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GameFAQs is a website that hosts FAQs and walkthroughs for video games. It was created in November 1995 by Jeff ''CJayC'' Veasey and was bought by CNET Networks in May 2003. It is currently owned by CBS Interactive. The site has a database of video game information, cheat codes, reviews, game saves, and screenshots, almost all of which is submitted by volunteer contributors. The systems covered include the 8-bit Atari platform through modern consoles, as well as computer games. Submissions made to the site are reviewed by the site's current editor, Allen ''SBAllen'' Tyner.

GameFAQs hosts an active message board community, which has a separate discussion board for each game in the site's database, along with a variety of other boards. Since 2004, most of the game-specific boards have been shared between GameFAQs and GameSpot, another CNET/CBS website. The site also runs a daily opinion poll and tournament contests.

GameFAQs has been positively reviewed by ''The Guardian'' and ''Entertainment Weekly''. As of 2009, GameFAQs.com is one of the 300 highest-trafficked English-language websites according to Alexa.

History

GameFAQs was started as the ''Video Game FAQ Archive'' on November 5, 1995, by Jeff Veasey, who says he wanted to collect the numerous online guides and FAQs into one centralized location. Hosted on America Online, it originally served as a mirror of Andy Eddy's FTP FAQ archive. The initial version of the site had approximately 10 pages and 100 FAQs. In 1996, the site moved to its current domain at gamefaqs.com and changed its name to ''GameFAQs''. User contests were introduced during this period; the first monthly contest, which was held in 1998, received 253 entries. GameFAQs went through several design changes, including a pink color scheme, Until this time, he had been working as a programmer.

GameFAQs has boards made purely for the purpose of socializing, some that cater to special interests (such as ''Harry Potter'', anime, or professional wrestling), and some purely for users from a particular region (e.g. United Kingdom, Australia/New Zealand). GameFAQs also has boards for official announcements, contributor discussion, contest discussion, suggestions, and site help. Unlike many message boards, GameFAQs does not allow tags for images, hyperlinks, or underlining. Avatars are not used, signatures are limited to two lines of text (160 characters total), and posts cannot be edited. Additionally, the forums use a wordfilter to prevent the use of certain vulgar words. On some boards, topics are removed permanently after a having no new posts for a period of time. On other boards, they are locked and archived (a feature which was added in 2008). The length of time that a topic can remain inactive without being removed or archived depends on the number of posts on its board.

GameFAQs users gain one ''karma'' for every day they visit the boards while logged in. As karma increases, new features become available, such as the ability to post more messages per day, visit high-level social boards, and view a post history page. Shortly thereafter, the ads were moved to the bottom of the message lists. The author retains the copyright on the submitted material, and his name is added to the site's ''Contributor Recognition'' section. GameFAQs agrees to host the guide only on their servers but does allow other affiliates to link directly to the guides (including GameSpot, Yahoo! Games, AOL, and GameFly).

Since 2002, GameFAQs has hosted annual (or semiannual) tournament contests consisting of daily polls in which visitors to the site choose between competing characters, games, or series, with the character contests being known as ''Character Battles''. Registered users can submit prediction brackets, and prizes are awarded to those who score the highest. The contest polls are shown in place of or in addition to the regular Poll of the Day and have always been accompanied by an image depicting the entrants in the match. The entrants of the Character Battles change from year to year, with some characters being added and some being removed. In some years, previous winners were removed from the main bracket and competed in a separate contest (i.e., ''Tournament of Champions'', ''Battle Royale'').

The annual Character Battle has been the subject of two webcomics—''Penny Arcade'' featured the Character Battle in their comic on August 23, 2002, and Creative Uncut's ''Inside the Gamers Studio'' strip mentioned the Character Battle in their ninth comic.

The smallest margin between any two choices in a contest poll was three votes—this occurred in the four-way match between Alucard, Liquid Snake, Ness and Zidane Tribal on September 22, 2007, with the three vote difference between first-place winner Liquid Snake and runner-up Alucard.

10 Best Games Ever

During the 10-Year Anniversary Contest in 2005, GameFAQs users voted on the 10 best games of all time (and tried to predict what the top 10 would be). ''Final Fantasy VII'' was selected as the best game ever, followed by ''The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time'', ''Chrono Trigger'', ''The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past'', ''Super Mario Bros. 3'', ''Super Smash Bros. Melee'', ''GoldenEye 007'', ''Metal Gear Solid'', '' Combat Evolved'', and ''Final Fantasy III/VI''.

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