Letter From the Editor: This is Shacknews

Greetings,

Shacknews and Quake have an intertwined history dating back to our site's launch in 1996. Today Shacknews has unveiled a brand new premium content initiative for Mercury subscribers. It seems only fitting that our first new piece of premium content would be Rocket Jump: Quake and the Golden Age of First-Person Shooters. This mega feature is 130,000 words about the Quake franchise, id Software, and its impact across the FPS genre. We rebooted our Mercury subscription model a little over two years ago, and at the time it provided Shackers with an advertisement-free Shacknews experience for only $5/month. Today, we are creating more value for our Mercury subscribers and we are just getting started.

We believe that programmatic online advertising is not going to be a sturdy pillar for our Shacknews business to depend on. Premium content, new features, and a brand new website experience are all areas that we will focus on in the upcoming year. 2018 will be a huge year for Shacknews, but today is a big moment. We acknowledge that Mercury subscribers should get more bang for their buck and look forward to releasing more long-form content like Rocket Jump and our Doom Select to provide an increased value. 

Not many websites are willing to spend the time and effort to create long-form content like Rocket Jump and I want to thank all of the folks who participated in the creation of the mega feature. I also want to thank our Shacknews Chatty community for supporting us during the past few years, and I look forward to showing everyone our vision of the future of the Shack. 

Most importantly, I want to give special recognition to David Craddock for the job he did creating Rocket Jump. He certainly showed everyone how to do it for Shacknews!

This is Shacknews and this is just the beginning.

Asif Khan

CEO/EIC/EIEIO

Asif Khan is the CEO, EIC, and majority shareholder of Shacknews. He began his career in video game journalism as a freelancer in 2001 for Tendobox.com. Asif is a CPA and was formerly an investment adviser representative. After much success in his own personal investments, he retired from his day job in financial services and is currently focused on new private investments. His favorite PC game of all time is Duke Nukem 3D, and he is an unapologetic fan of most things Nintendo. Asif first frequented the Shack when it was sCary's Shugashack to find all things Quake. When he is not immersed in investments or gaming he is a purveyor of fine electronic music. Asif also has an irrational love of Cleveland sports.