HeavenGames

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HeavenGames
URL http://www.heavengames.com/
Commercial? Yes
Type of site Gaming
Registration Optional
Owner HeavenGames, LLC.
Created by Mike "Archangel" McCart

HeavenGames (abbreviated online as HG) is a network of websites covering various genres of games, (primarily strategy games and city building games. It was founded in 1996, and operated by the company HeavenGames, LLC, which is owned by Tom "SpineMan" Mescher, Jan Jaap "Jayhawk" van den Hurk, Ho Yin “Zen” Au, Sergio "Socvazius" Prado, Francis "Draco" Cermak and Matthew "Reckless Rodent" Lowe. The company's main source of revenue is generally online advertising, and some of its wide user base, including forum users, in turn provide an audience for the advertisements.

Contents

[edit] Site Administration

As a network, HeavenGames provides separate websites for each game that the company chooses to cover. Each website, to retain affinity to the network, is named with the suffix “Heaven,” as in “Age of Empires Heaven.” The features provided to each website include a well maintained, moderated and safe forum community (running on a highly modified UBB system), newspro, and a content management system.

HeavenGames currently covers (or in other words, has a website otherwise called a "Heaven" dedicated to covering to) :

Former HeavenGames sites include Asheron's Call, Settler III, Baldur's Gate II and Black & White.

[edit] Moderation & Employees

HeavenGames is staffed by volunteers whom are chosen from the forum community or gaming community surrounding each game covered. The volunteer staff is divided into four distinct groupings: EXCO, Seraphs, Angels, and Cherubs.

The EXCO, or the Executive Committee, consists of representatives and directors from the various aspects of the site. The group controls the governance, administrative and operational responsibilities of the network. The EXCO keep in close contact with HeavenGames' owners with "Draco" serving as the official legal adviser. Currently there are 5 EXCOs - two volunteers ("GillB" - FMT Rep and Projects Manager, "Kester" - Seraphs Representative) and three co-owners ("Jayhawk" - Europe Director of Operations, "Spineman" - Bookkeeper, and "Zen" - Americas Director of Operations)

Seraphs are the webmasters of each website whom handle the administrative, moderation and changes of their website. There is usually only one Seraph per Heaven, however, there have been some cases where this is not always true, such as AoE3H, where "NAT" and "Elpea" currently share Seraph duties.

Angels and Cherubs are the volunteers selected by the Seraphs to work at each individual website. The work selected for both groups is usually constricted to website content or forum moderation, depending upon their skills. The main difference between an Angel and a Cherub is their seniority. Staff members who have been around longer, and proven themselves as valuable staff members are given the Angel status. Each grouping, (excluding the EXCO) is assigned a separate username color for the forum communities: green for Cherubs, red for Angels, and orange for Seraphs. Members of the EXCO do not have a specific color. While GillB and Spineman go under "Angel" status, Jayhawk goes under Seraph status, because he is the webmaster of many Heavens.

The moderation of the forums is controlled by the Forum Management Team (FMT), which is made up of several active moderators. The FMT, while not directly involved in the IP banning of a forumer, upholds the code of conduct in complaints, moderator abuse, and requests for parole (a form of moderation where a banned forumer may be given a second chance). Currently, the FMT members are GillB, David, Crazed Ewok, Sith, and Brad4321, with GillB serving as the chair and David serving as the co-chair.

All staff members participate in a multi-tiered profit-sharing system, where HeavenGames's yearly profits are divided amongst the staff according to staff evaluations.

[edit] Contributions to the gaming community

As of 2005, the original HeavenGames webmaster, Mike "Archangel" McCart, worked full-time for Ensemble Studios. Other HG webmasters hired to the gaming industry include Lila Yee and Steve "Vidguy" Cherrier, working for Edelman PR doing online marketing and promotion, and Graham Somers, first hired by Big Huge Games and then Ensemble Studios to become their Public Relations manager. The now-defunct Stainless Steel Studios also hired several members of HeavenGames' community to test and develop Empire Earth, Empires: Dawn of the Modern World, and Rise and Fall: Civilizations at War. Former staff member Merepatra works as a consultant for Breakaway Games. Take Two Interactive also hired another HeavenGames staff member to foster public relations and feedback. Former staff member The Rasher works for Electronic Arts. Several staff members worked as quality assurance testers for Stainless Steel Studios.

HeavenGames has played host to at least two beta tests and has also provided tools for game developers to aid in the beta testing process. Furthermore, each Heaven usually has abundant information on its respective game, as well as active participation by the several game developers.

[edit] Forum Communities

Screenshot of HeavenGames Forum
Enlarge
Screenshot of HeavenGames Forum

The forum communities at HeavenGames have been known to be highly dynamic – consisting of just over 150,000 members. There is some exchange of forum members (otherwise known as forumers, forummers or even forumites) between different Heavens, as forums for the main site itself were eventually added and linked to from the forums on each Heaven, in the hopes of promoting inter-Heaven relationships, although friendly rivalries still exist between Heavens. Consequently, there are forums dedicated to intellectual discussions (The Library), history, historical roleplaying (now defunct), troubleshooting problems with computers and games, and Outside Discussions (OD), where forumers can gather just to socialise in an atmosphere with less stringent rules than other Heaven forums.

The demography of the forums traditionally has been greatly divided between the citybuilding and strategy genres, with the citybuilding community consisting mostly of middle-aged people, and the strategy areas consisting of teens and young adults. While the forums have been around since 1998, newer forumers often replace older-visiting forumers (oldies) in radical outbursts around the release of each website's game; albeit a few oldies tend to remain with HG afterwards.

The subculture of the forum community changes with each Heaven. As of 2005, the majority of topics made tend to be on questions, complaints or on recommendations for the improvement of each game. While the websites have a community discussion forum for their community alone, a majority of topics tend to be reported as repeated debates or spam-filled topics, although there have been popularized forum games or topics focusing on gaming community issues.

[edit] Outside Discussions

OD stands out from the other off-topic discussion forums on HeavenGames as it is not attached to any particular Heaven, and has comparatively lax rules governing it compared to similar forums. It evolved from the old offtopic forum at Age of Kings Heaven, which opened in 1999, was closed for several months due to immaturity among many members, and was reopened as Outside Discussions in April 2000. Angel Chris was the first regular moderator; he was eventually replaced by MeatloafX and others. After a string of disagreements over what topics could be discussed and the powers of moderators (which eventually resulted in many of the forummers leaving), Angel Zen held a vote on whether he should split the forum into several different forums or keep it as is. The status quo prevailed. In late 2002 the forum was moved to HG main and renamed Knights of the Round Table, after the old General Discussions forum at AoKH. In early 2003, the forum was archived and a new Outside Discussions forum was created.

The archives date back to the forum's opening circa 1999; one of the most famous threads there is the historic "Party Thread" where nonsense was strictly the rule (it was first posted in KoRT, but was later moved to the first incarnation of OD). It began with a post by then-Cherub Dimitrios, musing what things would be like if KoRT was real life, and wondering how various forumers would behave. The thread was the first in HeavenGames history to reach over 10,000 replies, eventually making it problematic for HG's servers, which led to its locking.

OD's members come from a wide spectrum of the various Heavens, although most of them can trace their pasts back to the original KoRT or Outside Discussions on AoKH. Most of OD's members pride themselves on being weird and unusual, and will give newbies (new users) a hard time, more so if they behave in a n00bish manner.

OD's current moderators are "Ultima Knight", "Berend", "Angel Chris", "AndyMan1", "shelper" and "Spitfire", although a plebian group of selected forumers are in the officially-sanctioned Core Group (CG). The Core Group is a liaison between the forumers and the moderators, a sort of "middle ground". They get a custom title identifying them as people a new forummer can turn to for help. The Core Group has received some opposition from certain forumers, who feel that it does not serve a strong enough purpose to exist.

OD has become infamous in HeavenGames lore for being a place where users are permitted to run amok, this perception not being helped by the odd behavior of several OD members. OD is particularly intolerant of what they view as n00bish behavior such as posting as though one were in an America Online chatroom, and most senior members do not refrain from flaming users if they feel it is appropriate, leading to the harsh perception of OD by outsiders. Some offenses that would merit a ban on other Heavens usually result in a warning on OD; however, OD's moderators insist that the Forum Code of Conduct is applied in OD just as it is on other Heavens, but is interpreted more loosely to account for OD's unique culture.

The culture of OD has been subjected to fads over the four or five years of its existence; some of the more enduring jokes have included kicking the genitalia of one forummer named Rasher, the sexual orientation of a right-wing forummer under the screenname of F18Fett, and the forming of unusual religions which have deified things such as cutlery (with the spoon gaining the greatest following).

Another popular fad that later became an elaborate piece of collaborative fiction was Cannibal Island, the first incarnation of which was popular from June 7 to July 2, 2000. In various threads, forumers would roleplay or narrate, typically in script shorthand format, their fictional actions in a fantasy scenario where some had turned to cannibalism, with each entry into the ongoing scenario building upon the developments of the prior entry. Eventually, Cannibal Island would continue to be reincarnated until it eventually lost its popularity on another message board separate from (yet with relation to) HeavenGames.

A recurring topic in the forum has been forum politics, the high point of which was reached circa 2000 when a number of active forumers held an election and formed a congress, which seriously debated legislation relating to the management of the forum for a while. Eventually, certain forumers became upset by the direction in which the congress was heading, and the congress was disbanded.

However, the forum politics fad has refused to die, and has popped up on several occasions; a fixture in them after 2002 was legion, a Korean New Zealander, who led several parties including the Sheep Party and the KORT Soviet, as well as a Stalinist, Islamic micronation he called Kortica http://www.kortica.mish-mash.info. There was a substantial minority, mostly consisting of the Dillo Party which had held the reins of power beforehand, that insisted elections held after 2001 were invalid, as they had not been sanctioned by the elected President, but these charges were, more often than not, ignored.

[edit] External links

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