Engineering

More than just a job

IGN engineers are made up of leaders who are fanatics about building the best user experience for our 60 million video game enthusiasts/fans a month.


Technology @ IGN

WHO WE ARE

The engineering team is comprised of seasoned leaders, passionate game enthusiasts (Halo, or StarCraft anyone?) turned code-warriors, and high-potential interns via Code Foo who have recently joined IGN. We follow Agile/Lean development principles, work in an open, collaborative environment, and are active in technology meet ups and events. And did we mention games and beer?

WHAT WE DO

  • IGN is an active user of Open Source Technology.  We actively contribute back to the Open Source Community. We’ve adopted Open Standards such as REST, OpenID, OAuth and OpenSocial among others. IGN has a strong affinity to the open stack, using PHP, Ruby and Scala as our main language sets.
  • IGN Front End Development includes HTML5, CSS3, JQuery, Node.JS, mobile and Zend Framework on PHP.
  • Back End Development technologies include MongoDB, MySQL, Varnish, Memcached, elasticsearch, and Scala with Scalatra, Lift and Play Frameworks.

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Invent the
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The IGN Way

Scott B.
Marketing Manager

Almost every day Ben and I take 15 minutes to square off in an epic ping-pong battle. This rivalry has become a great way to blow off steam, get rejuvenated for the rest of our day and has also been good for brainstorming ideas. All-in-all, it's FUN. Video games are supposed to be fun.

Errol P.
Senior Manager, Esports

The year is 2000, and I was attending E3 for the first time. What I remember most about that time was trying to get the latest news about Neverwinter Nights onto the NWN Portal site but was having technical problems. Peer suggested I speak to Kevin, who not only took time out of his schedule to help me, but was very cheerful despite working around the clock. He hasn’t changed, and it’s the type of attitude shared by so many people at the company. The value of working hard, doing what you love.

Salim T.
Senior Director, Ad Product Strategy and Yield Management

During fiscal Q2, we always tend to run out of ad inventory due to the highly sold out situation. It amazes me how everyone comes together from all departments (Editorial, Product, Engineering, Sales, Ops and Marketing) to help find innovative ways of increasing traffic to help us fulfill sold campaigns and reach our revenue target.

Dana W.
Program Manager, FilePlanet

When we were creating FilePlanet we used our community network and everyone in the office to come in weekends and evenings to do data input, design pages, networking, etc. Everyone was there. Everyone pitched in together because they all believed that what they were participating in was amazing. It was teamwork at its best.

Katie A.
Senior Manager, Sales Dev

CSI has team members in 4 different cities. I am a team of one in Chicago. The first time we met up as a team in SF, something just clicked. It was an instant connection - one of sharing, laughing, collaborating and we had a language all our own. From that day forward, it didn’t matter which time zone we are working in, we were together in spirit. We are a force. We are a team.

Ryan G.
Managing Editor, IGN

Rather than tackle our year-end Game of the Year awards the same way we always had, Arthur, Scott and Brian pitched a new approach: making custom box art for winning games, and making them available to developers and gamers. It was a challenging project, but they owned the idea, pushed to make it a reality and created something fresh, authentic and miles ahead of the competition.

Dan K.
Marketing Coordinator, IGN UK

Before I worked at IGN, I was an avid podcast listener. I went so far as writing into Podcast Beyond whilst backpacking and was fortunate to have my request read out on air (thanks Ryan Clements!), which, as a reader/ listener made me feel quite special and almost like I was part of the team. Now, I'm lucky enough to have been working here for a while and am glad to see that the level of community engagement has grown to involve readers in new and interesting ways.

Ryan V.
Software Engineer, GameSpy Technology

Near the holidays we hit a point where multiple engineers had upcoming vacations so we were trying to work out an elaborate switching scheme for the on-call rotation that would accommodate everyone. Mike graciously volunteered to continue on-call after his week for whichever days/nights the upcoming engineers were unavailable, but then ended up taking the entire week. He didn't look for any recognition, or even acknowledgement, he was just literally taking one for the team.

Scott H.
Senior Engineer, GameSpy Technology

When I started, the GST group decided that at 5pm every day we would break for at least an hour to play Quake. We would slur teasing insults and the occasional compliment over cube walls at one another whilst bonding over the very reason we were in business: a belief that games are more fun with your friends. Fast forward to today, and the same "mini beat down" now occurs every Wed with the group. The bonds that are formed from this type of an experience are strong and truly reiterate with every employee that this is why we do what we do; because we love it.

Dominic B.
Senior Sales Manager, IGN UK

How do I get an Xbox on my desk? Some time ago I took a picture of my desk and posted it on Facebook. I received a bunch of replies from Family & Friends asking me why I had an Xbox on my desk. I explained that I work for IGN. Amongst the various replies about me being a lucky (insert four letter expletive)... I was amazed at how many people replied with "Wow, you work for IGN" and "How do I get a job at IGN" This filled me with an enormous sense of pride in what we do.

Aaron B.
Account Executive, Game Sales

The first two days of my IGN career were some of the most exciting and nerve-wracking days of my life. I had no idea what to expect from my new co-workers upon entering into a new role. You never really know what to expect in a new situation. However, all of my new colleagues, both those that I met in person and those who were across the country, were absolutely amazing. Everyone was so warm and welcoming. Never once did I feel that I was being judged or imposing on another's territory.

Kay R.
Sr. Campaign Manager, Ad Ops

It was a tough Q2 for the AdOps team, so we wanted to take a few hours and do something fun. We decided on a gourmet cooking class. We all donned our aprons, split off into groups that included people from teams that may not talk every day, and together created a wonderful six course gourmet meal. Everyone had a great time, was allowed to show their silly side, and at the same time, we were all working towards a common goal.

Erik H.
Senior Producer, Video

Editorial approached video with an idea to create a comedy sketch based on Borderlands, a "hardcore" video game. The idea was initially deemed "too niche" even for our audience, but we decided to get together to see if it could work. What resulted was "Borderlands is for Real Gamers," one of our most popular IGN Originals. On its own, editorial didn't have the capacity to produce a skit this complex. On our own, video didn't initially understand the humor of the video. But once we put our heads together, we were convinced that this could work, and created a great product!

Kevin L.
Regional Sales Manager, Branded Sales

When I was first promoted we booked a huge campaign for District 9. We were a two person team and the package included an E3 sponsorship, sweepstakes, bringing a winner to SDCC to interview Peter Jackson, editing that video and then promoting it on IGN. We had to lean on sales dev, the sponsorship group, editorial, video, CS, zing and accounting and I remember being in awe of the collaboration. While people from every corner of the company were involved we worked as if we were sitting right next to each other and did it every day. It's that teamwork and that makes me love IGN.
 

IGN Talks

IGN Engineering not only comes up with cool, ideas and features, we host tech talks to evangelize technologies, ideas and inspire conversations.


Groups Currently Meeting at HQ
SF PHP
SF MySQL
GamesJS

Check out the Event Calendar

Code-Foo

IGN’s Code-Foo Challenge is a six-week program where you get paid to learn cutting edge web technologies while working on real IGN projects.  Blow our minds while you’re here and we’ll hire you.  No kidding.

You don’t need a degree, or official qualifications.  You need to love IGN, and know how to code.

Want to know more? Check out this FastCompany article:
Self Taught Coders

Ready to sign up? Apply at: Code-Foo 2013


Hack Week

First held in February of 2010, Hack Day immediately became a tradition at IGN with a goal of fostering technical innovation and winners such as IGN Answers and IGN Stock Exchange. Two years and a total of four hack events later, what was once a single day has become an entire Hack Week and the hacks have continued to get bigger and better. Notable success are Face Off which has been used to generate votes for the top Pokemons and E3 Booth Attendants, IGN Find It Now to find games and peripherals in stores, and Character Builder which allows IGN to quickly rollout build tools for folks creating game characters. With participants from all of the IGN teams, both technical and non-technical, the Hack tradition is here to stay and continues to grow in both popularity and in scope at IGN.