At the time, the "Internode Games Network" website looked like this;
(Not a joke. This is legitimate)
hart had reached out to the co-ordinators of local South Australian LAN Party Valhalla to help Internode launch a proper games network. At the time, Internode hosted a couple of Counter-Strike (Beta) servers, as well as (from memory) maybe a couple of Quake 3 DM servers, and they were looking to expand. Simon Hackett was personally invested in making it bigger and better, and invited us to Internode's offices, which were at the time situated above a parking garage on York St in Adelaide, to come up with a plan of attack. (The building Internode used to be in was demolished and replaced with an apartment complex approximately 4 years ago)
UgLyPuNk, along with Aetherone and AWatts, were Valhalla's server gurus, and started working feverishly with hart and Thermal from Internode on the infrastructure, reporting, and GUI interface tools such as server usage and statistics charts that would become Version 1 of the Internode Games Network.
I was brought in to design the front-end GUI of the website. As an 18 year old kid with no formal web-design experience, I was definitely thrown in to the deep-end, but I relished the challenge, and was provided excellent guidance from the other boys involved. UgLyPuNk especially carried me through a couple of road-blocks, never once taking credit for himself. To this day, I think a lot of people here underestimate just how crucial he was to the Internode Games Network becoming a success.
Throughout May and June 2002 we continued to design, re-design, accidentally break, fix, re-re-design, and test the Internode Games Network extensively, working towards an anticipated July launch.
On 1 July, 2002, the Internode Games Network re-launch went live, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Unfortunately, the Internet WayBack Machine doesn't retain a lot of the images and GUI elements from the relaunched site, and is only available for late July, and not the actual day of it's launch, but it's interesting to check out regardless; http://web.archive.org/web/200208020107 ... de.on.net/
I found this news-post from hart bragging about a new player record particularly charming;
Anyway, I'm sure that i've forgotten to mention salient facts from 10 years ago, and I sincerely hope I haven't forgotten anyone who deserves due credit, because there were many hands that built the re-launched IGN, and for those who were around back in the day, they'll know how special it truly was. It's gone through many, many changes since then, and a lot of the original crew don't seem to visit much these days, but I still thought it was important to share this piece of GON history with everyone.
Cheers
Chad 'toe2toe' / 'Chadwiko' Ryan
