Sarcastic Gamer - History

History

The site was founded by Jeromy "Doc" Adams in early June 2007, the first SarcasticGamer.com article, written on 11 June 2007 after his first parody song, "How You Killed Your Brand" (a parody of How To Save A Life by The Fray) gained immense popularity on YouTube. The song has been viewed almost 7 million times as of April 2009 and won the "Top Favorites (All Time)" and "Most Discussed (All Time)" YouTube honors. As a result of the success, Adams created a website to host all his future parodies.

As the popularity of the parodies and, consequently, the website increased, Adams needed to find reliable writers who could help him satisfy the growing demand for new material. The first to be approached was Sean "Rothbart" Workman, a trusted GamerCast Network forums member, who agreed to start preparing new articles for Sarcastic Gamer. Shortly thereafter, Matt "Volkov" Schmidt offered his help with the blog. Adrian "Lono" Cherikos, who had met with Adams on Xbox Live a few months before Sarcastic Gamer was created, started writing for the site after his debut on the Sarcastic Gamer Podcast on July 13, 2007. Adams also recruited his friend David Cothran, who stars on the podcast with him and helps him edit the podcasts.

With the site traffic increasing daily towards the end of 2007, more writers were required, leading to the recruitment of Alex "SupaSlick" Shaw and Anthony "Yousty" Youst in September, along with Eric "PacManPolarBear" Ross, who joined the staff in October 2007. Writer Matthew "Animathias" Schramm and cartoonist Tim "MightyMutt" Hibbs joined Sarcastic Gamer in early 2008. Jon "Yamster" Brady and Alex "RaiseHavok" Saunders were recruited as writers and in June 2008 and Ben "Eoco" Simmons joined the staff a month later.

The same increases in traffic that necessitated the extra staff were the impetus behind the shifting of the site, in early 2008, from its original host service, Blogger, to its present self-hosting state with Wordpress.

Since the site is non-commercial, the staff rarely takes part in non-essential gaming events and gatherings. The first event the Sarcastic Gamer writers participated in was QuakeCon 2007, whilst the second one was Kane and Lynch Community Day. In July 2008, Jeromy Adams and David Cothran were able to receive E3 passes and attended the gaming convention and have since attended QuakeCon in 2008, the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) in 2008, the Godfather Part II Community Day and the Computer and Electronics Show (CES) in 2009. Aside from conventions, Jeromy Adams and Adrian Cherikos were invited by Microsoft in December 2007 to see the forthcoming device under development by the company, Microsoft Surface, The SarcasticGamer.com relation. thanks to the video parody of the device created by Adams.

On April 6, 2009, Adrian "Lono" Cherikos announced his official departure from the Red Show and from his position as editor of the SarcasticGamer.com Blog, following a dispute of creative differences between the co-owners of the website. Following his departure, Yamster and Eoco replaced him in editorial positions and they selected six new writers under the pseudonyms of "DogsDieInHotCars", "O(ld)M(arried)G(amer)", "Krelith", "ShanghaiSix", "PillowFort" and "Monstar". Even more new faces: "Darkwonders", "Esmeralda" and "Lord Drattigan" have joined the writing staff since then. Starting with the Penny Arcade Expo on September 4, 2009, Cherikos resumed his writing and podcasting duties for Sarcastic Gamer, while continuing to support Achievement Hunter with his show, Respawn Radio with 8BitBass and Knuckles Dawson. Respawn Radio joined the Sarcastic Gamer Network on March 3, 2010, after a dispute between Knuckles Dawson, a former cohost and Lono. Lono subsequently dropped Knuckles from the show and moved it to Sarcastic Gamer, with Keadin joining as the 3rd chair. On April 5, 2010, Rothbart stepped down as community manager for Sarcastic Gamer, but he continues to do the PlayStation Podcast. Rothbart's role as community manager was replaced by site webmaster "regua". In early December, 2011, regular content publication ceased and issues with Lono were cited as the cause. Each writer then posted a "farewell article", followed by an official announcement that all current writers, with the exception of Lono, intended to leave the site. Podcasts are still being produced until a new home is found for them. In early 2012 the SG Podcasters have officially announced that they have all moved to BigRedBarrel.com. They have said that all the active podcasts from SG will be transferring and future content will be posted on the new site. On December 27, 2012, Adrian "Lono" Cherikos announced on his twitter feed that Sarcastic Gamer had relaunched as a collaboration between him and founder Jeromy "Doc" Adams. The inaugural podcast's new intro said that the podcast would be published "on a semi-regular basis".