseudo") who does most of the show's editing. Behind the scenes, Online Producer Nat Kealen (site name: "agentgray") does recording and editing of interview segments and gets the podcast on the website and iTunes.

[edit] Evil Avatar Comics

Evil Avatar Comics (EAC) was started in May 2006, by community member joruussuun (writing and drawing). The style could be described as "screwing around in MS Paint", and earned the name Evil Avatar: The [Really Bad] Comic. Member zrikz offered to host the comics and thus EvilAvatarComics.com was born. The style allowed joruussuun to pump out comic after comic in a quick fashion, sometimes 2 or 3 a day in the beginning, before leaving him a broken shell of a man. Knite was a notable addition as competent artist near the end of joruussuun's run as writer. After a brief hiatus, this section was resumed in October 2006 in the much more capable hands of member DoctorSetebos serving as headline artist, and member dorkandproudofit acting as the main comic writer. The comics strive to discuss current gaming news and other happenings in the Evil Avatar community.

[edit] Community

The Evil Avatar community is comprised of readers from all sectors of the games industry, from simple every-day fans to game developers. Upon joining the "EvAv" community, a user creates a username and profile, and is able to post within the various Evil Avatar forums. Usernames appear in yellow and offer nearly unfettered access to the site.

In addition to advertising revenue, Evil Avatar is also sponsored by user donations. When a user donates to the site, their username appears in orange, and they are allowed a customized user title, as well as access to the "Subscriber's Only" forum.

A small handful of EvAv users are promoted to administrator status. Their names appear in red, and they are tasked with various responsibilities and privileges. Administrators on Evil Avatar are known to take a very active role in the EvAv community and forums, maintaining the front page and generally moderating forum behavior.

Currently, one user of Evil Avatar - RandomViolence - has a pink username.

A notable (and oft-discussed) "feature" of Evil Avatar is the absence of user avatars. The site strives to maintain a quick-loading, minimalist feel, and to achieve this, no user avatars are allowed, and signatures must abide strict guidelines. However, during the site's 2006 Halloween celebration, user avatars were allowed, and these images still display in the user profiles of those who participated.