Full disclosure mode: I have been a moderator for Newgrounds.com since 2005. I currently moderate their BBS, and reviews users post for both flash submissions and audio submissions. I have met Tom Fulp, the owner, and he hosts a party for the mod staff each year in which he pays for our accommodations. I am however a voluntary member of the staff, and Tom did not in any way endorse or encourage this article. I am writing this because I love the site that much and want to help with spreading the word to potentially new audiences. On with the show…
In 1997 my best friend at the time told me about this wacky website where you could kill celebrities, club seals, and do view other sorts of socially inappropriate content. That site was called Newgrounds.com, and over the preceding 11 years NG has grown, NG has evolved, and has even seen fit to make me part of the madness. But something puzzles and disturbs me, NG is one of the true innovators of content on the internet (Tom Fulp totally tried a lot of what you see on Myspace, Facebook, and other such sites around 2002 and scrapped it when the user base hated it, heck, the Myspace ownership actually tried to BUY NG at one point!) but there are many, many people who are net savvy who’ve either never heard of Newgrounds (we in the community dub it simply NG, cause we’re clever and stuff), or have heard of it, but thought it closed down long ago. Even in the home base, Philadelphia Pennsylvania this terrifying phenomenon occurs.
I must fix this. What follows is the story of my Newgrounds experience,as well as what it is, how it‘s changed, and how it has changed the life of myself, and so many others who’ve clicked onto that wonderful, f$%% up site.
When I first looked up Newgrounds after the aforementioned recommendation, it was a very different site then it is today. The place consisted of: Cat Dynamics (pictures of cats as cyborgs, which may or may not have somewhat inspired the 4chan idea of “lolcats” it’s never been clearly explained to me, if someone reading knows, please leave some feedback in the interest of fact checking, thanks), Club A Seal (various games about abusing seals, such as a flash volleyball type game where two wills punted a seal around), Assassin (games and films about killing various annoying celebrities), and the Portal (a very, VERY crude version, with only about 3 or 4 total movies). It made for a site which was an interesting way to spend a couple of hours, but nothing really earth shattering. Especially because Tom was only just beginning to do most of his stuff in Adobe Flash, vs. the prior HTML based creations he‘d been doing.
The site pretty much stayed that way for another couple of years, Tom introduced a membership system called Grounds Gold, which allowed users to have an account on NG and use somewhat “premium” services like it’s BBS, and entitles a user to specialized content to be unlocked at various point plateaus. When Tom automated the Portal in 2000, turning NG into a community for ALL flash authors and not just himself, Grounds Gold users became extremely important. After the redesign of last year, the Cat Dynamics, Club a Seal, Assassin, and Teletubby Funland (parody of the teletubbies doing frankly unspeakable things. The BBC got it shut down for a bit, but an advocacy group that protects the right of parody helped Tom re-open it. Take that corporate overlords!) sections of the site were removed. Assassin was mourned
NG is now driven by it’s flash and audio portals (the audio portal was added so that flash authors could have a resource to download music produced by NG users and such without fear of any sort of copyright infringement issues). The user base is also vital. Each NG movie has a voting bar on it. The voting ranges from 0-5. Users are encouraged to vote no lower then 2, unless the movie is a horrible work that shows absolutely no effort (remember, without the flash artists, we don’t have content on NG, so it’s important not to make them feel like there’s no point in submitting work). When a movie is newly submitted, it must pass muster with the users to stay on the site. If the first 100 votes drop a submission below the quality threshold (somewhere around 1.0 last I checked), the movie will be deleted from the site automatically; this is referred to as a “blam”. Should the movie pass, it is “protected”.
To encourage users to vote on newer submissions, a system of “points” was created. Users who vote 0-1 on a movie, and that movie is subsequently deleted (either by their 0-1 vote, or a subsequent 0-1 vote) shall receive a “blam” point. Users who vote 2 and up on a movie that passes receive a “protection” point. When a user has a certain amount of blam and protection points, they’re awarded a specific rank associated with their account. For example, I myself have 360 blam points, and 276 saves, my rank is Police Officer I‘m ranked #10,862 on the whole site in this regard, so I‘m pretty low down the chain. Now on to experience points.
When a user votes on 5 movies each day, they rack up “experience points” which can then be deposited. You get 10 per day, and these effect your experience level of your account. Experience is crucial, those points will unlock special content for you I mentioned earlier, but they also effect your standing in the community. If you’re a lower level, with a low sign-up date, don’t expect to get much respect on the boards or elsewhere to start with. The higher you are, the more respect people will tend will tend to have for you. There are 60 total levels, and again, how many exp. points you have will determine your level. So again taking me as an example, I’m currently at level 42 and my overall experience rank for the site is #107. So that makes me seem a bit more important. Now that we’ve discussed the benefits of having an account, and some of the ways the site works, you may be left with two questions. 1. Does the site have moderators for it’s various areas? And 2. What kind of content is on NG? Both very good questions.
Let’s answer content first. If it can be done in Flash animation, Newgrounds has it. The audience tends to be teenagers and young adults, so, the vast majority of things contain lots of violence, or parody things that are popular. There’s also been a lot of “shock” content on the site. A great example is the NG mascot Pico, who debuted in a school shooting type simulator (no, Pico wasn’t the one who began the shooting, but he does go after the gang responsible with a gun of his own). If that wasn’t bad enough, the initial intro piece for it featured an airplane slamming into a building, about a year before 9/11. NG has also received negative press for the Virginia Tech perpetrator being a site member, the shooting before that the kid was an NG member, and I’m sure we’ll get blamed somehow in the Palin email hacking deal. But I’d charge those things being more about the individual, and not the site. NG is a creative community, whose creators are for the most part, sane people who just like to explore dark and weird themes. But there’s also some humor, some drama, and it’s a great way to spend time. The forums also skew younger, but there’s a solid base of regulars there and the mod staff is also top notch.
Which brings us to the idea of rules and what not. NG does have them. They don’t want stolen work, they don’t want anything illegal discussed, if you’re going to review flash on the site remember to be constructive and not just swear at or berate the authors. To that end, they’ve got the people like me, moderators. Moderators are the police force on the various areas of the site that need an overseer to make sure things go smoothly and everyone can enjoy themselves and the content. Speaking from personal experience I know the team is extremely committed to the site, and to it’s users. We sometimes seem harsh, but it’s only because we care…and because when you deal with kids who really make you afraid of the idea that when you get old we have to rely on THAT to take care of us; well, you can get mean. Mods are pulled from members of the community who have been around a long time, and are seen to be helpful and active with the areas of the site their chosen to work with. It’s not uncommon to have one person holding positions on various areas of the site. It’s one of the things that makes Newgrounds so unique and worthwhile; Tom Fulp owns it, and he and his staff run it. But the fans create the content, and it’s by and large the fans who are pitching in their time and energy to help it succeed and grow.
I hope you guys have enjoyed reading this as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it. I also hope you’ll take a few minutes to check out Newgrounds and all it has to offer. If you do, sign up, get an account and join the madness. Also feel free to look me up on there, I post as aviewaskewed.
Next week: Boy I hope there’s a next week! Not sure what’s on the docket yet. I have some ideas of things I’d like to discuss, but it’s all down to finding time. I know this column is very much starting to come off the rails early on here, and that is not fair to the readership, or the nice folks who give me this space. I’ve just got to learn how to budget time better, and I promise you I will try harder to that end in the future.
