Newgrounds

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Newgrounds

Type	Private
Founded	July 6, 1995
Headquarters	Glenside, Pennsylvania, USA
Key people	Tom Fulp: Founder & CEO Rob Rosenbaum & James Holloway: Back-End Programmers Tim Miller: Sysadmin Will Stamper & Jeff Bandelin: Web and Media Designers Bob Rudderow: CSS Designer Wade Fulp: Administrator & Public Relations
Industry	Internet services
Website	www.newgrounds.com

Newgrounds is a website headquartered in Glenside, Pennsylvania, USA and created in 1995 that primarily hosts Adobe Flash animated films and games. The site was created and is owned by Tom Fulp (born April 30, 1978), who still oversees every aspect and regularly produces in-house content. Newgrounds is distinguished from other Flash websites by its automated submission/rating system.

1 Front page icons
2 Newgrounds Forum
- 2.1 Forum Catagories
3 Audio Portal
4 Censorship
5 Newgrounds Flash Collection(s)
6 NG-Groups
7 Site Redesign
8 In the media
9 Events
10 See also
11 References
12 External links

[edit] Front page icons

On April 19, 2000 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 Josh "Psycho Goldfish" Tuttle, 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. There are currently 24 icons on the front page. 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.

Today the front page features 12 movies and 12 games, all hand-picked by the Newgrounds staff. Most of these are featured for about a week or less before being replaced, with the occasional very high-scoring piece of content lasting several weeks at a time, especially those ranking high in the All Time Top 50.

Originally the icons were created by 08 Users, 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 2005 the front page archive was launched, keeping a month-by-month list of Flash content that was deemed to be worthy 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.

[edit] Newgrounds Forum

The Newgrounds Forum has a community of roughly 1,500^[1] unique posters a day. Its community discusses a variety of popular topics in each of the 12 forum categories ranging from site related Flash submissions, to personal and off topic discussion. The most popular section on the forum is "General" discussion, housing over 520,000 topics ^[2]. In the Flash or Art forum you would expect far more serious and moderated discussion as the staff strongly encourages a creative community.

[edit] Forum Catagories

All-Access Forums

General
Where is/How To?
Flash
Politics
Programming
Clubs & Crews
Audio
Art
Video Games

Reply-Only Forums

NG News
Network News
P-bot's Postings

[edit] Audio Portal

The Newgrounds Audio Portal is a place where amateur artists can submit all types of music. When an artist submits their first song an administrator or audio moderator will have to review it before it gets listed, this can take two days or longer. All the music is free to use (under a Creative Commons license).

Since the redesign, the Audio Portal has become more flexible and allows artists to edit their submissions or remove them providing it hasn't been used in a Flash, yet^[3] also they are able to add an icon like with flash submissions. Unlike the Flash Portal, Audio cannot be "blammed", this might be due to the lack of popularity of the Audio Portal or other reasons.

[edit] Censorship

Newgrounds has been known to censor the words "Whitey", "Cracker" and "Nigger" throughout the Newgrounds text-place areas, except the only place it is not censored is the profile post replying section due to using JavaScript. The reason is mostly (and probably) because as it shows in the Flash submission area it quotes that "Your Flash should not be racist" as being known that Newgrounds is against racism.^[4]

[edit] Newgrounds Flash Collection(s)

Submitting a Flash animation or game to Newgrounds gives the viewers a chance to choose to recommend the Flash to a collection or not. The collections help viewers of Newgrounds navigate the website easier to help find what they are looking for. For example; the Clock Crew collection contains Flash videos pertaining to the Clock Crew, a specific Flash group on Newgrounds as well as on their own personal website[1]. Series collections are also alloted to popular serial Flash, such as Salad Fingers. A certain amount of votes for a collection as well as approval from an administrator/moderator is required for the Flash to go into the collection.

[edit] NG-Groups

There is a large list of Groups, formed by Newgrounds users, with the function to be platform for people who have the same taste of humor, the same interests or a similar style, to work together in so called collaboration projects. The following list includes NG-Groups that contain at least thirty active and participating members:

The Clock Crew (Website)
The Kitty Krew (Website)
The Star Syndicate (Website)

[edit] Site Redesign

On 16th July 2007, Newgrounds underwent a total redesign. The redesign process took many months to prepare and the site was down for about one and a half days to implement it. The under construction page showed the Newgrounds tank being welded by three Tankmen characters, while text said 'IN UR TANK, UPGRADING UR FEATURZ'. The redesign added a number of new features, including blogs on user pages and modifications to the level and blam/protection systems.

Several system upgrades were commenced on 28th April, 2008. A similar under construction page was shown, this time saying 'IN UR TANK, UPGRADING UR SERVERZ :3'. Further upgrades commenced on the 7th of May and 12th of May 2008.

On Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008, the servers underwent maintenance. During the process, the same animation as the redesign and server upgrade was shown, under which was text saying 'IN UR TANK, MAINTAININ UR SERVERZ :3'

At first many were angry about the redesign, but after a few weeks it was accepted and loved by most Grounds Gold members.

[edit] In the media

Teletubbies: In 1998, Tom Fulp of Newgrounds created a spoof of "Teletubbies" called "Telebubby Fun Land^[5]" which resulted in a law suit from the BBC^[6]. This resulted in a boost of notoriety and media exposure.
Kaboom!: In mid-2002, Newgrounds received notoriety for hosting Kaboom!, a game in which the player controls an apparent Palestinian suicide bomber who kills innocent men, women and children in Israel.^[7] Despite receiving criticism and calls for its removal from the internet by congresswoman Nita Lowey, several groups including the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, and other sources, Newgrounds continued to host the game.
Oklahoma City Escapades: Newgrounds received more negative attention in 2004 by refusing to remove Oklahoma City Escapades from its site, which is a game that was developed by Joshua Bend, that spoofs the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.^[8]
Jeff Weise: Jeff Weise, infamous for the Red Lake High School massacre, posted a violent animation on Newgrounds.com.^[9] Its existence was discovered and widely reported after the massacre.

Numa Numa Dance: Gary Brolsma first published his "Numa Numa Dance" on Newgrounds on December 6, 2004, where it has since been seen more than 14 million times^[10], and copied onto hundreds of other websites and blogs, making it the second-most watched viral video of all time^[11] (only losing out to Star Wars kid). He has also received mainstream media coverage from Good Morning America, The Tonight Show and Best Week Ever, and, according to The New York Times, was an "unwilling and embarrassed Web celebrity."^[12] In September 8, 2006, he reappeared with a professionally produced video titled "New Numa"^[13]. The release of the video has prompted the New Numa Contest which offers up to $45,000 in prizes.
Attack of the Show! From July 5-8th 2005, Tom Fulp was a co-host on Attack of the Show! in which he would showcase and describe popular Newgrounds flash submissions.^[14]
The Virginia Tech Massacre media blowout: V-Tech rampage, Virginia Tech Shootout!, and others achieved questionable fame from allegations of making fun of the Virginia Tech massacre.
Metasonix: David Lovelace, creator of the popular Newgrounds series Retarded Animal Babies, used his Animal Babies characters in the offensive panel artwork for a guitar amp made by Metasonix and demonstrated at the 2008 Winter NAMM Show. The amplifier caused a minor firestorm of media attention. [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]

[edit] Events

Newgrounds hosts and participates in many events throughout the year to give users a chance to meet each other or to interact in general. Some events are organized by regulars but usually by forum moderators and site administrators.

Notable Events:

[edit] See also

[edit] References

13. [9] - dumassstudios makes awesome claymations

[edit] External links