PlanetCrap
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PlanetCrap is a long-running Web discussion forum created by Hendrik Mans, known as Morn. It is ostensibly concerned with discussing computer games, although its content varies almost as much as the Internet itself. Growing out of the Unreal community, it has always remained slightly less reputable than its peers. It has mostly stable group of regular contributors, some of whom have remained there since the site's inception in 1998.
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[edit] History and unreal.org
Its origins can be traced back to unreal.org, one of the early Web forums to spring up for the PC game Unreal. Unreal.org's principals were Morn, Max (who now runs Massivebraincase [1]), Jeet (later to become UncleJeet), Sumbry, Darkblade and SteveD. Editorial content was handled mostly by Max and Jeet, with Morn providing Webmastering and other technical expertise, while the other three were involved in a related online radio show entitled UnrealAudio. Unreal.org was shut down on July 19, 1998, and not coincidentally PlanetCrap started in 1998 with most of unreal.org's users switching over.
Given that it was not part of any other larger network and was not being operated for profit, unlike GameSpy or many other competing sites, PlanetCrap was able to develop an outsider's perspective. This came to a head during the time Andy Smith was producing many topics. The subjects of Smith's topics were increasingly regarded as inflammatory, culminating in a thread in which George Broussard made a statement concerning screenshots [2] which Smith then included in a story [3] written for The Register. This cemented PlanetCrap's reputation for vitriol and anarchy. Smith left the site shortly after.
[edit] Site design
The software Morn wrote to run PC is now at version 6.0 and is named "blah". While Morn has fiddled with some format changes over the years, the basic design has mostly stayed the same: 10 topics on the front page submitted either by users or mods which link to discussion threads which are notorious for diverging early and often from the subject matter of the original thread starter. For most of the site's life thread-starting articles had to be approved by mods, but version 6.0 included a voting feature whereby topics could be voted in by getting the majority of an undisclosed number of votes by users.
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PlanetCrap's content has traditionally centred around computer games. In its early years, it hosted lively discussions between many noted developers, journalists, mod creators and regular users. Among the regular developer posters were: Warren Marshall, Tim Sweeney (game developer) and Brandon Reinhardt of Epic Games; George Broussard and Scott Miller of 3D Realms; Petri Jarvilehto of Remedy; Derek Smart; JeanPaul LeBreton of Human Head; Aubrey "Bezzy" Hesselgren of Ludopathic; Caryn "Hellchick" Law of Raven Software and Katherine Anna Kang of id Software.
PlanetCrap has traditionally had several hot-button issues. Anything to do with Unreal was, given its roots, guaranteed to be interesting to readers. Due to the high amount of game industry posters, threads on technical issues are usually well-informed.
A strong theme of attack of gaming Web sites developed early, with many topics criticising the gradual commercialisation of GameSpy [4]. Many operators of fan sites which had been brought into the GameSpy network used PC to air their grievances. As time went on, however, this antagonism has softened and a good many current and ex-GSI writers have populated the site. A related stream of threads have decried the so-called "Ctrl-C-Ctrl-V" journalism practiced by sites such as Blues News [5], Voodoo Extreme [6] and Shacknews [7].
Over the past two or three years PlanetCrap's core community has dwindled to just a handful of regular posters, with some semi-regular posters and occasionally a very few random posters. This apparent cliquishness combined with PlanetCrap's traditional tendency towards the snide and sarcastic to give the forum an air of impenetrability to newcomers, and means that very few new posters join the ranks of regulars.
[edit] Offshoot projects
Morn has developed several other sites which at one point were tied into his own network, such as an online radio station called CrapRadio which has since been discontinued. There is also an IRC channel connected to the site, of which only half of the usual idlers are also regular posters at PC - the channel #planetcrap can be found at irc.planetcrap.com, irc.craplink.net or irc.chromag.net depending on server availability. The two current moderators of the site, Morn and Gabe Kruger, also partner in a game development venture called Refracted Mandog [8] with several other PlanetCrap denizens. Gabe developed a reader for PC called OpenCrap [9], following on from an earlier standalone reader called CrapSpy. Jibble has started an indexing service for PC called CrapSifter [10].
Several other readers who met through the site have launched their own sites, some in collaboration with each other. The most prominent of these is UAC [11], a Web comic written by Shadarr and lwf, drawn by Penguinx, with technical support from Jibble. After problems with getting a consistent supply of artwork, UAC has since been abandoned. MattG (Matthew Gallant) and Foodbunny were among the group which started the Q&A website True Meaning Of Life in 2000, which has since been disbanded. MattG is now a prominent games industry journalist and Foodbunny has worked for Gearbox Software. Other regular posters have gone on to launch or participate in their own sites: Ashiran was a mod at wtfpeople.com [12] and m0nty has started a fantasy football site called FanFooty [13] and a "human search engine" called Tinfinger [14]. Still other posters have entered the online journalism community after joining PC, such as The_Joker (Karel Donk) who recently interviewed Steve Ballmer for his pro-Microsoft blog [15] and Bailey who has written for Gameshark.
