Fran Mirabella III

Who is Fran Mirabella III?

Francis Michael Mirabella III is an editor at IGN Entertainment, a division of News Corporation's Fox Interactive Media. He is currently the Sr. Director of Video Production, overseeing all video projects at IGN Entertainment.

Born in Joliet, Illinois, he was a computer engineering student at University of Cincinnati. Fran was a writer at the Dolphin Cove website, the predecessor to N-Sider. In 2000, he left to join Matt Casamassina as co-editor of IGN64, IGN's Nintendo 64 section, and IGN Cube. He then moved on to head up IGN's Insider section. In 2005, he left that position to head up IGN's video division, which provides videos for the other sub-sections of the site.

Fran became infamous on IGN's boards after his critical review of Mario Kart: Double Dash!!. While the game was generally reviewed highly by many sites, he gave it a 7.9 score. This briefly led to the phrase "7.9'd" being used when something got rated lower than expected.

A popular nickname of his is "Frangoat," which was first used as a joke by Matt Casamassina in IGN's mailbag sections, but was later used for him in the IGN webcomic, Cubetoons. He is also imitated by many other editors, generally by snapping one's fingers, pointing them in a gun formation, and saying "Nice..." He currently lives in the Lower Haight district of San Francisco, California.