Newgrounds
From Free net encyclopedia
- See Newgrounds timeline for information on the events that happened within the Newgrounds community.
- See List of Newgrounds groups for information on the groups, crews and rivalries within the Newgrounds community.
Newgrounds is a website created in 1995 that hosts Macromedia Flash animations and games. It was created and is currently owned by Tom Fulp, who is assisted by his brother (Wade Fulp), and is also helped by liljim, an administrator living in England. Tim, Tom's former roommate, also assists in running the site. This site allows its users to submit their own Flash movies, games, and music, and view submissions from other users. Over the years Newgrounds has grown significantly, and must rely on the cooperation of its visitors. Visitors are encouraged to review the submissions. A rating system produces lists that direct visitors to the most popular flash movies and allows the site designers to easily locate any material that might be considered for deletion or promotion. The site now has close to 1 million registered members and over 300,000 flash submissions. Out of those about 75,000 still exist due to the auto delete system known as "blamming". Newgrounds is partners with many other flash and media websites.
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Development
Newgrounds started as a website made by Tom Fulp, for his brother and friends. At 1995, he created a site called, New Ground Remix. The site had few interesting things, until the summer of 1996, the site's creator created two games, Assasin, and Club a Seal. There was a primitive BBS system back then, and some games created by Tom Fulp and his brother. Ever since he was a pre-teen, he created movies and games, programming them too. When he went to Drexel University, he had no way to update his website. He created Assasin 2, and Club a Seal 2 during his free-time. While he was at Drexel, he created New Ground Atomix, a new website. He created Beep Me Jesus, and Cat Dynamics for his website. When he moved into a new apartment at spring, he had connection to New Ground Remix. He combined the Assasin 1 and 2 into a single game, and Club a Seal too. A bulk of traffic ignored New Ground Atomix, and strayed in New Ground Remix. Tom Fulp then started experimenting with Macromedia Flash, and created Teletubby Fun Land. At fall of 1998, Inside Edition wanted to write a story about Tom Fulp's assasin. They later abandoned the story, but Tom Fulp wasn't discouraged. To get a domain name, he changed merged his sites together, and created Newgrounds. He had to pay alot of money because of the hosting fees. The next year, he was in a crisis. He had to put banner ads in his site to pay off the hosting fees, that made him pay $1,000 each month. Fortunately, Troma helped pay for the hosting fees. Tom Fulp then created Pico out of Flash 3. He was satisfied with flash, and used it to create many games later on. At the year 2000, he created a nav-bar so people can easily view his site. People started emailing their flash work, and Tom Fulp had to see it, and manually put in on his site. Because of this, he told his friend Ross to work on an automated flash portal. Later that year, they finally created the famous portal, and the site grew even more popular. His site was now getting stable, and now he started earning profits from his site. He also created the BBS that year. During 2001, he updated his site, and created lots of flash work. At 2002, he and Dan Paladin, (currently the member of The Behemoth) created Alien Hominid. He created more flash during the year, and at 2003, he added the audio portal. By 2005, his site was runnning smoothly, and at 2006, he updated the NG logo. Other then that recently Tom Fulp's recent portal game "Dad and Me" was made to promote the popular newgrounds game Alien Hominid. The portal game Dad and Me was nominated for the most popular web game in the IGF 'Game Developers conference" and on the award with much popularity.
Voting system
As both a means to gauge the quality of content and to filter out poor submissions, all submitted flash are subject to a vote which both members and non-members can participate in (members have the ability to have their votes weighed more; see "Voting Power" below). The flash submissions are rated on a scale from 0 to 5. After a flash is submitted, it is considered "Under Judgement" and must pass three checkpoints (based on the number of users who have voted) to survive. It must have at least a rating of 1.0 at the first checkpoint (100 votes), 1.25 at the second checkpoint (150 votes), and 1.6 at the third checkpoint (200 votes), otherwise the flash is permanently removed in a process called, "blamming." [1] A blammed flash can no longer be seen by users, however, a listing is kept at a page called the "Newgrounds Graveyard" (also known as the "Obituaries"). There, the removed flash's reviews, author's comments, and score at the time of removal remain visible.
Experience and levels
There are two ways of increasing the worth of one's vote (known as "Voting Power"). The primary method is to gain "levels" by accumulating "experience points" (also known as "Grounds Gold"). Members may gain 10 experience points per day by voting on 5 different flash movies or games in the Flash Portal. There are 30 levels within Newgrounds with progressively increasing requirements in terms of experience. The level requirements and range of levels 1 through 8 remain the same: 50 experience points to reach the next level. The requirement for level 30 is equivalent to the experience points of the user (or users, in the event of a tie) with the highest amount of experience. Levels 9 through 30 expand to even out the experience point differential between 9 and 30. Because they are variable, their requirements and range cannot be accurately given. To illustrate a user's level, an icon of a weapon is shown on each member's profile and below their names on each of their BBS posts (see here for both the icons and experience requirements for each level). Levels influence one's voting power in the Portal and to indicate amount of experience. Thus higher levels do often command respect. Certain levels also unlock secret flash and options. These secrets are not allowed to be discussed at all, as stated by the BBS rules.
Blam/protect system
The other method of gaining voting power is by accumulating "blams" and "saves" (also called "protects"). This system is often referred to as the "blam/protect" system. Existing primarily to encourage voters to vote on movies under judgement (thereby streamlining the process), users are given points based on whether or not their votes on flash under judgement reflect the flash's ultimate fate. Thus, if a user votes a two or higher on a flash that survives, the user is awarded a "save" or "protect point" and if a user votes a zero or 1 on a flash that is removed, the user is awarded a "blam point." Votes which are contrary to the flash's outcome award no points. While blams and saves are tallied independently, only their total is relevant to one's "rank," a title given to a user on their profile which also determines by what percentage their voting power is increased. For example, a "civilian" (a user with less than 100 combined blams and saves) receives no bonus to his or her voting power, however, an "Elite Guard Supreme Commander" (a user with more than 30,000 combined blams and saves) receives a 60% bonus. Each rank is also accompanied by another icon, a badge/insignia, however, unlike the level icon, this icon is only visible on a user's profile. See here for a more detailed explanation and a link to a list of ranks, icons, and statistics. In order to prevent group think and attempts to game the system, a submission's score and reviews are not shown while it is under judgement. Also, users who uniformly vote zero or five on flash under judgement are often detected and punished by having their accounts erased.
Reviews
Only members are able to post reviews for submissions, however any visitor to the site is allowed to view past reviews of any surviving flash in the portal. Although Newgrounds encourages users to give only constructive feedback, reviews which feature unrelated advertising, spam, or outright verbal abuse frequently appear. To help control this, users can indicate whether they felt that a review was helpful, not helpful, or abusive. Reviews which garner a number of votes indicating them as abusive are directed to the attention of certain members called "review mods" who sort through them and punish the reviewers with temporary bans from reviewing, and, occasionally, deletion of all their reviews (including reviews that were not marked). Members who 'flag' abusive reviews are rewarded by a whistle icon (found in their profile), which ranges from 'normal' to 'deity' in accordance to how often they do so. In order to prevent abuse of this system, however, users are unable to see their exact score. Those who do 'flag' inappropriately are rewarded with a 'garbage' whistle, which is to be rectified with the opposite behavior. Contrary to belief, multiple users can obtain the 'diety' whistle, and he/she sets the benchmark for the gold whistle. The popularity of the system has elicited a number of members to post links, found on a thread in the forums, to places where such reviews can be found
Portal awards
When a movie or game is submitted to the Flash Portal, it has the chance to win any of the following awards:
- Daily Feature: The award given to the submission that scored the highest for the day.
- Daily 2nd/3rd/4th/5th Place: Lesser awards given to submissions each day.
- Weekly Users Choice: The award given to the submission that scored the highest for the week.
- Weekly 2nd/3rd/4th/5th Place: Lesser awards given to submissions each week.
- Review Crew Pick: This award is given to the submission with the best "overall" score in reviews.
- Underdog of the Week: (Often referred to as UOTW) This award is given to the submission with the biggest discrepancy between the review score and the popular vote.
- Turd of the Week: (Frequently referred to as TOTW) It is given to the submission with the lowest score that manages to pass judgement.
Notes: One must have at least 30 reviews that week to win an award that involves calculating the review score as well, such as the Underdog or Review Crew Pick awards. Weekly awards are awarded on Wednesdays.
Front Page Icons
On April 19, 2001 the first front page icon for a user-submitted flash game was posted under the heading "Tom and Wade recommend:". The game that was posted was Taipan 3000 by Psycho_Goldfish, a remake of a popular Apple II game called Taipan.
Over the years, as Newgrounds received more and more quality submissions the "Tom and Wade recommend" section grew from 1 to 2, 2 to 4, and 4 to 6 icons. The rate at which these icons was updated also increased, from weeks to days, eventually leading to the removal of the "Tom and Wade recommend" heading and becoming a staple of the front page, making it easy for new users to the site to find quality content.
Originally the icons were created by Newgrounds admins, as were the short text descriptions (The same process used for the collections pages), but this proved to be extremely time consuming and soon users were given the ability to attach their own icons with their submissions, and write their own brief descriptions.
In January of 2005 the front page archive was launched, keeping a month-by-month list of flash content that was deemed worth of display on the Newgrounds front page.
On July 26 2005, the Icon Helpers system was launched for Newgrounds volunteers to make and submit icons for older flash content that was lacking an icon, making the integration to automated collections pages much more effective.
BBS
The BBS (Bulletin Board System) is a popular series of forums on the site. Next to the Flash Portal, the BBS is the most popular part of the site. The forums for regular members consist of the General section, the Politics section, the Programming section, the Flash section, the Clubs & Crews section, the Where Is/How To? section, the NG News section (for any and all news posts made by admins), the Network News section (For anything pertaining to the tech aspects of the BBS), the P-Bot's Posts section (for Portal updates from the automated Portal Bot 'P-Bot'), and the recently added Audio forum.
User of the Day
The User of the Day is the title that one gets when he is chosen randomly by a system. Various information about that user is then displayed on most pages of the BBS. A new user is chosen every day, and although it is random, there are still a few criteria that a user needs to meet in order to be eligible. These include:
- Having posted on the BBS at least once
- Having a public profile
- Having a picture in that profile
There is an ongoing effort in the BBS to post a screen capture of every User of the Day [2], and the topic is now over 100 pages long.
Chat
Newgrounds has its own chat, usually referred to as the NG Chat. It's accessible via the CHAT button on the navigation bar at Newgrounds.com, or via any IRC client, such as mIRC, IRCle, Firefox's IRC clients, Trillian, etc. Many people join and chat about whatever they deem fit.
America Online (AOL) users on Java clients are not allowed into the NG Chat, because their IP Mask changes dynamically when the user begins a new dial-up session, so bans and akicks can't directly affect one person using that ISP (in any geographical region). If an AOL user enters the NG Chat, they are automatically kicked upon entry.
NG Chat also has two other smaller, less frequented channels: the Hookup room (#nglove) and the Insult room (#ngwar). The Hookup room is for any users who wish to "Chat intimately," trade pictures of one another, etc., to deter users from doing so in the main chat. The Insult room is simply a room created for users to insult each other.
The NG Chat is accessible via any IRC client by entering the java.webchat.org, area.webchat.org or irc.webmaster.com servers and joining the channel through the irc command: /join #newgrounds.com.
The NG chat has spawned many spinoffs, such as #radiogrounds (The radiogrounds.com chat), #ngdrunks for the NGDr0kns (dr0kn.com), #blamclub for the blamclub, #minimanjapan.com (minimanjapan.com) and many other (smaller) user-made channels such as #ngpoker for the NG Late Night Poker Club.
The Newgrounds.com IRC Channel Rules (as of March, 2006):
- Excessive foul language, and insulting of other chat room users will not be tolerated.
- Requesting special status (i.e. VOP, AOP, SOP, @, etc.) is strictly prohibited.
- Spamming, flooding, and other means of disrupting the chat is prohibited.
- NG links are allowed, but only once per hour for a unique user. All other links are prohibited.
- No scripts may be run that automatically post text in the chatroom, unless you are an OP.
- Impersonating Newgrounds.com staff members and other chat regulars is prohibited.
- There is to be no cybersex in the chat room, please use private messages for this. No ASL!
- Do not harass chat users with private messages if they do not want them.
- Requesting Warez, Porn, and other files is prohibited.
- Using ALL CAPS is considered to be yelling. Excessive use of CAPS is prohibited.
- No clones allowed!
- No racial or hateful words or phrases will be tolerated!
- Limit your use of colored text, avoid using annoying color combinations.
- Do not proposition users to a private chat (i.e. type 323 to chat).
Recently, a new Newgrounds chat room has been added on PalTalk, a service that offers voice and webcams. After installing the program, users can enter the room by joining "Newgrounds.com Fan Room" which can be found under Browse Video Chat Rooms -> Adult -> Conversation.
The controversy surrounding the addition of the PalTalk room is that PalTalk is generally a very overpowering program, and that while the PalTalk NG Room administrators and the NG BBS members generally are advocates of the PalTalk room (as well as Wade Fulp), the NG Chat members, as well as members of the Radiogrounds.com Chat (many of whom are also NG members) despise the program for its small annoyances and overpowering of their computers, as well as the fact that it seems like the PalTalk room is the outsource to the NG Chat, which has not been updated in years, outside of the new rules and links. The Chat server runs on Webnet, commonly referred to in the chat as "Webnut" for its lousy IRC servers which has a tendency to undergo resets, Ping resets on users, and checkups constantly, which ruins the aura of the Chat. The Chat itself runs with both official Java and Microsoft's version, though many users get blank boxes due to using older versions of this software. Many users have stated over the years that the Chat needs updating on both the general page layout, what server it runs on, and the make of the Chat itself, as it is outdated and somewhat slow.
Site Mascots
Besides from Pico, the unofficial mascot of NG, there is P-bot and A-bot, each respectively the mascot of their own portal, P-bot being the Flash Portal Mascot and A-bot being the Audio Portal Mascot, both of which appear on their pages.
The bots were originally designed by Andrew Dickman years ago, he was commissioned to design them for the site at the time (the original design can be viewed here), since then the two mascots have been redesigned by MindChamber, a popular NG artist.
According to the P-bot's NG profile, they have been with the site for 6 years now.
The P-bot alerts you of your Flash submissions status by email, whenever you submit, whenever your flash is blammed and on a weekly basis if you permit so.
There is also a G-bot (Grounds Bot), but there's no image of it. Email notifications for lost password, Newgrounds account creation etc are sent from G-bot. G-bot is also seen on the NG BBS for the BBS rules and the sticky section for the Flash and Audio section.
Newgrounds Originals
Tom Fulp has submitted several movies and games to Newgrounds. These are referred to as Newgrounds Originals.
His work includes:
- Alien Hominid (Later remade for PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube (US only), Xbox (Europe only) and Game Boy Advance.
- Beep-Me Jesus
- Club-A-Seal
- Dad 'n Me
- Domo Kun Angry Smash Fest!
- Harry Pothead
- House Hunting
- Pico's School
Collaborations
Another popular activity on Newgrounds is the collab—various animators, artists and programmers collaborating on a single movie or game. It began with group works by the Clock Crew and flourished when the Newgrounds Time Trials sparked a more general interest among authors. Collaborations are a great way for artists to work together and get to know each other. They are also a great way for up-and-coming artists to get in the spotlight with the bigshots. Currently there are a lot of collaborations based on songs, with each participating author animating one or more line each, because of the huge amount of collabs being started at the same time and spamming the Newgrounds Flash forum some members took it upon themselves to create the website NGCollabs where people with a batting average (average score of their Flash submissions) of lower than 3.00 could start collaborations.
Daily Collections
Daily collections existed between 2004 and 2005. The collections were headed by the user "Coolboyman". They were written, created, and submitted to Newgrounds within the course of one day. Due to the short timeframe, the majority of the included animations are of poor quality, featuring little (if any) animation and for the most part, speech to voice synthesis used for voices. Each collection features from four to five animations, typically with each cartoon produced by a single animator.
These collections are generally themed. Most of them are based on TV shows, mainly sitcoms, anime productions, and kids' shows. Certain collections are based after people, while others have been based on movies, cartoon characters, and video games.
The collections have been taken up by the user, "Mr. Show" in early 2006; 8 months since a daily collection has been submitted. However, these collaborations are higher in quality. After a short test run two new collections lampooning The Daily Show and Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, "Mr. Show" announced that it would be best for the collections to resume in the summer and that he would be glad to continue them.
Criticism
Image:SiteAdvisor 1.jpg Newgrounds.com no longer contains Spyware.
Pop-up advertising
Image:Newgrounds-vs-ebaum.PNG Newgrounds is a free service, transferring an estimated 4 to 7 TB dailyTemplate:Citeneeded. This is funded only by advertising revenue.Template:Citeneeded This includes banner adverts and pop-up advertising.
Those who dislike pop-up advertising could have them blocked using the browser or add-on software. However, to use the site, users would have to configure an exception for Newgrounds because the flash files themselves will appear in a new popup window.
Linking to an item on Newgrounds can only be made to a launch page, where the reader has to find and click on a Watch this movie button. Clicking this button spawns a pop-up window showing the flash file. Users cannot link directly to a page with the flash file without the interstitial launch page.
Most or all popups on Newgrounds are blocked when logged into a Grounds Gold Account. Template:Citeneeded