Newgrounds

Newgrounds is a site run by Tom and Wade Fulp. It is a website that houses a vast amount of Macromedia Flash movies and games submitted by the many members of newgrounds. They are then put to the test in the ‘Portal’. Newgrounds also supports audio creators and so has an audio portal aswell. These audio submissions can be used by anyone for free as long as they provide some credit to the creator.

People can vote for movies and games on a scale of 0 to 5, 5 being the best score a movie or game can recieve. Although movies can be uploaded instantly, they can be deleted quickly if they don’t meet the following criteria.

• by 100 votes it needs a score of 1.0 score
• 150 votes - 1.25
• 200 votes - 1.60

When a movie is deleted this is referred to as Blamming. It is then put into the Newgrounds flash Obituaries where all that remains is most likely some sad reviews and the score that it was deleted at. When a movie is kept on the site it is Saved. This means that it will now stay on the website until it is either manually removed, Newgrounds is removed, or it’s score becomes so low that it could be automatically deleted. Any one can view it at this stage.

Movies can also be flagged. This means it violates the Terms and Conditions that the artist accepted on subbmitting. It is then marked for review for an administrator to decide if it will be allowed to stay on the site. This proccess usually takes a while.

You can also give reviews about a movie. You get to write a title, a body, and rate on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the best) on these: Graphics, Sound, Interactivity, Style, Violence, Humor, and Overal. You must have an account to review a movie or game. Reviews can also be rated for abusiveness. There are rules on reviewing as well and you can be reported for bad reviews. A simple example of a rule is no ALL CAP reviews or reviews that contains abusive language towards the author with no supporting reason.

To be participate in most Newgrounds activities, you must become a member. When you become a member you get to be rated yourself on how active you are at Newgrounds. Members can also submit movies and leave comments on reviews given to them on thier movies by other members.

You will be given a name and voting power. Voting power depends on the number of movies you have moted on and how many Blam and Protection Points you have. Voting power effects how much you can influence the score of a movie or game, positively or negatively.

* Experience Points - You get exp points for voting on movies or games. You get 2 points per vote and you can deposit a total of 10 points per a day. The more points you have, the greater your voting power the more influence you have. It is also represented by a level. The person you has the most exp points has the title of Level 30, which there can only be one of.

* Blam and Protection Points - These also effect your voting power by increasing it by a designated percentage. The higher rank you are, the higher percent your voing power is multiplied by. The greatest percent you can get is a 60% percent increase.

* Whistle Level - Whistle level does not have any effect on voting power, it just represents how good you are at reporting reviews and flagging movies. However, a higher whistle level will have a greater influence on what you report. There are 6 levels: Gabage (which means you abuse the reporting system and have no influence in reporting), Normal (default level), Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Diety (which only one person can have).

* BBS Posts and Betting Average - Niether effect anything. BBS Posts is the amount of posts you have contributed to the Newgrounds forum. Batting Average is the average score of all your flash movies and games on your account. It starts when you have 3 protected movies or games and you are given a letter grade such as A, B+, and D’s.

* 1991 - Tom Fulp published the first New Ground fanzine in his parent’s basement.

* 1995 - Tom Fulp launched his first website, New Ground Remix.

* 1996 - March, 1998 - Tom attended Drexel University. Unable to access the FTP account for New Ground Remix, he launched New Ground Atomix on his Drexel University webspace. He created the Flash files Cat Dynamics and Beep Me Jesus.

* Spring, 1998 - Summer, 1998 - Tom moved into an apartment, and regained access to the New Ground Remix FTP account. He started to experiment with Macromedia Flash and created a Flash front page for New Ground Atomix. The now infamous Telebubby Fun Land (http://newgrounds.com/tubby/) Flash movie was made.

* Fall, 1998 - Tom received a call from Inside Edition, who planned to publish a story on his Flash game Assassin. To make it easier for visitors domain newground.com was taken, he registered newgrounds.com. Inside Edition eventually lost interest in the story, but this did not discourage Tom. Newgrounds had such high traffic levels at this point that he was forced to move Newgrounds to a new host, and began selling T-shirts to pay the hosting bills.

* 1999 - Tom was forced to change servers and web hosts multiple times to meet the ever-increasing bandwidth needs of Newgrounds. He started to place banner ads on the site to pay for the high costs of maintaining the site, which had risen to over $1000 a month. He decided to partner with Tromaville - an online affiliate network - who agreed to host Newgrounds for part of the advertising revenue.

Newgrounds started to run into legal issues, mainly with the BBC. Newgrounds had been featured in Stuff Magazine, Wired Magazine and many other magazines and online news venues. Tom also released Pico, which was acclaimed as the pinnacle of Flash 3 programing. By the end of the year, he had also released the Flash games UFA (http://newgrounds.com/ufa) and Samurai Asshole (http://newgrounds.com/samurai).

* 2000 - Tom added a chat room and message board (commonly known as a BBS). He created the Portal, a page that allowed users to submit Flash movies and games to Newgrounds. However, Tom had to manually select and post submissions. The portal received so many submissions that Tom was unable to view them all. He and his friend Ross Snyder started work on an automated portal system in an attempt to solve the problem.

Tom quit his job, and he and Ross dropped out of Drexel. When the automated portal was launched, it became the highlight of Newgrounds. Tom made two more games, Wasted Sky (http://newgrounds.com/shooter/) and the Police Simulator (http://newgrounds.com/police/). He met Shok, a Newgrounds member, at a Philadelphia nightclub. They became good friends and co-created FDA (http://newgrounds.com/fda/). Ross created a new BBS system, and Tom hired his brother Wade to assist in the upkeep of the site. By the end of 2000, Newgrounds had grown to become one of the biggest and most active user communities on the Internet.

* 2001 - Commonly known as the “dot-com bubble burst”, 2001 was not a good year for Newgrounds. Tom saw many other Internet entertainment sites go out of business. Advertising revenue at Newgrounds dropped significantly and it began to struggle financially. Ross took on a second job. The site was still updated and Tom continued to release videos and games, such as Crazy Shuttle (http://newgrounds.com/shuttle/) and Captain Low-Rez (http://newgrounds.com/captain_lowrez/).

* 2002 - The Newgrounds servers were not upgraded due to financial problems. Ross was forced to put his job over his position at Newgrounds and moved on. Newgrounds also wasn’t growing as fast as it had been the past two years. Tom and Ross decided to go back to Drexel University; Tom succesfully graduated, receiving a BS in Information Systems.

Despite full-time education taking up a large amount of his time, he managed to create Alien Hominid: (http://newgrounds.com/portal/view.php?id=59593)

Still considered his most advanced game. James, an old friend of Tom, cleaned up and optimised the PHP backend of Newgrounds - providing Newgrounds with a significant performance increase. The Newgrounds servers were also upgraded. Tom released three new games: Domo-Kun’s Angry Smashfest: (http://newgrounds.com/portal/view.php?id=73449), Chainsaw the Children (http://newgrounds.com/portal/view.php?id=71851) and Sack Smash 2003 (http://newgrounds.com/portal/view.php?id=73750). Meanwhile the automated portal celebrated reaching 50,000 submissions.

* 2003 - Tromaville released Newgrounds from their contract. Tom gained full control over the New York City servers, which he moved to Philadelphia. By this point, Newgrounds’ bandwidth costs were over $10,000 a month. Tom launched the Audio Portal which allowed users to submit their music and sound effects to Newgrounds.

The site’s layout was also redesigned. Tom starts work on a console version of Alien Hominid. The work involved with programming the game prevented him from submitting any more movies or games, but the Newgrounds community continued to submit Flash works. The flash portal reached 100,000 submissions during this time, but while submission 50,000 still exists on the portal, submission 100,000 was blammed from the portal with a 1.43/5.00 at the time of its demise.

* August 7th, 2002 - Original Alien Hominid flash game is realease by Tom Fulp and Dan Palidin. This game was soon to be remade into a console game.

* November 18th, 2004 - Console version of Alien Hominid is realsed on the Gamecube and PS2.

* December 6th, 2004 - Newgrounds received a submission from gman250, called The Numa Numa Dance. It receives national publicity for both the site, and Gman - also known as Gary. The animation rapidly circulated around the internet and was featured in many major newspapers, such as The New York Times and Boston Globe, and TV shows, including VH1’s Best Week Ever, and the Today Show. (source Wikipedia)

More information can be found a the Newgrounds FAQ: http://www.newgrounds.com/lit/portal_faq.html

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